During the 2020 fires in southern Oregon, I bought an air purifier. I set it up, turned it on, and felt better. It ran for months. When I finally opened it to change the filter, the plastic wrap was still on. There was one small tear, and under the tear a black dot —...

“To tie your worth to achievements is a recipe for suffering.” ~Brad Bizjack Children don’t just learn mathematics, science, and languages in school. They also learn what success feels like, what failure means, who they believe they are, and sometimes, whether they...

‘Its source is neither from heaven nor from earth; its heroism does not depend upon the changing seasons. Then from where does it arise?’ Chan Master Fenyang

A few months ago, I found myself wondering whether I had made a mistake. It is not a question I expected to be asking in my seventies. Like many people my age, I sometimes think about retirement, savings, and financial security. I look around and see friends who spent...

‘Now, wellbeing is a beautiful thing; there is no inherent shortcoming in wellbeing. The problem is in our excited reaction to it.’ Corrado Pensa

Buddha is the quality of awareness that observes without judgement, the compassion that arises naturally when we let go of our self-centred views.

We hear about resilience often, yet most of us don’t recognize it when it quietly appears in our own life. It doesn’t always look like strength or steadiness. Sometimes resilience is a trembling breath we manage to stay with when we’re meditating after a stressful...

You go on a retreat, finish a training, dive into therapy, or spend a week doing the kind of inner work that shifts something real inside you. You come home changed, while the person you love most is still exactly the same. The same habits, the same reactions, the...

Paramita is a Sanskrit word that means “gone to the other shore.” Whenever I read this definition, I imagine myself swimming out to sea, leaving behind what is familiar but limiting in search of a more skillful way of relating to my life.  The six...

At age eleven, I went to a massive, marvelous playground. Part of it was labyrinthine and low-ceilinged, and it was almost meditative to crawl around in there, my eyes on the floor. At one point, though, I realized I was about to bang into another little girl. I...