While we’re on the topic, we should talk about maternal mortality. I have been on a tear about this issue for some time. It’s a no brainer, as my father would say. So we decided to try to stick to the principles Thich Nhat Hanh laid out for engaged Buddhism…

Y’all seem to like it when I write about politics, which is fine with me, because I have trouble restraining myself. I think we should continue to follow the principles Thich Nhat Hanh laid out in articulating his idea of engaged Buddhism. The first principle, in particular, is important. He…

Actually, Buddhism offers the best attitude for politics. It turns out that Jill Biden, the First Lady of the United States, visited with her counterpart in Ukraine on Mothers’ Day. Mrs. Biden is doing a fine job as the nation’s Mom with this visit. Very few people apparently think…

Or pure consciousness. Lots of teachers use the two terms interchangeably. We are trying to describe the indescribable, so the exact terms do not really matter that much. Think lake, or pond. Lake might be too big. Your thoughts and emotions are like a river, always flowing past your awareness…

Your ego, that is. One hears often that traveling the Buddhist path requires a lot of courage. One of the biggest ways in which that is true is that traveling the Buddhist path causes you to look at yourself with total honesty, which is pretty terrifying. You gradually notice all…

How to do this. I am a lousy salesperson. If I ever have to survive by selling, just leave me to starve or put me out of our misery. I mentioned this, almost exactly a year ago now. I didn’t realize it had been that long. …

An important and interesting Buddhist idea that I should have written about long ago — my apologies — is dedicating the merit. If you read a lot of Buddhist literature, you will often find that the author, and anyone else involved in the production of the publication who has the…

Very careful readers may have noticed that Anapansati, mindfulness of in and out breathing, ends with the same four letters, -sati, that the Satipatthana Sutra begins with. “Sati” is the word in the language of the sutras, or the recorded teachings of the Buddha, Pali, for “mindfulness.” Patrick Kearney explains…

In the Anapanasati Sutra, which we just looked at, as part of the setting of the scene in which the Buddha explains the how and why of Anapansati meditation, he makes a claim that has always struck me as a bit odd. …