“Meditation does not involve discontinuing one’s relationship with oneself and looking for a better person or searching for possibilities of reforming oneself and becoming a better person. The practice of meditation is a way of continuing one’s confusion, chaos, aggression, and passion—but working with it, seeing it from the enlightened point of view. That is [...]

Why do you stay in prison When the door is so wide open? -Jalal ad-Din Rumi Waking up and seeing for the first time, again. I am trapped. Sitting in meditation. Moving through asana. Watching. What is seen? The realization that indeed I am trapped. Trapped in thinking. Trapped in doing. Trapped in the habitual, [...]

“And when He sees me in all and sees all in me, Then I never leave Him and He never leaves me. And He, who in this Oneness of Love Loves me in whatever he sees, Wherever He may live, In truth, He lives in me.” -The Bhagavad Gita In a recent dialogue with a [...]

We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that makes the wagon move. We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable. We work with being, [...]

I’ve broken a lot of bad habits over the years: nail biting, excessive caffeine consumption, sugar, junk food, etc. I’m running out of “things” to let go of. Now, my experience is not necessarily a “habit” that I am letting go of, but rather a way of being. This is proving to be very frightening [...]

Did I disappoint you? Or leave a bad taste in your mouth? You act like you never had love And you want me to go without Well it’s Too late Tonight To drag the past out into the light We’re one, but we’re not the same We get to carry each other carry each other [...]

To be, or not to be–that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep– No more–and by a sleep to say we end The heartache, and the [...]

A few years ago, I conducted research on Buddhism and addiction at The Wat Thamkrabok Monastery in Southern Thailand. Within the monastery is a drug rehabilitation center that uses only Buddhist philosophy, meditation, and herbal remedies to “cure” addiction. The monastery was built in 1949 during the opium trade in Southeast Asia. Since then, the [...]

photo credit: Kanani Ann Daley You fit into me like a hook into an eye a fish hook an open eye -Margaret Atwood My old home had a vicious cross breeze that often blew open the kitchen cabinets and tossed things from the dining table. One day, the wind blew over a full glass of [...]

I was raised Roman Catholic and for the first nine years of my schooling I went to a Catholic School. We had confession twice a month, said rosaries, and opened some morning lessons with The Lord’s Prayer. Every spring our religious studies would shift focus towards Easter. We were often asked to give something up [...]