Category: Buddhist Wisdom
How to Set Better Boundaries
Guided by Buddhist teachings on the brahmaviharas, Elizabeth Hernandez-Stomp helps us learn when to say yes and how to say no.
The True Nature of a Flower
For Valerie Brown, her garden is a teacher of the dharma. In every bloom she sees impermanence, nonself, and nirvana.
Is the Guru Model Broken?
Pema Khandro Rinpoche, Lama Rod Owens, Lama Rigzin Drolma, and Lobsang Rapgay discuss the guru model in the Tibetan tradition, in which the teacher is central to the path.
Uncover the Golden Buddha Within You
The gold of your true nature can get buried beneath fear and confusion, but it can never be tarnished. Tara Brach on how to trust your basic goodness.
How to Be a Friend Until the End
According to Frank Ostaseski, offering care to someone who’s dying is like meditation: there’s no one right way, but practice helps, and so do basic guidelines.
The Dharma of Fiction
Novels, fables, and plays — they’re stories that are made up, yet they often express deep truths. Five writers and thinkers explore the spiritual teachings they’ve found in fiction.
The Sacred Desire to Exist
Out of the primordial desire to exist, everything comes into being. This sacred force, says Anam Thubten, is different from clinging, which is the source of our suffering.
Develop a Mind Like Sky
Meditation comes alive through a growing capacity to release our habitual conflicts and worries that make up our sense of self, and to rest in awareness.
Why We Take Refuge
There are two kinds of refuge. The reason we take refuge in the outer forms of enlightenment is so that we may find the buddha within.
The Immeasurable Beauty of Queerness
Taryn Stickrath-Hutt shares her journey as a queer woman and Jodo Shinshu Buddhist, drawing inspiration from the infinite light of Amida Buddha.
How to Grow Wiser with Age
As you age, says Judy Lief, you can discover your true nature — timeless and luminous.
What to Say When Someone Dies
Avoid pat expressions, says Valerie Brown. What a grieving person needs is loving presence.
Detox Your Mind: 5 Practices to Purify the 3 Poisons
Five Buddhist teachers share practices to clear away the poisons that cause suffering and obscure your natural enlightenment.
Excerpt: Sangha of Boundless Life, by Jeff Wilson
An excerpt from Jeff Wilson's new book, "Living Nembutsu: Applying Shinran’s Radically Engaged Buddhism in Life and Society" — reviewed in the Summer 2023 issue of Buddhadharma.
How Mindfulness Can Help Ease Anxiety
Buddhist teacher Judy Lief explains the Buddha’s deep analysis of the roots of anxiety and shows how mindfulness can help us ease the suffering of an anxious mind.
7 Life and Death Questions
Michael Hebb, founder of Death Over Dinner, offers some important questions to guide your contemplation of mortality.
How Mindfulness Leads to Enlightenment
Melvin McLeod on how Buddhism uses mindfulness to develop the wisdom that frees us from suffering.
How Listening Becomes a Spiritual Practice
Everything and everyone are always teaching us the dharma, says Christian McEwen. We just have to know how to listen.
Who Was the Buddha?
The Buddha who lived 2,600 years ago was not a god. He was an ordinary person, named Siddhartha Gautama, whose teachings on enlightenment and the end of suffering became the basis of the world religion of Buddhism.
What Are the Three Types of Suffering?
Suffering is the central problem that Buddhism addresses, and recognizing our suffering is the first step to its solution.