Browse Topics

Suffering As Grace

An Interview With Ram Dass

From the Buddhist point of view, we have five hindrances: lust and greed; hatred and ill will; sloth and torpor; agitation; and doubt. That’s who we are, so why is one surprised if there’s suffering? But when you look at it from the spiritual point of view, you see that suffering is grace, a gift given in order to awaken you.

Mastering The Enemy Within

An Interview With Richard Strozzi-Heckler

My idea of a new warrior is one who takes on the challenge of facing his or her own aggression — mentally, physically, emotionally. The point is not to say that aggression is bad, but to recognize that it is within us, and to learn how to look at it and train it.

The Cosmic Airdrome

The power of the false and stupid. Emotional appeals and manipulations, whether in advertising, con games, or religious sects, are always seen by intelligence as duplicitous, hypocritical, pandering. Often the appeal is so obviously false that people seem hypnotized or brainwashed.

At The Heart Of Healing

An Interview With Stephen Levine

What we’ve really come to see is that healing is not limited to the body. The body may live or die, but the healing we took birth for occurs in the heart; if that quality of heart is not there, no matter what happens to the body, healing is absent.

Homeless

It is terrifying to look in the mirror and realize that our identification with the form we see is the first and grandest error of our lives. Paradoxically, it is the error we cannot completely undo as long as we are here. Hating that error can be as painful and unproductive as never perceiving it.

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.

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.”

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?

Kindred Spirits

“Anchoring,” going to a secondhand store, watching the boys play pool

Peak Experiences

Two blue herons, a red tail-feather, wild blueberries