Browse Topics

Progress

Being a tree, meeting the neighbors, growing larger than pains

The Anxious Wrestler

A Zen Story Of Psychotherapy

Nothing remained in the temple — except the mighty ocean rising and falling, and surging onward in its cycles. This was the sole reality. The temple itself disappeared. There was only the ocean, and the wrestler himself was the ocean.

Noble Heart

Christians And Buddhists On Compassion

We need to learn how to be decent human beings. That is the basis for what we call “religion.” A decent human society brings about spirituality. It brings about blessings and what could be called the gift of God. This is an extremely simple-minded approach. I’m sorry if I disappoint you, but it is as simple as that.

The Guru

Excerpted From Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

People always come to the study of spirituality with some ideas already fixed in their minds of what it is they are going to get and how to deal with the person from whom they think they will get it. The very notion that we will get something from a guru — happiness, peace of mind, wisdom, whatever it is we seek — is one of the most difficult preconceptions of all.

The Turquoise Dragon

Remembering Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (1940-1987)

He was a short man with glasses and a penetrating smile, and a high, almost falsetto voice. He was enamored of Oxford English and taught elocution, after his own comical fashion. (Elocution lessons were given at one o’clock in the morning, before an audience of 400 laughing spectators.)

Our True Nature

On the wooden board outside of the meditation hall in Zen monasteries, there is a four-line inscription. The last line is, “Don’t waste your life.” Our lives are made of days and hours, and each hour is precious. Have we wasted our hours and our days? Are we wasting our lives? These are important questions. Practicing Buddhism is being alive in each moment. When we practice sitting or walking, we have the means to do it perfectly. During the rest of the day, we also practice. It is more difficult, but it is possible. The sitting and the walking must be extended to the non-walking, non-sitting moments of our day. That is the basic principle of meditation.

The Path Of Compassion

Thoughts On Spiritual Practice And Social Action

I could make a very convincing case to you for the practice of sitting meditation — just to do that and nothing else — and an equally convincing case for going out and serving the world.

Letters Unsent

Dear Frank,
You always liked it short and sweet. Here it is: Don’t sleep and sigh and move around on your cushion in the zendo. It disturbs others, and is conspicuous and self-centered.

The Light From Different Windows

As a Westerner turning Buddhist in 1982, I was concerned about abandoning my “Christian heritage” for a foreign culture. I had never felt completely at home with that heritage: church seemed like a sterile routine, and any form of dogma affected me like one more arrogant know-it-all telling me how I should live.

Dharmapala