A reflection on suffering and unsatisfactoriness (dukkha) – the motivation for deciding that ‘I must change the way I see the world’ Suffering is part of my life. Everything I experience is tinged with incompleteness. I cannot escape...
Reflection on karma: our actions have consequences for better or for worse Everywhere I look in the universe I see things arising and passing away in dependence upon conditions. From galaxies and stars to micro-organisms, this pattern holds true. Things aren’t...
Reflection on Death Here is my version of the second of the four reminders (also called the Four Preliminary Reflections): reflection on death and mortality. One day I will die. I cannot avoid it. It comes to everyone, and it will come to me. Everyone who has lived in...
The Four Reminders are guided reflections on what Buddhism considers the basic facts of life. Turning them over is a way of reminding ourselves of what we know, but forget and jolting ourselves into activity. Here’s my version of the first of those reflections...
I met German-born Analayo some years ago when he was living a life of intensive meditation and study in a small retreat centre in Sri Lanka. He told me how his study of the Buddha’s original meditation teaching had led him to question established approaches to...
in his life before Buddhism, Issan Dorsey was a ‘bad drag queen’. But at the San Francisco Zen Centre he was a bodhisattva for a gay community blighted by AIDS. This excellent biography vividly evokes his extraordinary life. What...