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 [...]
Deer to the Heart
Even if you don't think much about them, they're always present. Andrea Miller reexamines something we all might have missed in the meaning of the quiet, watchful deer. Somehow, I’d missed the part about the deer. I’d read everything in the guidebook about Nara, or at least I thought I had. I’d read that Nara’s temple, Todai-ji, sheltered a gargantuan bronze statue of [...]
Facing Death, Mindfully
Bhante Henepola Gunaratana — affectionately known as "Bhante G." — had a moment of coming face-to-face with death while on a flight. Here's what he told an audience at Cittaviveka, a Buddhist monastery in the UK, about it. I had received word of my mother's final illness. On the way to Sri Lanka from Washington, DC, I changed planes to a jumbo jet in Hawaii. An hour or two [...]
Learning That My Father Was a Sexual Predator
My father was a caring and somewhat charismatic minister turned therapist. He was also a sexual predator. One of the disturbing and hopeful signs amidst the many difficulties of our present world situation has been the continuing parade of revelations about the sexual predation of men in power. The assaults reported seem to have occurred in almost every sector of our [...]
Answering the Call to Awaken
Like the Buddha, we all get our call to wake up. It often comes when life isn’t working and we may have to go a little crazy. Here’s how Buddhist teacher Spring Washam answered her call. My birth was not a celebrated and magical event. My parents’ relationship had always been rocky and, sadly, it completely unraveled during my mother’s pregnancy with me. We lived in [...]
“I’ve Got Friends Here”: Stories from Issan House
Three HIV-positive residents of Issan House, part of the "Greyston Mandala" of Buddhism-inspired social-service organizations, share their stories with photographer, author, and Zen practitioner A. Jesse Jiryu Davis. A few weeks ago I visited Issan House, a supportive housing facility for HIV-positive poor people, an hour north of New York City. The facility was founded in [...]
That Driver Could Be Your Mother
Compassion and rebirth are two traditional Buddhist tenets that both came together for me recently as I sat reflecting on how I nearly drove my mother off the road. That incident had occurred another night long ago. Irritated by a slow driver ahead of me, I tailgated the vehicle so closely that I could not even see the license plate. I persisted until the car turned off onto a [...]
There’s Plenty of Room in Buddhism for Both of Us
Even with all the ways his views might differ from those of other Buddhists, Daniel Scharpenburg mostly sees common ground. I was at an art party in a friend’s living room, struggling to paint a standing Buddha with watercolors. People started talking about astrology. Sometimes I feel like I'm just an observer at events like these. “I'm an Aries, what are you?” someone [...]
Why isn’t the “Angry Asian Buddhist” angry?
As his cancer goes from bad to worse, the anonymous blogger known as the "Angry Asian Buddhist" strives to accept the absurdity of life. Update: Aaron Lee, who went by the pen name "Arun," died on October 21, 2017. He was 34. For the author of a blog called “Angry Asian Buddhist,” Arun isn’t as angry as you might expect. And it isn’t like he doesn’t have cause to be upset. He [...]
A Refuge for Myself and for All Beings
Coming to terms with metastatic non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Arunlikhati realizes he is his own refuge — and one for everyone else, too. Back when I thought I was healthy, I paid repeated visits to various doctors with a basket of unexplainable symptoms. Joint aches. Headaches. Fevers. Night sweats. I was otherwise doing well, it seemed, eating a mostly plant-based diet and getting [...]
