The nagging, negative voice of self-judgement, says Christina Feldman, is a powerful affliction best met with courage, kindness, and understanding. Unruly beings are like space. There’s not enough time to overcome them. Overcoming these angry thoughts. Is like defeating all of our enemies. —Shantideva The Buddha sat beneath the Bodhi tree on the eve of his enlightenment [...]
The Great Escape
Yoga and meditation help Pippin Ross escape the hell of America’s oldest prison for women. “RELEASE YOUR DIABETICS! RELEASE YOUR DIABETICS TO TRAUMA!” This is prison’s wake-up song—the deafening, metallic squawk of the PA—and, for many women here, it signals a trip to medical for a morning insulin shot. I’m at MCI Framingham, a medium-security prison twenty miles from [...]
Editorial: Looking for Help
Editiorial introduction to the September 2009 issue of Lion's Roar magazine by Melvin McLeod, Editor in Chief of Lion's Roar. We’re all looking for help. When life is so problematic, even in the best of times, how could it be otherwise? Gracing the cover of this issue is the female buddha Tara. She offers us help. She is sometimes called a protectoress, even a savioress. [...]
The Suffering We Share
At her weekly meditation class, Sylvia Boorstein finds that sharing stories of those we love and worry about leaves her feeling kinder and more connected. I’ve been leading a two-hour Wednesday morning class at Spirit Rock Meditation Center for more than fifteen years. Of the seventy or so people there on any given week, there are the folks who have been coming regularly since [...]
The Shitty Monk
Even a zendo enforcer, says Shozan Jack Haubner, finds his practice put to the test when trouble sneaks up from behind. This past winter, as the temperature shriveled along with my remaining illusions about Zen practice, the great wheel of dharma turned once again here at the monastery and I rotated into the officer position of jikijitsu. The jikijitsu is the bad-ass [...]
How Meditation Helps in Difficult Times
Pema Chödrön on four ways that meditation helps us deal with difficulty. Meditation takes us just as we are, with our confusion and our sanity. This complete acceptance of ourselves as we are is a simple, direct relationship with our being. We call this maitri, loving-kindness toward ourselves and others. There are four qualities of maitri that are cultivated when we [...]
Erring and Erring, We Walk the Unerring Path
If we use them as opportunities to work with our mind, all our mistakes, confusion, and difficulties become an unerring path of awakening. This is the essence, says the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, of the Buddha’s wisdom for difficult times. Across much of the nation and the world, people have been losing their jobs and homes due to the global economic decline. Everyone is [...]
Google Searches
Hot-shot geeks at the world’s leading information company are taking a ground-breaking course called Search Inside Yourself. As Barry Boyce reports, it’s a new model for teaching mindfulness and emotional intelligence, and its creator is thinking big. “For as long as I can remember, I have had a desire to do something big and important for humanity,” says Chade-Meng Tan. [...]
Ready, Steady, Go
One of the crucial qualities of the bodhisattva warrior, says Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, is the steadiness of mind that fosters strength and confidence. We harness the energy of mind through the practice of meditation. In one of the most beautiful Buddhist poems ever written, the great Indian teacher Shantideva talks about the bodhisattva warrior. The Tibetan term is changchup [...]
Love, Loss, and Anxious Times
Fear and uncertainty mark our lives as we face our personal difficulties and an increasingly troubled world. Yet in difficult times we can also discover the love and vulnerability of the human heart, and so much more. Poet and Zen teacher Norman Fischer is our guide. One day in January, feeling expansive and cheerfully open to being interrupted, I answered the phone in my [...]
