Wanting to know where eggs came from, the five-year-old Jane Goodall ensconced herself for hours in a henhouse, oblivious to the fact that her family was worriedly looking for her. But the little girl didn’t get scolded when she got home. Her mother saw how excited...
Melvin McLeod: Your newest book is called The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. So before we get to the question we all want the answer to—what actually makes us happy?—tell us about the famed study of human happiness you...
1. Choose a quiet and uplifted place to do your meditation practice. Sit cross-legged on a meditation cushion, or if that’s difficult, sit on a straight-backed chair with your feet flat on the floor, without leaning against the back of the chair. 2. Place your hands...
‘When you say, "Another delusion! I can’t do anything about it." You are giving these delusions wheels, aren’t you?’ Motoko Ikebe
Contents Who Was Buddha? What Do We Know About the Historical Buddha? Have There Been Other Buddhas? What About the Buddhas in Buddhist Art? Do Buddhists Worship the Buddha? What Did the Buddha Teach? What Is Enlightenment? Is There a Buddhist Bible? Additional...
In the Buddhist tradition, bodhisattvas are those who, aspiring to enlightenment, make a resolve, “I vow to attain full enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings.” That is a pretty incredible vow! It means that we recognize our own liberation is intertwined...
‘A body wrapped in rags, but a followers mind possesses a priceless gem.’ Zen master Hsuan Chuen
The great Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki Roshi died in 1971, but what if you could talk to him today? Jiryu Rutschman-Byler, abbot of Green Gulch Zen Center, which was founded by Suzuki Roshi, was recently reading about the power of artificial intelligence to conjure...
Precarious times like these call for us to be quiet and listen to our hearts. According to its etymology, the word “precarious” derives from the Latin prefix prec, which means “prayer.” An especially potent form of prayer for times of crisis like these is metta. Metta...
I’m walking down a street near my house. It’s a warm afternoon. A gentle wind plays with the trees. There are some men standing outside a shop, drinking. I walk past them and overhear: “Is that a man or a woman?” I carry on walking. This is an everyday experience for...