When I recognize the need to serve someone who is suffering, I usually take an in-breath to get grounded and settle the body on the exhalation. Then I might ask myself as I encounter this person’s suffering, How can I keep an open mind and not jump to conclusions or actions? I also can ask, Why, really, do I want…
Suzuki Roshi, the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center and one of the first ambassadors of Buddhism to the United States, had a very helpful way of describing the relief that comes from getting over yourself. He used the expression “mind waves” to describe the turmoil of the ego’s struggle with everyday life. Waves, he would always insist, are…
Cultivating self-control through mindfulness practice can help us become more compassionate people.
The remedy for loneliness is in learning to admit solitude as one admits the bayonet: gracefully, now that already it pierces the heart. —Denis Johnson, “The White Fires of Venus” (1975) In dark times, we often turn to literature to help us understand the turmoil raging within ourselves and our worlds. During the 1850s, for example, American readers looked to…
For four billion years, life on this planet has been ascending to higher and higher levels of organization. First there were just bare, self-replicating strands of information; then they encased themselves in cells; then some of these cells got together and formed multicellular organisms; then some of those organisms developed complex brains, and some species of brainy organisms became highly…
The Buddha said that the origin of all suffering is craving — we either don’t get what we want or we get what we don’t want. But what is the origin of our craving? In his recent New York Times best-selling book, Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment, Robert Wright argues that the process of…
Does meditation work? I got interested in questions like this through an unusual project I helped develop: the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative. Back in the early 2000s, the Dalai Lama asked Emory University to develop a sustainable curriculum in modern science for his Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns in exile in India. As you can imagine, this was (and still is)…
Looking for something interesting and enlightening to read? Here is a roundup of links recommended by the Garrison Institute staff, highlighting stories from around the web. On Being | Krista Tippett and Rachel Yehuda How Trauma and Resilience Cross Generations “We’re just starting to understand that just because you’re born with a certain set of genes, you’re not in a biologic…