Turning: Everyday Buddhism

Join me for the first of a series of interviews with podcast listeners on how they are coping with the pandemic. In this episode, David Farley, a travel and food writer who lives in New York City, joins me for a conversation. David wrote a blog post where he mused about our seeming missing future. He wrote: We can't envision what life is going to be like in, say, a year or what we'll be doing.......

Announcing a new Everyday Buddhism feature for the Membership Community: A lecture series/workshop on mindful writing! In this series I hope to introduce you to a new way of practicing mindfulness through writing. As Gary Snyder wrote, meditation can put you totally into the world even as it takes you out of it. Mindfulness and meditation are practices of deliberate attention that can create a spa...

Join me as I share some insights from an article by Tara Haelle, Your Surge Capacity is Depleted—It's Why You Feel Awful, and some insights of my own, that may help you find new attitudes and practices to help you keep going. Help you go the distance of this pandemic, even though we don't know how long that distance is—or what's at the end. This time of ambiguous loss can cause feelings of helples...

We're currently faced with a global pandemic, which reminds us how uncertain life really is. So what do we do? How do we cope? Join me in conversation with Gregg Krech, who uses the concepts of acceptance—active acceptance—to understand how we can't take effective action until we've accepted the reality of the situation we're in. Gregg talks about how a large portion of the population has not acce...

Join me for a short episode check-in and sharing of how I am taking personal action despite living in our current reality of uncertainty. Awakening to the fact that I was spending too much time anxiously looking "out there" at what was or could be coming ... or focusing on the horrible feelings inside me, I decided to turn my personal boat around. As Gregg Krech of the ToDo Institute reminds us "E...

Join me for an episode that is part autobiographical, part solidarity with Pride and Black Lives matter, part poetry, part science, and part Buddhism. Sounds a bit chaotic, doesn't it? Yet I hope you find some relevant order. Sharing a recent experience with my own revisiting of internal trauma sparked by the external trauma of pandemic politics and social unrest, I tried to find order in the chao...

Join me for a special guest episode with Dr. Christiane Michelberger, a retired physician, psychoanalyst, and past spiritual seeker who currently mentors seekers in their quest to awaken. Christiane talks about how more than 10,000 hours of meditation and 40 years of studying Buddhist scriptures didn't help her deal with debilitating fear when she was faced with the reality of breast cancer. It wa...

In this episode, I reflect on our responses when we find ourselves in life situations that don't make sense and that are out of our control. As we make our way through the global Covid-19 pandemic we see humbling examples of courage and compassion. And we also see examples of people responding in fear and anger. The symptoms of fight, flight, or freeze—our natural responses to perceived threats—ar...

Join me for a special guest episode with Duncan Ryuken Williams, the author of American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War. 125,000+ Japanese-Americans we rounded up and placed in internment camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Many of these were Buddhists who persevered despite their imprisonment. Circumstances that were no fault of their own but because of their "Jap...

The whole world is afraid. A tiny piece of biological stuff—this virus—brought the world to its knees. A contagion or plague of this level is not new to the world but new to most of us living today. We have very little experience dealing with this level of uncertainty. This makes protecting the health of our minds and hearts as important as protecting the health of our bodies. There has never been...

There is a view of Buddhism that is idealistic. That it's all about meditating and chanting in an incense-filled room, hidden away from the world. That the peace promised in Buddhism comes from being away from, above, or different from, the troubles of the world. If your mind is full of what you think Buddhism or spirituality "should" be, no matter what teaching is placed at your feet, the grip of...

This is a special episode dedicated to the life of our good friend and neighbor—too soon lost. It focuses on the haiku by Issa: This world of dew is a world of dew, and yet, and yet. Listen as I read writings of my grief and how I come to the realization that maybe "and yet" is not just "nevertheless it hurts" but also "but yet." It's all in how you show up for yourself and for others. In that sho...

Join me for a special episode and conversation with Ken McLeod , author, translator, and teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. Ken and I talk about his innovative approach to teaching and writing about traditional Buddhist texts and practices. I reached out to Ken because I connected on a deep level to the material in his books and in the written and audio presentations on his website, unfetteredmind.org ....

