I have recently undergone surgery for tubal ligation (or tied my tubes). Since then, I have been particularly grateful for sticky hands and early mornings. Even the occasional eye rolls are met with much more understanding and patience because I know this won’t last....

I was born on December 27th. My birth was complicated and traumatizing. I almost died, and so did my mum. We had to spend months in the hospital due to both of us having a staph infection. The doctor who delivered me didn’t change her clothes for two days because she...

Let me tell you about yesterday. Usually, when I get off work every other Friday, my partner and I start our weekend together. I was so excited to grab dinner on the way home, which was pizza and wings. I requested my Lyft to pick me up from work, take me to the...

I have two dear friends who married, and then had a child, a lovely boy. They gave him my name for a middle name, so, I was particularly happy on top of the happy I’d already felt for them. When their child was about three, out came a proclamation: “I’m a girl.”...

Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing Stephen Batchelor, author of Buddhism Without Beliefs, about the role of study in Buddhist practice. Often, it seems Buddhists fall into talking about two possible paths: that of the practitioner, and that of the scholar,...

A friend of mine once had to explain to her four-year-old son that the woman who had been providing child care for him since he was born was going to move away. Because her child was very attached to this person, my friend carefully told him about this step-by-step,...

The first verse of Shantideva’s “Patience” chapter, in his Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, reads: Whatever wholesome deeds, Such as venerating the buddhas and [practicing] generosity, That have been amassed over a thousand aeons, Will all be destroyed in one...

Growing up outside Philadelphia back in the 1980s, I found myself attracted to practicing meditation to attain enlightenment. When I was first exposed to Buddhism, I assumed that silent sitting meditation, with or without the single-minded contemplation of koans, was...

For over thirty years I worked as a doctor in the field of child abuse—examining and/or interviewing children who’d been raped, burned, beaten, and killed, most often by their caretakers. Every time I thought I’d seen the worst cruelty adults could perpetrate on a...

‘For us, to be alive is to practise. The question is our very life. If we hold it continuously, this is proof that we are alive.’ Haechun Sunim