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…
Leading up to his retreat “Lucid Dreaming and Dream Yoga” at the Garrison Institute on September 18-25, 2018, Alan Wallace discusses how dream yoga can help one wake up from delusion. In the first moment when our consciousness shifts from dreamless sleep to an ordinary, nonlucid dream, we are unaware that we are dreaming and fail to recognize the nature of…
In 2016, while trekking in New Zealand’s Fjordland National Park, my wife and I were inundated by three straight days of rain. It made for a grueling trek; our gear was soaked through, our packs weighed down by water, and every part of our bodies was sore. Each day we wondered aloud if it would have been better to have…
Leading up to the Westchester Buddhist Center’s sixth annual retreat at the Garrison Institute on February 16-23, 2018, Derek Kolleeny discusses the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. This is part two of a two-part series. Read part one here. In the second part of this series on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness (FFM), we will look at the unique presentation of…
“Just as the physical world is comprised of integrally related particles, so too, we are integrally related to one another and to (nonhuman) creation. We live in a web of relationships. As we affect this web by our actions, so too are we affected by it. Conversion is accepting interdependence as the definition of life in the universe.” —Ilia Delio,…
But with all our contemporary tough-mindedness the question is still to be answered: what does man live for? Control of nature, mastery of the cosmos, which is what our world is mainly up to, fails to satisfy the longings of the human heart. It may be that we must in the end redesign and remake the heart. —Between Wind and…
Every story has a beginning. Mine begins, too, with silence—with being silenced. My voice was smothered and squashed for years by a violent mother whose anger and bitterness consumed her, whose anger and bitterness very nearly consumed me. As a young girl, my only desire was to vanish from the world, and I did by disappearing into the stories printed in books. I devoured books.
Leading up to the Westchester Buddhist Center’s sixth annual retreat at the Garrison Institute on February 16-23, 2018, Derek Kolleeny discusses the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. This is part one of a two-part series. The Four Foundations of Mindfulness (FFM) are a system of contemplation presented by Siddhartha Gautama—known more commonly as the Buddha Shakyamuni—to his students in the year…