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...

‘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