Category: Dharma in Daily Life
How do Buddhist teachers work with doubt?
Sometimes when I teach I feel like I'm pretending to be someone I'm not because I see where I fail to live up to these precious teachings. I begin to doubt.
What is the Buddhist view of hope?
Oren Jay Sofer, Sister Clear Grace, and Ayya Yeshe look at the meaning of hope in Buddhism and what it means in today's world.
Turning to the Present Moment of Racism
How do we hold the realities of racism in our hearts, asks Doshin Mako Voelkel. And how do we hold the parts of ourselves that might want to look away?
Practice Is the Right Medicine
This, says Jan Chozen Bays, is the healing power of practice: we release our fear, transform our unskillfulness, and discover our kindest selves.
The Beauty of Imperfection
Lion's Roar Special Projects editorial assistant Sandra Hannebohm looks at wabi-sabi and the perfection of imperfection.
Putting Their Compassion Into Action
Hal Atwood looks at three organizations who focus on humanitarian work as an essential expression of their Buddhist values.
The First Noble Truth of Baseball
In the Baseball Sutra, recently discovered by scholar Donald Lopez, the Buddha explains why he created a game where suffering and failure are the norm.
Get to the Root of Your Patterns
Our basic problem, says Trudy Goodman, is ignoring the reality of impermanence. Being mindful in the moment, appreciating this flowing, interconnected life, we miraculously free ourselves from habitual patterns.
Omitting None: The Deep Practice of Community
The practice of community, says Mushim Patricia Ikeda, is more than including beyond all people, even all beings. It mean including all thoughts, all emotions, all realities—the bad as well as the good.
The Fifth Sight: The Suffering of Injustice
To the Buddhism’s traditional four causes of suffering we must now add a fifth: the suffering caused by racism, sexism, poverty, and all the other forms of human injustice. Only when seeing that clearly, says Ann Gleig, will our compassion will be complete.
The Heart of Good Spiritual Friends
When we are with others in times of suffering, says contemplative care expert Koshin Paley Ellison, we can take the four noble truths as our guide.
Our Inner Light
Only when we awaken to our own light can we be fully present to another person’s inner light and life, says Shinge Roko Sherry Chayat. "Only then can we respond fully, with nothing in the way."
I Thought I Knew How to Fix the World
We cling to our own worldviews, says Dorotea Mendoza. Imagine if we listened to each other instead.
Wisdom x Compassion = Freedom
The combination of wisdom and compassion—the very essence of Buddhism—leads to that all-American value, freedom. It is, says Duncan Ryuken Williams, freedom in the most profound sense.
Put Out the Fires
As we learn to limit our consumption, a peace appears, says Sean Feit Oakes. Without this peace, the fire that burns our hearts and communities can never be put out.
Theravada Practice Off the Cushion
A roundtable discussion with Gil Fronsdal, Michael Liebenson Grady and Marcia Rose. Introduction by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
A Hungry Ghost’s Sugar Fix
Gesshin Greenwood on what happens when chocolate, peanut butter, and Buddhism collide.
Thich Nhat Hanh: At Home in Vietnam
After his stroke, Thich Nhat Hanh began enjoying a quiet, contemplative life in the temple where he lived as a young novice. Sister Annabel Laity shares the moving experience of visiting her teacher there.
Love Is Not All We Need
If love were enough to truly help others, there would only be one kind of bodhisattva. Melvin McLeod on the trinity of bodhisattva archetypes.