The rain clouds receded, and the October sun finally broke through as I was practicing walking meditation on a deck overlooking a small pond—my favorite place to walk during the seven-day retreat at Cloud Mountain Retreat Center. Red and gold leaves blanketed the...

What happens to us after we die, if anything, is perhaps life’s biggest mystery, one all the world’s religions try to address. The Buddhist text popularly known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead offers us a unique and very specific answer. It gives us a step-by-step...

In 2022, my mum, Michelle, was diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). Her diagnosis was scary and sudden. With no cure, no truly effective treatments, and an average life expectancy of just three to four years, ALS is a fatal motor neuron disease that...

In 1991, shortly after my first serious breakup, I moved into my long-dead grandmother’s apartment near Coney Island. It was far from everything and everyone I knew—an hour and a half by subway from Greenwich Village. My father and aunt had decided to keep this...

“What have my children done to my body?” Joanna Macy wailed, collapsing to the floor. Her voice broke through choking sobs, channeling the grief of a river. “How can my human children pollute me and turn away?” To the uninitiated, such raw grief might seem at odds...

Parkinson’s is a disease that wasn’t identified until 1817. Yet, 2,600 years ago, the Buddha taught practices that can help manage the symptoms. The prescription: mindfulness, repetition, and slowness. Parkinson’s disease is a progressive neurological disorder that...

Wise effort is an essential element of the Buddhist eightfold path; it means letting go of harmful habits and cultivating positive, productive ones. In Wise Effort: How to Focus Your Genius Energy on What Matters Most (Sounds True), Diana Hill, PhD, combines this...

A few years ago, I was invited to teach mindfulness meditation to a group of software engineers at a multinational tech company. The company hoped mindfulness would reduce their coders’ stress levels, and it sounded like it could be of some benefit. But when I met...

‘Just as a thunderbolt Can light a dark cloudy night for an instant, An awakened being can sometimes Inspire people to do the right thing.’ Acharya Shantideva

There is that strong wish in us to ignore painful things — if possible — but that leaves us bound to them in a kind of sleepy slavery.