The Heart Sutra Will Change You Forever
Penetrate the true meaning of the Heart Sutra, says Karl Brunnhölzl, and nothing will be the same again. The secret is making it personal.
Deep Dive
Emotions Are Part of the Path
When difficult emotions run high, whether anger, grief, fear, or overwhelm, we tend to do one of two things: push them away or let them take over. Buddhist practice offers another option, which is to turn toward intense emotion with curiosity and use it as material for the path.
That’s the approach running through this month’s Buddhadharma Deep Dive. Sharon Salzberg, Judith Simmer-Brown, John Tarrant, and the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche offer fresh ways to think about our emotional lives, and three more teachers take up how emotional provocations can turn us toward practice. Ayya Khema shows how the faults we see in others reflect our own, and James Gritz offers a subtle-body practice for restoring balance. Victress Hitchcock and Darlene Cohen describe what they found when age and illness stripped away who they thought they were, and Mushim Patricia Ikeda makes the case for caring for ourselves as well as others. Plus, video teachings from Thupten Jinpa and Jack Kornfield. We hope this Deep Dive helps you meet your most intense moments with steadiness, and even a little curiosity.
How can I engage with emotions in a way that turns me towards the Dharma?
Three dharma teachers are asked how to engage emotional provocations and self-centeredness in ways that turn us toward dharma practice and life.
I Used to Be Important
At 78, Victress Hitchcock went to a Chöd retreat expecting the worst. Instead, she lost a few identities she no longer needed. What has she learned about embodying wisdom and turning toward what challenges us?
Ground Yourself from the Inside Out
Working with the subtle body’s inner wind can calm restlessness, restore emotional balance, and anchor you in the present — James Gritz gives you a practice to begin.
What My Body Taught Me When It Stopped Working
The late Zen teacher Darlene Cohen was athletic, fearless, and self-reliant — until rheumatoid arthritis took her strength, her independence, and even her ability to care for her own child. What she found on the other side of denial wasn’t peace. It was curiosity.
How Red Pine (aka Bill Porter) “Dances With the Dead”
In this video interview with John Kain, the famed translator reflects on the mountain hermits and packed Zen retreats his work has inspired in China, the long search that finally cracked the Diamond Sutra for him, and more.
Waking Up to Patriarchy
In this 2015 conversation, the late Gloria Steinem joins Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo to talk about personal challenges they’d each faced, progress they’d seen, and why there’s more to be done.
Is Your Life Too Busy for Loving-kindness?
One small word in the Metta Sutta raises a question that modern practitioners may prefer not to ask: What if meditation cannot compensate for the lives we have
Who Wrote This? On Buddhism & Agency in the Age of AI
When AI writes your emails, edits your prose, and so on, where does “you” end? Hajeong Park finds that Buddhism has been sitting with this question for centuries — and that its answer, rooted in non-self and dependent origination, gives us a useful framework for navigating the age of AI.
Meet the Teacher: Andrew Holecek
Andrew Holecek, whose work involves studies on dream yoga, the practice of dark retreat, and coming to terms with death, impermanence, and loss, speaks to Lion’s Roar’s Rod Meade Sperry about what makes him tick, and what he teaches in “Waking Up to Death,” his new online course coming soon from Lion’s Roar.
Dharma Books: Excerpts
Devotion in Three Keys
At a monastery’s grand reopening in Kathmandu, Justin Kelley watches three very different expressions of Buddhist devotion sit side by side — and finds, in his teacher Mingyur Rinpoche, a living example of what it looks like when they meet.
Equanimity Is Not Detachment
Nichiren Buddhist teacher Mark Herrick argues that equanimity isn’t stoic composure — it’s homeostasis, the same balancing function that lets a single cell survive change.
U Po’s Five Hundred Years
In 19th-century Mandalay, a physician’s reading of a single Vinaya passage put him at odds with centuries of commentary — and cost him his life.
How I Turned My Buddhist Practice Into Service
A Marine veteran on how a felony arrest, a Zen teacher, and a correspondence with a man on death row led him to bring meditation to veterans, teenagers, and the incarcerated.
Moving Through the Three “Karma Doors”
Vanessa Zuisei Goddard on how understanding our gateways to the world — body, speech, and mind — is key in our practice of sila, or virtue.
The Buddhism the World Forgot
In Bangladesh, ancient monasteries, local legends, Theravada communities, and centuries-old devotional practices tell a remarkable story of survival and renewal.
Buddhism A–Z
Learn all about key Buddhist terms, concepts, and traditions in our in-depth glossary — perfect for beginners and committed dharma practitioners alike.
