Susan Piver gives advice on working with a mind that can’t stop working over every detail. Question: I am a constant worrier. I replay every event, stress about any little mistake I make, and often fear I haven’t done a good enough job, even when I have done my very best. How do I work on this? Answer: Anxiety is so tricky. The nature of this trickiness is revealed by [...]
How to Read Dharma
Studying Buddhist teachings is different from learning other subjects. Judy Lief shows you how to read the dharma so that it really changes you. Illustrations by Carole Hénaff How do we become one with the dharma, the Buddhist teachings? One way is through meditation practice, another is through study, and a third is through our behavior. This trio of meditation, study, and [...]
Life on the Edge
Buddhist teacher Joan Halifax describes five “edge states” where courage meets fear and freedom meets suffering. I have a small cabin in the mountains of New Mexico where I spend time whenever I can. It is located in a deep valley in the heart of the Sangre de Cristo Range. It’s a strenuous hike from my cabin up to the ridge at more than twelve thousand feet above sea [...]
Another Birthday on Death Row
Jarvis Jay Masters has spent almost 30 years on death row for a crime many think he did not commit. Rebecca Solnit celebrated his 56th birthday with Masters as he seeks freedom through meditation until the day his conviction is overturned. Bolted to the wall is a box painted a glistening red, and on it stenciled in white are the letters TRAUMA. Inside there must be [...]
Buddhist teacher researches ways to improve Indigenous healthcare
Native American Buddhist teacher Bonnie Duran works to decolonize healthcare for Indigenous communities. For Bonnie Duran, it felt like coming home. For two months in 1982, she lived at a Tibetan monastery in Nepal. As a mixed-race Native American, she’d long witnessed the suffering of her community, and what she learned there about Buddhism’s first noble truth—that [...]
My Bully Became a Buddhist
When Eric Steuer discovered his childhood bully was now a Buddhist teacher, he asked him the question he’d always wanted to: Why did you treat me that way? When I tell my dad I’m going to hang out with Jeff Zlotnik, he laughs. “Once, when you were a kid, I asked why you were so scared of Jeff. You said, ‘Because he’s so much bigger than me.’” In reality, I was a head [...]
Where Everyone Can Thrive
East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland is a leader in developing dharma for people who don’t feel welcome elsewhere. Lindsay Kyte explores EBMC’s focus on respect, safety, and the joy of being seen for who you are. In a society where many fight to be seen and heard, Mushim Ikeda sees a great need for well-being for the oppressed through spirituality and community. “For [...]
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. A friend or family member shares the news of a life-threatening diagnosis or we see them stumble on a curb or over their words, and in that moment we realize that we’re about to become a companion to someone [...]
The Sacred Feminine
In Vajrayana Buddhism, dakinis are seen as unbridled and enlightened feminine energy. Lama Tsultrim Allione on how she discovered her own dakini power. When I was eleven, I ran home on the last day of school and tore off my dress, literally popping the buttons off, feeling simultaneously guilty and liberated. I put on an old, torn pair of cutoff jean shorts, a white [...]
6 Ways to Step in a Bucket
Lion’s Roar's editor-in-chief Melvin McLeod reflects on the ways in which Buddhism turns your world upside down in the opening editorial of our July 2018 issue. Secular mindfulness is great. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s inspiration to present meditation as a nonreligious practice with scientifically proven benefits is getting countless people meditating in simple, effective ways. Many [...]
