I was working beneath the composting toilets, churning shit with a shovel, trying to turn it into food for the earth, when a voice rose up from the depths: I just have to tell people about this.

When I teach in the West, people talk about self-loathing and self-aggression. Imagine what could happen if we all began to feel that we are good and to have confidence in ourselves that way.

In the midst of our wreckage that I speak to you, both as a Jew and as a New Orleanian, because survival is not just a matter of urban planning, or of financial aid, or willfulness. It is something deeper. It is of the soul.

Seeing the world through Buddha's eyes is the work of a lifetime, one that constantly needs to be renewed at every life stage and in every societal circumstance.

At the heart of Buddhist teachings is a crucial ambiguity that has become increasingly problematic as Buddhism has globalized. This ambivalence needs to be resolved if the Buddhist tradition is to help us address most effectively the challenges that now confront us.

He swung into our line of vision, swiveling his wheelchair around finally to face us in his spacious living room, his back toward a large window with a vista onto the Pacific Ocean in Maui. Ram Dass was beaming, joyous.

It feels to me that we are suffering inter-generational trauma. We are leaving our descendants with such a horrific prospect. We can't claim to be handing on the Earth in a condition that is easy to love, or even endure.

We want to live in a world of peace and goodness. We want a world where the highest values are tolerance, generosity, creativity, kindness and fearlessness rather than self-absorption, aggression and speed.

We may or may not forgive, but we must let go of revenge, otherwise we become prisoners of our own anger, and of the vicious cycle that is terrorism.

We experience ourselves as so very real and distinct, and we are so consumed by desire, that the notion that it is all empty is just confusing. But impermanence is actually a wonderful thing.

Delusion takes many forms, but for Buddhism the fundamental delusion, at the root of our dukkha suffering, is ignorance of our true nature. Today, the delusion of separation is not only an individual problem but a collective one.

Many of us dream of exchanging our day-to-day responsibilities for a heartfelt life full of purpose, but few of us ever get around to doing something about it. The women featured here are the exception.

In collective denial -- such as that concerning climate change -- the group bubble of delusion becomes much more difficult to dispel, or even to become aware of, when people consciously or subconsciously believe they benefit by not seeing it. This suggests a Buddhist response.

Genki Takabayashi, the retired Japanese-born Rinzai Zen teacher, died at his home in Victor, Montana on Monday at age 81.

The spiritual literature tells us that an attitude of non-attachment is a goal in spiritual development, or an endpoint on the road to enlightenment. What does this mean?

A lot of people won't want to go near anything remotely religious, including meditation. But for those who want faith, and who have become cynical about faith seeming little more than political tool, don't let politicians and giant religious institutions steal from you what is rightfully yours.

Living in the light of humility, kindness and compassion is the deep lesson and timeless inspiration of Bodhi Day. When we celebrate Bodhi Day this year I hope that we can celebrate it as a 21st century holiday, embracing the full weight of Buddhism's long history without being limited by it.

With a Buddha surrounded by flames and flanked by two brutish figures, the scene at the heart of the earliest-known drawing in a printed book might seem an unlikely source of spiritual comfort.

The notion of aging as a spiritual practice could be seen as just the latest of these baby boomer projects: "We're going to do aging differently and better than anyone!"