Buddhist Women on a Path of Spiritual Awakening
Death – A Portal of Deliverance
Contemplating the 4 elements, the 32 parts of the living body, and the remains of the body in a charnel ground, we gain a deeper understanding of impermanence and the intrinsic impersonal and empty nature of the body. Seeing it for what it truly…
Masquerade of the Hindrances – A Blameless Life
Clearly see the danger of the hindrances in the mind and stop killing goodness. The story of Angulimala’s life reveals the power of moral rehabilitation to end our harmful ways and urgently revert to the path of goodness, wholeness and purification. There’s no one…
Beautiful Qualities – Five of the Ten Perfections
The Buddha taught about ten perfections or beautiful qualities of mind that are needed to help us cross the flood of samsara, the cyles of existence. The first five of these are generosity, virtue, energy, wisdom and renunciation. When embodied, these qualities lead us…
How To Cross the Flood – Seven Enlightenment Practices
The Buddha answers a deva who wants to know how to cross the flood of sensuality, the flood of existence, and all its dangers. Walk the Middle Way, he taught, not stopping and not over-struggling with obstacles. Use the seven enlightenment practices to train…
I Will Not Be Angry – How Ajahn Gunhah Won the Hearts of Outlaws
Laying down weaponry, giving up hostility, we can abandon negativity and establish sanctuary within us. We hear the inspirational tale of how Ajahn Gunhah transformed his kidnappers in northern Thailand. Through his embodiment of mettā they became his disciples, just as the Buddha had…
Love Everyone or Die
We may speak of or feel that we know about death but until we truly contemplate, approach and move into death, what do we know? This is a tale about looking into the eye of a tortoise shell butterfly while it lay dying on…
Shoot Me First: Right Intention, Effort & Social Responsibility
As we follow the steps of the Eightfold Noble Path, our hatred, greed, and delusion abate. We may yet suffer, but we use our suffering to fathom the meaning of it, see its causes, and see the possibility for ending suffering. The four Noble…
Ascending the Altar
What is renunciation? Patiently we learn how to let go of the thoughts and actions that enslave us to samsara. And we begin to understand what it takes to tame the ego and cultivate greater and greater compassion in its boundless quality. Through this…
Empty the Basket – Guided Meditation and Reflections
Let us hone our expertise to witness the charade of gain and loss arising each moment. Seeing the eight worldly winds, impermanent, not giving in when the mind perches in ‘self’, purify wrong view, empty the basket, and begin here where we are, balanced,…
Into the Quiet – Guided Meditation and Reflections
We go forth into the quiet of the heart, distant from the world, to glimpse the Unconditioned. We are alone but we are as if with all beings. There is no ‘one’ who wakes up, there is just awakening. It is freeing and it’s…
~ Dhammapada Verse 54