As a friend of mine likes to say, “You got people, you got problems.” Even if we’re simply facing ourselves, we’ve still got problems. We can’t escape our pain. We can’t hide from it or make it disappear, but we can learn to live with it. We can be in relationship with it. It starts [...]
what to do? a buddhist & yogi response to sandy hook
The shootings that took place in Newtown—taking the lives of 20 children, all first graders, and 7 adults including the shooter—is a tragedy of such immense proportions, it has rightfully thrown many of us into confusion and deep questioning. As Buddhists, yoga, and mindfulness practitioners, how do we hold this? Make sense of it? Respond? …What [...]
newDharma Talk | Stilling the Patterns of the Mind
We practice our habits as if we have no control over them, forgetting that we are the thing that keeps the habit going. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to stop. But stopping is the only way you’ll begin to understand who you really are, and it is the only way you’ll begin to see [...]
newDharma Talk | The Gift of Fearlessness
Practice is about changing what we do in order to become who we are. Often, we start with boundless enthusiasm and optimism for our unfolding self, but as we run into snags we fall into old patterns. Here are a few ways we can remember to give to ourselves so that we can truly become [...]
newDharma Talk | The Value of Effort & Release
With the election weeks away, many people are attached to the outcome. This dharma talk, originally published last fall, is a good reminder for us all to give our best effort toward the campaign and then let go of our attachment to the results. “We run out into the world wanting to fix things with [...]
newDharma Talk | Coming Back to What Matters
We’re often distracted by what we’d like the future to hold. Distraction moves our attention away from whatever’s in front of us, and we forget not only the moment we’re in but also ourselves. By doing so we leave our true selves behind. If we face the present, we’ll find there is value–life–in staying right where [...]
newDharma Talk | The Five Pillars of Islam
This talk was given by a non-Muslim expressing the power of, and appreciation for, practices across traditions. “All of the great traditions of personal transformation have built into them–no matter how they’re playing out in the forms of mass religion–they all have built into them an intention, a practice that invites surrender of the will, [...]
newDharma Talk | Atonement for Creating Separation
In our day-to-day lives we might think of separation as neutral, as the thing that differentiates us from others. From a spiritual perspective separation is divisive; it is a way of thinking or acting that keeps us from knowing our whole self. And knowing who we are means looking at the parts of ourselves we [...]
newDharma Talk | A Time to Listen
How often do we heed the call of what our hearts are telling us? Most of us ignore them because the call isn’t loud, immediate, forceful. And yet there is much to learn here. There are answers in us reflecting deep wisdom which are hard to discern without effort. Here, we might find ourselves, our [...]
newDharma Talk | Your Practice Is Your Life
It happens time and again, we set out with the best intentions to redefine, reframe or change some aspect of our lives, and are waylaid on the path to freedom by what looks like a better route. In order to get anywhere Real practice has to lead you. You have to give it the reins [...]
newDharma Talk | The Six Paramitas, Part Two
In this talk we review the meaning behind each of the six perfections, or paramitas, and the value of each. These virtues are not called the six perfections for no reason; the paramitas are what we are trying to cultivate as we learn about our own true nature, which opens up the path to Awakening. [...]
newDharma Talk | Wholeness Through Relationship
In this dharma talk, we’re asked to focus on what’s hiding in the closets we call compassion, relationship, friendliness and joy. Using Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra as a platform, this talk asks if we are truly connecting with others or hiding behind a façade of actions and words and therefore living out of balance with ourselves [...]