Skip to content

LIFE

BUDDHISM’S NON-PREFERENTIAL PROBLEM

Some people are beneficiaries of a system that enables certain individuals to amass inconceivable riches while countless others are condemned to lives of squalor and disenfranchisement. And while Buddhism extends its systemic lenses on a much wider framework of human suffering, the in-between area of the immediately near us is sometimes neglected.

AYURVEDA’S WISDOM FOR WINTER

The rise in a multitude of ways to have a quick fix, a good body, and perfect health is another manifestation of our cultural sickness. Simple direct ways to live, eat and follow the flow of nature have become totally uninteresting to our hyped-up western culture. If it’s not sexy, trendy or going to make you famous, then it’s not of value to us at all. This is the danger of our current way of being in relationship to our lives and a direct affront to the sacredness and true purpose of life itself.

REACHING OUT TO ANIMALS & ALL CONSCIOUS LIFE

Day after day we can witness around us acts of callousness and cruelty of which most people are not even aware, because they simply do not acknowledge that other life forms are sentient and therefore feel and respond to energy, moods and pain. This is an extremely crucial point to understand if we are ever to come into greater harmony with all other life forms with whom we share this world. 

TIBETAN MEDICINE & WESTERN MIND, ANXIETY & STRESS

With everyday stress, you should be looking more at handling the situation with your own mind and your own attitude rather than turning to any medication. But medicine is there to help; either for people who are not handling it or people who have such undue stress that it’s not even reasonable to expect them to handle it. Body and mind are constantly interrelated.
Interview with Dr. Emchi Shakya Dorje.

TRANSPLANTING A GREAT TREE

Buddhism ultimately is not about making ourselves comfortable and well adjusted in samsara. It is about getting off that wheel entirely, by ending what they call the uncontrolled rebirth that arises out of confusion. We have to be careful in caring for each other and adapting to circumstances that we don’t reify the self, and reinforce our suffering.

AN ANIMAL SANCTUARY CALLED LOTUS

Lotus Animal Sanctuary, raising awareness, awakening hearts and saving lives. The sanctuary is the life mission of Lynn, a vegan animal rights activist. When I met her, she tells me she is following a Buddhist path and was inspired by her teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh to become vegan and to get off the meditation mat and put compassion into action in everyday life, and she is.

RADICALLY HAPPY

Radically Happy alternates between background explanations and instructions for guided meditations that build upon one another, moving from mastering one’s own mind to mastering one’s heart and finally mastering dignity, which is to say, finding radical happiness regardless of one’s circumstances.

PUSHING THE ENVELOPE: THE NEED FOR MORE INTEGRALLY-INFORMED BUDDHISTS

Welcome to a new age of communication and implementation that deeply cares about honoring both preservation and adaptation—a very necessary and important step towards a more integrated Buddhism that strives to maintain its relevance and thus its extraordinary helpfulness and integrity to actually remain a complete path to enlightenment in the 21st century.

THE TALE, A REVIEW

For those of us, men and women, who have experienced sexual or any kind of abuse, for that matter, the film offers insight into how we craft our stories into narratives that elude uncomfortable recognition of personal trauma and hurt by reshaping them into more tolerable story lines redefined in the abstract while denying the visceral or reacting with a lifetime of blame.

WORKING WITH A MENTOR

Many of us struggle to stay afloat these days. We have increasing social, financial, and work burdens that often stretch us in many different directions at once, and a meditation or spiritual practice can unfortunately easily slip into just being one more thing on the to do list.

HEALING: SEVEN HERMETIC PRINCIPLES OF REALITY

The best and foremost way to help others is to see them as they really are, reflections of their own nature of pure being, just like oneself. Knowing that reflections always manifest the same attributes and qualities as their source, all beings are in fact now and always the omnipresent totality of pure being. Knowing this, if you wish to help someone or wish to develop an attitude of compassion, train in seeing others as already possessing the attributes and qualities of pure being, in other words, see them as already possessing wisdom.

AUTHENTIC GENDER EQUALITY

As more people explore the option to alter their biology, gender issues have surfaced in so many ways it’s hard to recognize certain facets of culture we used to take for granted. There is no longer a ladies room or a men’s room for that matter in New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

ABOUT FRUSTRATION

In our society, there is a constant and intense quest for pleasurable and satisfying experiences, but no room for dealing with disappointment. Things do not always happen as we plan, inevitably resulting in frustration and a lot of effort to avoid it. Increasingly incapable of handling frustration, because on being unprepared for it, we seek illusory alternatives and flee from a real confrontation with the causes. 

ARE SMART PHONES MAKING FOOLS OF US ALL?

Many people are not aware of the fact that they are almost constantly distracted. We tend to have an almost addictive need for some kind of emotional engagement and smartphones fill this need on a number of different levels, very effectively. In fact they have been designed with just this need in mind.

CINEMA AS A MEDITATIVE EXPERIENCE

An interview with Neil Dalal, a scholar and director of acclaimed documentary Gurukulam, an immersive portrait about life in a remote forest ashram. “I knew Swami Dayananda for nineteen years prior to his mahasamadhi last year and studied extensively in India with him. Over the years we had numerous discussions and he was always interested in my research. He was keenly aware of the difficulties of self-representation that traditional Advaita faces today, but was disinclined towards publicity and biographical praise.”

A MEATY QUESTION

When we buy a piece of meat, doesn’t the supply-chain economy react to replace it in the grocery aisle, where it otherwise would not? If hundreds of tantric Buddhists shopped in the same Whole Foods outlet, perhaps that would be the case. But if we relatively few tantrikas are thoughtful and selective, we not only are very unlikely to add to the toll of lives lost to consumption of meat by our twice-monthly small purchase, but likely will be substituting our purchase for that of another person who lacks our motivation and purpose in forming a compassionate and aspirational karmic connection with the being whose flesh has been slaughtered.

VOYAGER

The Moon landing showed that humans can set foot on other worlds, and Hubble validated the Big Bang fourteen billion years ago, but Voyager revealed the depth of humanity’s astounding hubris by simply travelling from planet to planet and taking pictures of our solar system. It was like looking in a mirror while high on LSD and seeing 99.99999% Emptiness — a great void — with a few tiny bits of luminous matter spinning about a blob of boiling solar plasma that will eventually consume itself.

JOURNEY FROM FEAR TO COMPASSION

We must take empowered responsibility, skillful means, insight, awareness, make decisions with perspective and perform interconnected and compassionate actions beyond self-interest and fear, the fear of ourselves or self-doubt, fear of others, of the open space of possibilities, and beyond fear of action.

THE WONDER OF THE UNPREDICTABLE

It is strange that we can keep on upholding the notion of the superiority of our own civilization over earlier and currently different forms of society and cultures. And furthermore, it is strange that we find this position to be legitimized by the power that our economic superiority ensures us.

SLAVERY WAS ONCE AN ACCEPTED BUSINESS MODEL

That is why the industrial agriculture and meat industry can exist. It is due to a basic experience of discernment and independence that violence in any form grows. That thinking does not allow us to see ourselves as part of a larger and interdependent whole, but creates a world where we feel separate from other people and everything else alive. It is a thought pattern that appeals to our fears and greed, which has defined the world in purely economic terms, builds on the idea of ​​eternal growth and profit, and which constantly brings us to battle against others and nature.