Would you say you’re a healthy eater? If not, is this a goal for you? For years, people thought of me as healthy because I rarely ate meat or desserts. But it was more that I was desperate to stay thin, and I consumed tons of processed food and sugary candy because I...

‘Papañca is, in essence, the mental act of turning ‘just this’ into ‘me versus that’. It is the engine that generates ‘two’ from what was never really split.’ Everyday Buddhist

It was close to midnight the first time it really hit me. I was sitting alone at my kitchen table, still in work clothes, phone in hand. I’d come straight home after a long day of back-to-back meetings, staff conversations, and one decision I’d been avoiding for...

I am sitting across the table from a good friend, a man who is a professor and a chaplain. David has flown in from Minneapolis, arriving at Upaya Zen Center an hour ago. I look into his eyes and realize that I am seeing something in him I have never seen before. His...

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ~Viktor E. Frankl I stood in my kitchen, staring at the leftover red velvet cake from my birthday party the night...

‘Dependent on contact, there is feeling. From feeling, perception. From perception, thought fabrication. From thought fabrication, proliferation (papañca). From proliferation, perceptions of self and other arise—and with them, conflict.’ Madhupiṇḍika...