With red faces and steaming breath, more than two hundred faith leaders from across the country climbed back onto the buses. Dressed in brightly colored regalia, they’d just completed a forty-minute patrol monitoring ICE in ten-below-zero weather on Lake Street in...

As a young woman, I found the peacefulness of Buddhist teachings deeply attractive. But I felt myself stumble psychologically when they were called the “middle way.” I believed life was a bold and daring adventure, whereas the middle way sounded conservative and...

I was ten years sober when, in 1996, I first checked out the California Diamond Sangha at the urging of several AA friends. Early on, when I told its leader, John Tarrant Roshi, that I was sober and in AA, he replied that the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous “was a...

The poet Muriel Rukeyser once wrote: “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” Among the many stories that shape the human experience, those involving panic add a particular disorientation, intensity, and unpredictability to the narrative of any moment. ...

I am standing on a vast expanse of palm-lined sand on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica; a hundred baby sea turtles claw their way out of the safety of their nest. Inch by inch, these tiny beings wriggle across the runway of sand toward the ocean. I watch in wonder as...

No matter how advanced our spiritual practice might be, in the end, we should always remember not to be reckless in our behavior. Therefore, ethics is the foundation of all Buddhist practices, including the Dzogchen tradition in which I practice. Without the framework...