When Diana Reynolds Roome brought home a thangka of Manjushri from Nepal she wondered, "How could I bring this great bodhisattva into my humdrum existence?" On my last trip to Nepal, I purchased a thangka of the great bodhisattva Manjushri in a tiny shop on the eastern edge of Kathmandu. I carried the sacred artwork through a series of airports on a two-day journey home to [...]
Pioneering Buddhist chef Seng Luangrath wants you to know “Lao food is good food”
Shortly after Lao-American chef Seng Luangrath opened a Thai restaurant, she found herself asking, “Why am I not serving Lao food?” Now, she’s on a mission to popularize the cuisine of her native country. As a child, Seng Luangrath fled her home country of Laos during the Vietnam War. Her family lived in a Thai refugee camp for two years before moving to California, where [...]
The Wisdom of Anger
If you know how to use it, says Melvin McLeod, the energy of anger becomes fierce and compassionate wisdom. Because even the buddhas get angry about suffering and injustice. Is anger an empowering and appropriate response to suffering and injustice, or does it only cause more conflict? Is it skillful or unskillful? Does it help or hurt? With so many bad things happening [...]
Loving-kindness for Litterbugs
Armed with a trash picker and a garbage bag, Lina Blanchet finds an unusual opportunity to discover the sacred nature of life, in all of its guises. The winds of an impending winter arrive on an early Sunday morning in late November, the day of our sangha’s bi-annual roadside cleanup. The Buddhist Sangha of Bucks County has been responsible for cleaning the same stretch of [...]
Mindful Media Consumption
Each Friday, we share three topical longreads in our Weekend Reader newsletter. This week, LionsRoar.com editor Sam Littlefair asks: how can we find sanity in our dizzying media landscape? Sign up here to receive the Weekend Reader in your inbox. We live in a maelstrom of media. When I first wake up in the morning, I check Twitter on my phone. At the store, pop music [...]
Summertime Longing
Whether meditating or doing headstands, Susan Moon’s small self continues to reach for something beyond. When I was a child, I found a secret place in the bayberry bushes. In the summers my family floated free from the known world—the world that was measured by carpools and sidewalks—and went to the seashore. It was lonely for me there; I felt alone in my separate self, in [...]
Going Outside
When life gets too busy, Kathleen Dean Moore remembers the childhood joy of nature. For many years, my life has been impossibly over-scheduled. I finally resorted to computerized, categorized, color-coded to-do lists. I so single-mindedly finished and deleted tasks from the list that the consonants wore off the delete key on my laptop, leaving only e e e, and then the [...]
Zen Mind, Knitting Mind
In the dharma of knitting, there is no past or present or future, says Jennifer Urban-Brown. Without holding on to the promise of the finished object, loop yarn, pull through, breathe in, breathe out. I started knitting well before I found a steady Zen practice. In fact, I feel that knitting set me up well for Zen. Well, maybe not for studying the philosophy of Dogen, but [...]
How to Practice Metta with Children
You’re never too young to practice loving-kindness. Gail Silver on how to teach metta to your kids. When I returned home after attending my first silent retreat, I was overflowing with loving-kindness and found myself spontaneously reciting certain phrases of the metta prayer aloud: May you be happy. May you be safe. May you be strong. May you live with ease. “Did you [...]
How to Transform Anger in 4 Steps
Using the traditional metaphor of the poison tree, Judy Lief teaches us four Buddhist techniques to work with our anger. According to Buddhist psychology, anger is one of the six root kleshas, the conflicting emotions that cause our suffering. Its companions are greed, ignorance, passion, envy, and pride. Anger can be white hot or freezing cold. Anger can be turned outward [...]
