Caring for people who are suffering is a loving, even heroic calling, but it takes a toll. Roshi Joan Halifax teaches this five-step program to care for yourself while caring for others. In the early morning, a weary man dressed in tattered clothes walked into a rural Himalayan mountain hospital with a grimy, reeking bundle in his arms. I was in Nepal serving in one of [...]
What Happens When a Government Loses Its Compassion?
Without compassion, everyone is worse off. Zen teacher Roshi Joan Halifax comments on the Trump administration's family separation policy. What happens when a government loses its moral footing? When elected officials seem to be operating without integrity? When our politicians and their officials lack any semblance of compassion? These questions have been burning in me [...]
Now is the Time to Find Our Compassion
On Monday, 200 Buddhist teachers issued a statement calling for an end to the US government’s practice of separating migrant children from their parents. Lion’s Roar magazine deputy editor Andrea Miller talked to Tenku Ruff — president of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association, which created the statement — about what she hoped the letter would achieve. Andrea Miller: What can [...]
The Power of Buddhism
If you ignore power, you ignore powerful Buddhist teachings. Pema Khandro Rinpoche says that Buddhism teaches us how to be powerful and compassionate at the same time. Fellow Buddhists, we need to talk about power. Discussion of power is largely absent in the American Buddhist community. For some, this is due in part to privilege; many of us are blind to our own power. [...]
Inner Cities
With noisy neighbors and the homeless camped on street corners, city life offers many opportunities to practice kindness. Dzigar Kongtrül Rinpoche on how urban living can open our hearts. Spiritual practitioners often aspire to live alone in the mountains among wildlife, yet a city can be an equally or an even more supportive environment for practice. Unlike the [...]
Pema Chödrön & k.d. lang talk Buddhism, creativity, and “gapaciousness”
The beloved Buddhist teacher and famed singer joined Sounds True founder Tami Simon for a lively and insightful conversation about meditation, learning from hard times, and what it means to get “gapacious.” The evening was a benefit for the Pema Chödrön Foundation and Tools for Peace. Tami Simon: Pema, you’re turning seventy-nine in July. I’d love to hear about the things [...]
The Ocean of Boundless Compassion
Mark Unno reflects on compassion as immersion into the sufferings of samsara, like a raindrop falling into the ocean. I remember as a small child the experience of my first pet. Our family had traveled to Japan because my father’s study had taken us there. We rented an old, traditional wooden house in Tokyo where year round the wind whistled easily past windows and doors [...]
Compassion Has No Enemy
In the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, Chan Buddhist teacher Guo Gu looked at how to understand violence through the lens of the three poisons. My teacher, the late Master Sheng Yen, once said something very simple, but which requires a lifetime of practice to actualize. I share it with you in this difficult time: “Wisdom does not give rise to vexations; compassion [...]
Cultivating Openness When Things Fall Apart
Pema Chodron and bell hooks talk about facing life's challenges, in this 1997 conversation from the Lion's Roar archives. Initially when I enter the classroom, I share with my students that we are there to think critically—to engage the world we live in—the world of ideas, fully, deeply, with our whole heart. Pema Chödrön's work gives me this gift. Consistently she [...]
How can a Buddhist strive to “save all beings” without inflating their ego?
Question: How can one “take on the suffering of the world” or practice “for the sake of all beings” without also inflating their own sense of self-importance? As profound as these practices are, they also seem like fodder for the ego. Rebecca Li: As an antidote to the pernicious arrogance that gives rise to thoughts like “I’m doing something so selfless—aren’t I great?” we [...]
