June 2011
We tend to think of good things as being positive, of positive things being good. When things are perfect, for example, that’s something positive, right? Everything is just how you want it; everything is just so. [...]
… it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head. Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal-arts cliché about “teaching you how to think” is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: “Learning [...]
On our way back from a visit to Dharma Realm Monastery in Liugui, a rural district of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, our local host took us to visit another Buddhist establishment in the vicinity. This particular monastery sits half-way up one of the many hills in this mountainous region in Southern Taiwan, and like many other hill-side [...]
In January the Zen Chan Buddhist Catholic Dialogue took place at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. Among the twenty-two participants were teachers and monks from Dharma Realm Buddhist University, professors from Catholic Theological Schools, a representative from the American Council of Bishops and representatives from the Zen tradition on the West Coast. The Dialogue [...]
It was a slow, calming but also energizing practice. We did about five hundred bows every day, which took about six hours. Shortly after classes ended in May, the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas hosted a bowing session for twenty-three days. During the session we bowed to the ten thousand Buddhas that our community gets [...]
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As the school year wraps up, we asked the 4-6th graders to reflect on what they learned in meditation class. Their responses were both insightful and simple, serious and witty: I feel like my mind got a bath …. “I think meditation has been helping me. Not only my behavior, but my mind. I feel [...]
Recently, great posts by Alexandra and Audrey got me thinking. In their posts, along with my previous conversations with others who are trying to gain a little insight into their minds, often the word or the image of “edge” comes up. Alexandra wrote about becoming aware of one’s subconscious thoughts, of going to the “edge [...]