In this excerpt from Bhante Gunaratana's book Four Foundations of Mindfulness in Plain English, the great Theravada teacher explains why all practitioners should meditate on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, at every stage on the Buddhist path. Mindfulness practice has deep roots in Buddhist tradition. More than 2,600 years ago, the Buddha exhorted his senior bhikkhus, [...]
Making the Warrior Commitment
We've all got the potential to awaken and help others in meaningful ways, big and small. Pema Chödrön shows us how we can let go of self-centered worries and become a bodhisattva-warrior. It's the greatest happiness of all. Compassion is threatening to the ego. We might think of it as something warm and soothing, but actually it’s very raw. When we set out to support other [...]
Include Everything
A teaching by Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara. A group of twelve of us lived on the streets in Lower Manhattan for four days, practicing meditation and experiencing how it is to survive without money or cellphones. It was a renunciation and a pilgrimage, a way to give up all our habitual comforts and resources and to open up to reality, to the conditions of the world of which we are [...]
How to Unleash The Great Perfection of Creativity
Informed by the profound teachings of Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, Geshe Tenzin Wangyal tells us how to unleash powerful creative energy we can use anywhere, from the office to the art studio. There is little in life that does not require at least some measure of creativity. Whether you are trying to compose a symphony, write an essay, find a job, cook a meal, or [...]
Topsy-Turvy World
The strength of mind that comes from meditation, says Norman Fischer, can help us end the denial that keeps a world of problems spinning. There’s an old Zen saying: “The world is topsy-turvy.” In other words, it’s an upside-down, crazy world. This may seem like an extreme statement, but only for a minute. If craziness means that we keep doing dysfunctional and destructive [...]
Feminine Principal
The principal figure in Buddhism is the teacher, a role traditionally dominated by men. Andrea Miller profiles three women teachers — Trudy Goodman, Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara, and Lama Palden Drolma — who are changing the face of Buddhism and making the teachings whole. In a hospital room in Buffalo, New York, Trudy Goodman had a spiritual experience she had no way to [...]
Enter… the Bodhisattva
David Loy on why Buddhism's bodhisattva ideal is what the world needs now. Unless you’re on long retreat in a Himalayan cave, it’s becoming more difficult to overlook the fact that our world is beset by interacting ecological, economic, and social crises. Climate breakdown, species extinction, a dysfunctional economic system, corporate domination of government, [...]
A laugh with David Sipress
David Sipress' Buddhist cartoon from our November 2012 issue of Lion's Roar. [...]
Editorial: We Can Be Heroes
The Editorial introduction for the November 2012 issue of Lion's Roar by Associate Editor, Rod Meade Sperry. We sure love our big popcorn stories about heroes. Just consider our decades-long love affair with Batman—and the astounding box-office receipts for his latest filmic chapter, The Dark Knight Rises. Of course, that chapter was forever complicated when James Holmes [...]
Don’t Go There
As a Jew and a Briton, Henry Shukman had avoided all things German. As a Buddhist, he knew he had to say yes when his teacher asked him to teach at a zendo in the Black Forest. This is his journey. When I first reached Sonnenhof, I thought I had stepped into a Tang Dynasty landscape painting. High up an implausibly steep valley side, a large old building perched like a [...]
