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Verses For Eating Mindfully

Idols

Bob Dylan, the Holy Blessed Virgin Mary, J. Pierpont Morgan

Living With The Dying

An Interview With Frank Ostaseski

We try to curtail “helper’s disease” as best we can. It seems to be rampant in our society: there’s a problem out there, I must do something about it, I have to go help. We’re not necessarily motivated by the best intentions. Sometimes we act out of our fear or guilt instead of a real desire to serve.

When The Teacher Fails

The press reported recently that Osel Tendzin, the successor to Buddhist meditation master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, has had AIDS for years. Tendzin made love with some of his students without telling them they were at risk, and passed the virus on to them and their unknowing partners.

Celebrating The Charnel Ground

Notes On Death And Meditation

In Tibetan Buddhist liturgy, a reminder of death is chanted before each session of religious practice: “The whole world and its inhabitants are impermanent; in particular, the life of beings is like a bubble; death comes without warning; this body will be a corpse.”

The Face Of Maitreya

Flies are constantly present in human life. They investigate the baby’s diaper and have to be shooed away from the dying grandmother’s face. They cannot be ignored.

Without Fear

Talks With American Students

It is important to be aware of what is, not what should be, because the “what should be” is a fiction, a myth, a romantic notion, which all religions and idealists throughout the ages have nurtured and exploited. What good is the ideal of nonviolence if I am full of violence?

Journey Into Zen

Zen is a religion for adults, although even adults have a hard time getting the hang of it. Children don’t need to understand it because they live it. That’s a paradox — a Zen paradox.

Keeping A Short Bridge

Buddhist-Christian Dialogue

For seven years, Buddhist and Christian meditators have met at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, to understand each other’s religious experience, and to search out what it may have to offer the modern world.

The Heart Of Understanding

If you look into this sheet of paper, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in it. Without a cloud, there can be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Inter-being” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, “to inter-be.”