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how we live
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    Unconditional Love Paid Member

    By Dharmavidya David Brazier
    When I was young, I was fascinated by the ideal of unconditional love. I fell in love, and I tried to be totally devoted. At that time I was working in an office with a group of young men. They had stories to tell about the women they had been out with, and they flirted with the women in the typing pool, but I closed my ears. I had no interest in anything but being a perfect partner, completely loyal to my woman. The woman in question, however, was jealous anyway. Although I never so much as glanced at another woman, I still got accused regularly of having unfaithful thoughts. The injustice of this cut me to the quick, and in no time she and I would be engaged in grievous arguments. My attempt to be the perfect partner had led me into being just the opposite. I was fighting her with all the wit and energy I could muster. More »
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    She's Got the Beat Paid Member

    By Joan Duncan Oliver
      There’s a story Cheri Maples tells about the first time she saw her Buddhist practice in action. The year was 1991, and Maples, then a patrol cop on the Madison, Wisconsin, police force, was responding to a domesticviolence call. A divorced dad was holding his young daughter hostage, refusing to hand her over to his ex-wife after a weekend visit. When Maples interceded, he threatened her. Ordinarily, she would have slapped handcuffs on the guy and hauled him off to jail. But she had just sat her first retreat with the Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, and the experience “had broken open my heart,” Maples says. She persuaded the father to release his daughter and then, instead of arresting him, spoke to him from her heart. Within minutes, he was in tears. More »
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    Prime Time Buddhism Paid Member

    By Joan Duncan Oliver
    Filmmaker Babeth VanLoo (right) speaks with artist Meredith Monk in a scene from VanLoo’s new film, Meredith Monk – Inner Voice.  Courtesy Babeth VanLoo Listen to the podcast here. More »
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    Buddha in the Googleplex Paid Member

    By Joan Duncan Oliver
    All the President's Meng: Chade-Meng Tan with Barack Obama, John McCain, Al Gore, and Bill Clinton More »
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    Mindful Music Paid Member

    By Danny Fisher
    “This is why we come early,” Buddhist singer-songwriter Ravenna Michalsen says for the third time this trip, as we search for the correct turn into Wellesley College. She’s playing a show for the college’s Buddhist Community tonight, and we’ve driven up to Massachusetts from New Haven, Connecticut, where various karmic causes and conditions have brought the two of us together again for another semester. More »
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    Ruffling Feathers Paid Member

    By Joan Duncan Oliver
    “THOUGH SHE BE LITTLE, yet she is fierce,” Shakespeare wrote of Hermia in Midsummer Night’s Dream. It would be an apt description of Mira Tweti, a 5-foot, 2 1/2-inch, 108-pound animal-welfare writer and Zen nun who’s probably the best friend any bird—captive or wild—could ever have. Tweti’s exposé of the parrot trade industry, Of Parrots and People: The Sometimes Funny, Always Fascinating, and Often Catastrophic Collision of Two Intelligent Species, published this fall, is rattling bird breeders across the country— maybe the world—and challenging parrot owners to reconsider the wisdom of keeping a caged companion.“This book, I think, will drive bird breeders to violence,” Tweti says matter- of-factly. “I’ve had breeders tell me that it’s all lies—and that I hadn’t said all the good things they’ve done. Like what? That they’re keeping the ‘stud books’ on parrots? Stud books are for horse breeders. That has nothing to do with keeping parrot species alive.” More »