“If you are continually judging and criticizing yourself while trying to be kind to others, you are drawing artificial boundaries and distinctions that only lead to feelings of separation and isolation.” ~Kristin Neff I was lying on my couch again, Netflix playing in...

We have not seen each other in forty years, but when the package arrived from my childhood friend, Maki, who had found me on Facebook, I had a sense of what it might be: salty, briny, pickled, wrinkled, fragrant Japanese plums, called umeboshi, which her family in...

On the mountain where I live, the weather can be incredibly bipolar, which is great fun. In the winter we get snowed in and in the summer the sun burns us all to hell. A big fan of the “middle way,” though, my favorite time of year is… today, as it turns out: Spring...

‘True generosity arises from the recognition that when we give, we are not losing something, but participating in a flow of generosity that benefits both the giver and the receiver.’ Everyday Buddhism

‘To grasp the significance of pure lands is not to imagine them as distant or fantastical places, but to recognise that they symbolise states of awareness that are available to us here and now.’ Everyday Buddhism

‘When you turn within and drop off everything completely, realisation occurs.’ Hongzhi Zhengjue

“Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck where you do not belong.” ~N. R. Narayana Murthy Anyone who had a Stretch Armstrong as a kid remembers that moment when you and a friend would test the limits of what good ol’ Armstrong...

‘Enlightenment, as described in the Diamond Sutra, is not a goal to be attained, nor a treasure to be claimed. It is the dropping away of delusion, the recognition of what has always been.’ Everyday Buddhism

Tell me, is your jaw clenched as you’re reading this? Are your shoulders hunched? Do you feel tension throughout your body that mirrors the constant buzz of stress within your mind? I suspect we all feel like this far more often than we may even realize because, for...

‘The human mind thrives on notions of achievement. Whether in worldly or spiritual pursuits, we are conditioned to seek, strive, and accumulate. Yet, the Buddha’s teaching overturns this paradigm.’ Everyday Buddhism