May 2011
For many students, Spring Break is a time to unwind. It’s a chance to relax, and enjoy a week away from school, teachers, and structure. But for several of the students here, it was a chance to roll up their sleeves, dive into a different country, culture, and language, and “seize the day!” as high [...]
The hardest thing I have ever done is to teach high school for one semester. In the grand scheme of things, I realize how ridiculously lucky this makes me. But I have to admit it’s true; I’ve never struggled or suffered so much as I did in that endless five month stretch in the classroom. [...]
There is hope! There is a place of inner confidence from which we can see what’s going on. This isn’t the false bravado of ego that represents an over-compensation for not knowing. Nor is it the misguided sense of certainty through which we set up an external symbol and to which we give up our [...]
September 29, 1977 Feelings that can’t be described, only felt: the steam-fire energy sometimes crescendos past my control. If I can turn it (like a stampede of cattle) and slowly and quietly gather it in, “everything is okay.” It passes. This is called “Waiting out the fire.” If I can’t, all hell breaks loose. Very [...]
If one accepts the postulate that popular “love songs” reflect the attitudes of target audience toward relationship, then we can learn much in this area from Bruno Mars’ “Marry You”. Mars, in mid-20’s himself, is a Grammy-winning song-writer and performer who has written hit singles for Cee Lo Green (“Forget You!”), K’naan (“Waving Flag”), Flo [...]
Forty-eight days after my stepfather passed away, I had a dream. In the dream I am in the house I grew up in, the house where my mother still lives. My mother and two of my uncles are there, and also several people from the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. People are standing around the [...]
I thought that, because of the focus on meditation and introspection, Buddhists aspired toward a relatively passive, detached way of experiencing the world. When I knew very little about Buddhism, I misunderstood it in a way that is not uncommon in the West. I thought that, because of the focus on meditation and introspection, Buddhists [...]
In a lecture on the Sixth Patriarch Sutra awhile back, there was a line that described perfection as limitless. Marty told a story about his days cultivating at Gold Mountain Monastery, and how this line about limitless perfection reminded him of a 9-year-old monk who asked Master Hua, “What if you’re already enlightened?” Master Hua [...]