I was asked to write an article sharing my experience of living with Mild Cognitive Impairment, due to Alzheimer’s disease. After two weeks of working on this assignment, I thought that the final draft was complete. Then I realized it wasn’t, and that my process of...

With generosity as your guide, caregiving unfolds as a spiritual path. While material generosity—helping with  money and  objects—is wonderful, direct caregiving provides the opportunity to offer the deepest kind of generosity: protection from fear. When loved ones...

On the altar in our zendo, two nearly identical buddha statues sit facing one another. Their faces are calm and open. Their robes fall low, exposing their chests—heart to heart. Painted across their backs and shoulders are scenes from the natural world: trees, birds,...

Andrea Miller: Are there any rituals or practices in your tradition that you think people of all traditions could benefit from? S. B. Rodriguez-Plate: All of them! Whenever I participate in rituals and traditions from groups I haven’t been involved with before, I...

When I was first introduced to mindfulness meditation, the teacher said that there was “nowhere to go, nothing to do, and nothing to change or fix.” As I sat on my cushion that day, trying hard to be mindful, that instruction struck me as a giant contradiction. Wasn’t...

Mindfulness has begun to permeate Western culture, and, as expected in a capitalist society, it has become trivialized and commodified. You can now find hordes of “mindfulness products,” ranging from mindfulness coloring books to an “in-depth planner that will help...

“Travel far enough, you meet yourself,” the author David Mitchell writes in his novel Cloud Atlas. I’m inclined to agree. Discovering lands and cultures hitherto unknown to me draws out aspects of myself I never knew existed. The same could be said of my Buddhist...

“The body always leads us home… if we’re willing to listen.” For over a decade, I lived in a body that tried to tell me something I wasn’t ready to hear. But eventually, it got louder—loud enough that I could no longer ignore the message. It started with...

‘To keep observing the nature of our thoughts generates a mind emptied of Dukkha, and so, is the very best knowledge there is. Through it we gain familiarity with the realization or awareness of emptiness.’ Buddhadasa Bhikkhu

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” ~Kahlil Gibran There are two versions of me. There’s the one I am now—the grounded, present woman who holds space for others, who guides people toward healing, who...