John Tarrant demystifies Zen koan practice. Yes, it’s paradoxical, poetic, and totally personal. And so is life. The koan: The coin lost in the river is found in the river. A koan is a little healing story, a conversation, an image, a fragment of a song. It’s something to keep you company, whatever you are doing. There’s a tradition of koan study to transform your heart and [...]
What Is Dream Yoga and How Do You Do It?
Buddhist practitioners have understood for centuries that the illusions we encounter in dreams are the same ones we encounter in waking life. Andrew Holecek shows us how to harness the Vajrayana techniques of dream yoga in order to wake up to reality. According to legend, when Siddhartha was glowing right after his enlightenment, people asked him if he was a god, a [...]
How to Practice Zazen
Jules Shuzen Harris teaches Zazen, the meditation practice at the heart of Zen Buddhism. There are many forms of meditation that offer you the opportunity to cultivate stillness and open up space in your life. One such form, zazen, has both outward and inward instructions in how to engage your awareness in the immediate, uninterpreted experience of the present moment. [...]
Two Practices for Times of Tragedy
Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön and Zen teacher Bernie Glassman both teach three-step meditations that can help foster wisdom in times of tragedy. When tragedy strikes, we can feel like the ground has dropped out from under our feet. The Buddhist view, though, is that these experiences offer an opportunity to directly experience wisdom and compassion — exactly what [...]
How to Work With Fear and Pain in a Moment of Crisis
Even when it feels like you're lost in the universe, Emily Horn explains, you can face the unknown with a still and calm heart-mind. As I watched the snow fall on the mountains outside my hospital room, where I was undergoing treatment for an illness that had progressively worsened over the previous months, I was reminded once again that this life moves and changes with [...]
How to Feed Your Demons
Lama Tsultrim Allione teaches you an innovative technique to turn your inner demons into friends. Feeding our demons rather than fighting them contradicts the conventional approach of fighting against whatever assails us. But it turns out to be a remarkably effective path to inner integration. Demons (maras in Sanskrit) are not bloodthirsty ghouls waiting for us in dark [...]
Metta for Refugees
Zen priest Liên Shutt teaches a short meditation to foster compassion beings in search of refuge. Many people think Buddhism is about getting rid of desire. Really, our main focus is on promoting non-harming in the world. We look at how we can alleviate suffering. Given the social climate of the world today, people often ask, “How do I know when to meditate and when to [...]
Meditation Only Goes So Far
If you want to connect with the open, spacious quality of mind, says Lama Willa Miller, at some point you have to stop trying to meditate. One hot summer evening several years ago, I found myself listening to a teaching in a meditation hall in upstate New York, an activity that had become far too rare at that point in my life. A hush came over the crowd as the diminutive [...]
A Practice for Developing Kindness toward Yourself
Valerie Mason-John, author of Detox Your Heart: Meditations for Emotional Healing, shares a meditation for cultivating a positive relationship with yourself, and, by extension, the world. When we take positive action and respond creatively to our anger, we are taking good care of ourselves. Taking care of our hearts, minds, and bodies is taking positive action. Learning to [...]
Practice: What Are My Intentions for Today?
A daily intention-setting practice, from Sylvia Boorstein. Read her full teaching on the power of the Buddhist practice of intention. Here is a set of intentions based on traditional Buddhist precepts. Some people I know have them taped to their bathroom mirror and say them aloud each morning: On behalf of myself and all beings, I intend to refrain from consciously hurting [...]