2020 seems like something out of Sci-Fi. But here we are. And from my perspective—approaching my 67th birthday in a little under 2 weeks—we ARE living in what was the sci-fi from my childhood perspective. I imagine, though, that for most of my podcast listeners, how we are living today doesn't seem like sci-fi to you. It's not that new for you. It all depends on where you stand—your perspective. H...

In this episode, we celebrate Bodhi Day, the traditional celebration of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni's enlightenment. Yet, listen as we discover how it is a celebration of our enlightenment, too. The message of the December darkness is a messenger of our own enlightenment. Without darkness, we couldn't know light. Shakyamuni's enlightenment experience is ours. He proclaimed, "I and the great e...

In this special episode, I celebrate with podcast listeners the publication of my book Everyday Buddhism: Real-Life Buddhist Teachings & Practices for Real Change . The book officially launches on Monday, November 26th. In this special episode, l'll share a bit about why I wrote the book and a few snippets from the book, plus announce a special offer to the Everyday Buddhism podcast tribe about a...

In this episode, we'll look at the overlaps between the pagan origination, rituals, and concepts of Halloween and Tibetan Tantric or Vajrayana Buddhism ... and also examine it all from an Everyday Buddhism perspective. What scares you? What do you NOT want to look at? What masks do you wear? Do you show yourself as someone without a shadow or demon side? Is the so-called "spirituality" we want, we...

Join me and round the bases for a look at baseball as a metaphor for the Buddhist teaching of the Three Marks of Existence: Impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and the lack of a discrete self. Life, like baseball, is a team sport. In baseball, it's not just about the pitcher. In life, it's not just about me or you. All the players and contributing causes and conditions come together to score runs in...

In this episode, we talk about Bodhicitta. Bodhicitta characterizes the path of a Mahayana practitioner. It is Bodhicitta that creates a Bodhisattva and it is Bodhicitta that ultimately creates a Buddha. In Tibetan, compassion is translated as the nobility or greatness of heart which implies wisdom, discernment, empathy, unselfishness, and abundant kindness. Bodhicitta is compassion working with a...

In this special guest episode, join me in a conversation with Dena Moes, the author of the book The Buddha Sat Right Here: A Family Odyssey Through India and Nepal . Listen as we share some laughs, talk deep Buddhist philosophy, explore the difference between Indian and U.S. cultures and the way children are raised, and how in India there is a complete incorporation of interdependence as a reality...

In this special podcast, we'll revisit the topic of "Right Speech" through a reflection and practice tip from my upcoming book. We'll focus on how right speech depends more on listening than speaking. Speaking is dualistic. Listening is a non-dual activity of Oneness. Most of the time, the reason we speak is to speak TO or AT someone, expressing ourselves to the other. And, frequently, expressing...

What is a perfect day? A perfect relationship? Join me for a discussion of perfection in a podcast featuring a wedding Dharma talk. Stay until the end to respond to the challenge of making your own vows, allowing for the perfection of 'the other' in all your relationships. The perfection of life exists in impermanence and interdependence—the very things that end up messing with our plans. A perfec...

In this episode we'll talk about the 7th and 8th steps of The Noble Eightfold Path, Right Mindfulness and Right Meditation, also called Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration. It takes one to know the other and it all starts with an openness of mind. Studies show that meditation seems to cease the activity of the lobes in the brain that determine where self ends and non-self begins. Meaning, me...

The Three Jewels: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. I think many connect with the *jewel* or treasure aspect of the Buddha and Dharma, but Sangha? The Buddha taught the Dharma as an experiential path. His advice is to try it for ourselves, rather than taking his or anyone else's word for it.  It is Sangha that moves Buddhism beyond a study or philosophy to something lived and alive. But you have to prac...

In the 4th of the "talking with my teachers" series, I am talking with Rev. Satya Robyn, a priest in the Amida Order, about how the whole of messy humanity is met by the divine when we relax our sense of control and know that life accepts us just as we are. Satya talks of her journey from atheist to psychotherapist and Pureland Buddhist priest. And how she was "grabbed" by Amida, the celestial Bud...