When I think of Groundhog Day in a Buddhist context, the first thing that comes to mind is this old Zen story:

Zen teacher Ummon said to the assembled monks, "I do not ask about 15 days ago, or 15 days hence. But what about today?"

When no-one could answer,...

A few weeks ago I began a series of posts called "Western Buddhism: The 50 Year Lessons." In that post I mentioned three lessons: enlightenment is not what we thought, meditation is not good for everything and religious corruption is universal. Outside of ethnic enclaves, Buddhism is really quite new...

I often teach that Buddhism is about how to be truly happy, so I have been studying the new research field of "happiness studies," which focuses on the objective measures and causes of happiness. Researchers have found three factors that reliably increase happiness as we grow older -- gratitude, generosity...

Recently a fellow Zen priest who just turned 70 said to me, "Lew, when I was younger I did many exciting things and led an active, busy life. But these days I just want to live a quiet life. I want to work in my garden, feed the local ravens...

The word "Buddha" means to wake up. More precisely it means to see what is really going on (in other words, "dharma"), and understand that it has always been so. The Occupy Wall Street movement and its 1,000 offshoots worldwide is that kind of awakening. Its overarching theme is inequality:...

I have been blogging for some while in the Religion section of the Huffington Post, but my presence here in "Fifty" is new. My upcoming book Aging as a Spiritual Practice: A Contemplative Guide to Growing Older and Wiser seems to straddle both areas, which I suppose is...

It's been about 50 years since the bulk of the Asian meditation masters arrived here -- Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, Vietnamese and so on. Many of us have spent our whole adult lives trying to practice and absorb what they taught us. I've been thinking recently about the "50 year lessons"...

"I hate it!" This is what Greg said when I asked him how he felt about growing old.

Greg was a corporate executive in his mid-fifties, and it was not the first time I had heard this response from an interviewee. One of the things I learned in the...

Growing old is something we all experience (if we are lucky) -- except that the parameters of "old" continue to expand. As recently as 1900 the life expectancy of the average American was 45 or 50. Now it is 80, and many people can look forward to living an active,...

I often say when I teach meditation, "We meditate not just to be calm, but to be real."

Meditation has become quite popular in the West, and Buddhist teachers abound, but I wonder if we have yet learned this profound lesson well enough. The Buddha himself, beginning his spiritual...

In a recent article for the Associated Press, David Crary writes, "Baby boomers heading into what used to be called retirement age are providing a 70-million-member strong market for legions of companies ... eager to capitalize on their 'forever young' mindset, whether it's through wrinkles creams, face-lifts or...

The word "enlightenment" in a Buddhist context has been used so frequently and in so many ways, many people may not realize that this use of the word began fairly recently, and has a complex cultural and literary history.

Though 19th century translators of Buddhist texts sometimes used the word...

I have talked in recent posts about the Buddhist teachings on self and soul, and most recently about Buddhist meditators' tendency to "spiritual bypassing," i.e. moving past the messy and often painful work of wounds, selfish tendencies, traumas, life problems and developmental needs to try to reach an imagined state...

Does meditation still work when you're old? Of course it does, when done properly and with the right attitude.

But I meet many Buddhist meditators these days who say to me, "I've been meditating for decades. I've been to numerous retreats. When I was young it was fantastic. I...

Harry Roberts was a part Native American who had spent his youth on a Yurok reservation in Northern California, training with his Yurok uncle in how to be a medicine man. When I lived at Green Gulch Zen Temple in the 1970s, Harry, by then in his 70s,...

This March I turned 64 -- one year away from Medicare, two years away from Social Security. So there it is: I'm a baby boomer, a Buddhist, and one individual face to face with his own aging. But I'm not alone. Each day and every day for the next twenty...

The night that Osama bin laden was killed, I found myself feeling relieved -- even a bit glad. I examined those feelings and wondered: Were these feelings consistent with my Buddhist commitment to peace, compassion and forgiveness? I wasn't sure, but my feelings were my feelings.

The next day...

Vacchagotta -- Vaccha for short -- was one of the many religious wanderers whose spiritual dialogue with Gautama the Buddha is recorded in Buddhist scripture (the Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta). Vaccha was full of questions, particularly about the soul. The soul -- or atman in the language of...

In my upcoming book, Aging as a Spiritual Practice (Gotham Books, January 2012), I tell the following story:

Once, when I was on a live radio show being interviewed by a Christian talk show host, her first question to me was, "Do you Buddhists believe in God?"

I...

In my ongoing effort to find ways to adapt Buddhism to modern American life, I have long been influenced by the example of Vimala-Kirti, the "householder sage" of ancient India (pictured). According to the Vimala-Kirti Sutra ("sutra" means scripture),...