Buddhist Women on a Path of Spiritual Awakening
Don’t Be Afraid, Mahanama – Lean Towards Nibbana
The Buddha told Mahanama not to be afraid of the muddled mind, just to keep developing the qualities which incline the mind to Nibbana. This Dhamma is for one who is content. A mind unburdened can pacify itself and be calmed. A mind fortified…
Repair What Feels Broken – The Hardest Walk of All
The path is a gradual one. Don’t go to the depths immediately. First develop the strength. Going slowly but deeply. Forgiveness, supported by patience endurance, acknowledging and seeing the breakage and repairing it regularly, repairing what has been broken or harmed, and freeing ourselves…
A Mystical Ladder – Patience, the Incinerator of Defilements
We are ascending a mystical ladder which must be done so carefully and gradually. For a spiritual warrior, the path of practice is a gradual one. We are in a cloud of unknowing but patiently the cloud is emptied and we begin to see everything…
Breaking the Cycle of Harm – Patience and Friendship With The Lovely
The insight into not-self requires a deeper seeing and understanding of reality. Virtue is our saving grace. It gives us the energy for enlightenment which we transform into right effort. Thus we are guided through the wilderness of the world to develop and sustain…
What is Killing You – Thorns, Barnacles and Buoys on the Middle Way
When you know what is killing you then you will know what will save you. Right effort protects us and offers safety and seclusion. We find saving grace within if we can navigate through the wilderness of the mind assisted by a host of…
A Swallowtail Butterfly at the Hummingbird Feeder
The quality of energy manifest as courage, commitment and compassion is the way forward. We have to be brave – like a lion. Brave warriors face the powerful maras, monsters of the mind, to overcome them. They train the mind to gain its freedom…
A Matter of Death, Life, Truth and Recovery
Call suffering by its true name and the face of the Dhamma will emerge from within us. We meet the truth of impermanence, of death, and the universality of pain as we carve out the understanding of who we are and why we are…
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…
~ Dhammapada Verse 54