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The Latest in the Wisdom Collection

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  • practice

  May I Be Happy

  By Cyndi Lee

  Did you know? The author of this article, Cyndi Lee, is currently leading the online retreat "May I Be Happy: Getting Aligned for the New Year." You can watch the first week's teaching here. Walking along the Rhine River during my lunch break from teaching yoga in Basel, Switzerland, I felt mellow and full of gratitude to have such a wonderful job opportunity. Then my phone started to vibrate. Instantly my mood shifted, and a powerful sense of urgency took hold of me. It was like a Rube Goldberg chain reaction—I was balancing a cappuccino in one hand, fighting an uncooperative purse zipper with the other, trying to keep my glasses on my nose, and worrying that someone was calling from my mother’s nursing home. More »
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  • thus have i heard

  The Buddha's Smile

  By Andrew Olendzki

  The most difficult Buddhist idea to explain, I’ve found, is not interdependent arising or nonself, challenging though these are, but equanimity. How is it that one can neither like nor not like something without being emotionally detached or indifferent? Our sense of identity is so bound up with our desires that to many people the thought of being without preferences for one thing or another is tantamount to being stripped of the very quality that makes us human. Nonattachment is just so dry. Give me the pot-bellied laughing Buddha any day (who, of course, is not a Buddha at all but a Chinese folk deity), rather than the austere figure presiding over our meditation halls with barely a hint of a smile on his face. More »
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  • The Trackless Path

  Freedom and Choice

  By Ken McLeod

  A few years ago, I was teaching a workshop on the Heart Sutra. We had just finished that long list of negations and everyone was a bit off balance, having had the rug pulled out from under them four or five different ways. The next lines were “Because for bodhisattvas there is no attainment, they rest, trusting the perfection of wisdom.” “When he reaches the perfection of wisdom, can a bodhisattva choose to do whatever he wants?” a young man asked. “The illusion of choice is an indication of a lack of freedom,” I replied. He looked at me, stunned, then turned around and gently banged his head against the wall as he said, “Now my head really hurts.” More »
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  • on the cushion

  Goalless Practice

  By Brad Warner

  The iconoclastic itinerant Soto Zen teacher “Homeless” Kodo Sawaki Roshi famously said, “Zazen is good for nothing!” He wasn’t being facetious. He wasn’t employing some kind of “skillful means” by saying something he really didn’t believe. He wasn’t being mystical and saying it’s good (wink, wink) for nothing (nudge, nudge). Nope. He meant it. Zazen really is good for nothing. It’s useless. Absolutely useless. One of the hardest aspects of Zen practice is getting your head around the idea that zazen has no goal. No goal at all. You don’t do it for anything except itself. It doesn’t get you anywhere. It doesn’t gain you a damned thing. More »
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  • brief teachings

  Tortoise Steps

  By Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

  Practicing dharma is necessarily a frustrating business. What practitioners, especially beginners, often fail to realize is that frustrations are the signposts of our success. An exasperating lack of concentration, devotion, or inspiration might be just what you need to make the extra effort to tune in to your practice fully. Alternatively, of course, it may topple you in the other direction and stop you practicing altogether—a temptation you must resist at all costs. Always remember, though, that frustration with your spiritual path is often an indication that you are becoming a genuine dharma practitioner. More »
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  • brief teachings

  Let Grace In

  By Dharmavidya David Brazier

  Grace provides the framework within which a meaningful life is lived. Love is the substance of it day to day. To live a spiritual life, then, is essentially to do things “for the love of it”—to do things without attachment to a result or reward. It is a matter of living in a simple way and having a practice that enables you to return again and again to the consciousness of life’s all-enfolding blessing. Grace is the key to happiness. When bad things happen, if we have confidence in grace, then we can remain grounded in that and not be overwhelmed by the soap opera of life. And grace is a circular blessing. The more grace enters your life, the more grateful you are. The more grateful you are, the more easily grace seems to enter. You can do the following things in order to let grace enter your life: More »