Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights
The mockingbird on the Buddha says, Where’s my seed,
you Jezebel, where’s the sunshine in my blue sky,
where’s the Hittite princess, Pharaoh’s temple, where’s the rain
for the misery I love so much?
I wiped the fog from the glass and saw
a statue of the Buddha on a shelf, laughing
at himself, laughing at me standing there
in a puddle, under a pine tree that kept
dripping on my head
My husband is a farmer, so we often wake up before first light, and I go off on my own with a big cup of coffee to scribble in my notebook for a few hours.
I like to imagine that every morning
Before I get up, the pilot of my plane
Runs through the standard checklist,
Making sure the gauges and switches
Are set and secure for an easy takeoff
After more than two decades as an anchor for ABC News, an on-air panic attack sent Dan Harris’s life in a new direction: he became a dedicated meditator and, to some, even a guru. But then an anonymous survey of his family, friends and colleagues turned up some brutal feedback — he was still kind of a jerk.
I was in a conversation recently with a friend who had just returned from a meditation retreat. She said one of the ideas shared with her group was that “the teacup is already broken,” a meditation on how the death or ending or brokenness we fear is inevitable.
Racialized capitalism trains us to expect that some people fall through the cracks into unjust suffering; our cultural individualism tells us this is acceptable, as long as we aren’t the ones at the bottom.
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I’ve been doing a Buddhist practice now for some years. I’m not a Buddhist. I’m not “enlightened” nor do I see myself as superior to anyone else. I would never … Continue reading →
In the harsh environment of a Rhode Island men’s prison, a group of fifty inmates are transforming their lives through the practice of meditation.
nothing happens then it happens again a fly buzzes on one side of the window wind blows against the other side a car passes then a motorcyle the fly stops … Continue reading →