Who am I, really? Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara shares three teachings that have given her solace and strength as she’s asked that question. Conceived as part of our “Rainbow Dharma” coverage focusing on LGBTQ Buddhists, the lessons here are universally helpful to us all. The walls that separate us seem to be falling away. These days, many of the old constructions and categories [...]
About Roshi Pat Enkyo O'hara
Stand Against Suffering: A Call to Action by Buddhist Teachers
Thirteen prominent teachers explain why Buddhists need to be be politically engaged at this crucial time in the country’s history, in this statement published in Lion’s Roar magazine and co-signed by more than 140 Buddhist leaders. As long as a society protects the vulnerable among them, they can be expected to prosper and not decline. —The Buddha, in the Mahaparinirvana [...]
How to Make All Your Work Meaningful
Whether you’re waiting tables or washing laundry, meditating or making art, the key, Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara teaches, is always to savor the task at hand. Find a calm space and sit comfortably. Try to view what you experience as neither bad nor good. Sit at ease and let the sounds in. Feel your body; allow the sensations in your body to be present and not blocked off. Include [...]
Include Everything
A teaching by Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara. A group of twelve of us lived on the streets in Lower Manhattan for four days, practicing meditation and experiencing how it is to survive without money or cellphones. It was a renunciation and a pilgrimage, a way to give up all our habitual comforts and resources and to open up to reality, to the conditions of the world of which we are [...]
The Work of the Moment
Like the monk who strived so hard he couldn’t see the goddess right behind him, if we push too hard for results we miss what is most intimate. When we and our work are one, says Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara, even the most mundane of life’s activities are profound and beautiful. Several years ago, I was in the Catskills with a colleague, celebrating the completion of a [...]
Which River Will You Cross?
Whether buying products on the Internet or Skyping with our students and teachers, we instantly recognize our interdependence, and yet how about when we walk outside our door? Roshi Pat Enkyo O'hara discusses the importance of connecting outside of the sangha. It feels as if the ways of teaching and studying the dharma are changing at an accelerated rate. Today, with apps, [...]
About a Poem: Pat Enkyo O’Hara on an Anonymous Poem by a Sung Dynasty Nun
Pat Enkyo O’Hara on an Anonymous Poem by a Sung Dynasty Nun Searching for spring all day, I never saw it, straw sandals treading everywhere among the clouds, along the bank. Coming home, I laughed, catching the plum blossoms’ scent: spring at each branch tip, already perfect. Everybody is looking for something. The writer of this poem, a Sung Dynasty nun, is [...]
