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Mainstream American Yoga Avoids Suffering

After co-teaching a workshop on yoga and other movement practices in our social movements, I have been watching folks talk online about Yoga Journal and the state of American yoga these days. There's...

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Che Guevara, Buddhism, and Jumping to Conclusions

What the hell does Che Guevara, the infamous Cuban revolutionary, have to do with Buddhism? I'm guess it's probably never been on the radar for most of you, and I'm also imagining that the very mention...

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the basis for the bodhisattva work of non-violent intervention

Photo credit: hrustall from morguefile.com I was on the bus this morning and I saw a woman hurrying across the street in front of us. She was clearly anxious and as she passed the large, wide front bus...

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Did you hear the one about the Dalai Lama and Lululemon?

Seriously, it's no joke. In an era of ever-expanding capitalist reach, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism is teaming up with a corporation well known for its sexism, sizism, and sweatshop labor...

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A Buddha Transfigures

Photo credit: noesis from morguefile.com Transfigure is an interesting word. to give a new and typically exalted or spiritual appearance to : transform outwardly and usually for the better In a way, it...

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A Winter Herbal Meditation

Last weekend, we set our clocks back, and early sunsets ensued. This weekend, the temperature has dropped. Way down. Below freezing at night, and barely above during the day. Even though it's only the...

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The Silence of White American Buddhists on Ferguson

"Not terribly long ago in a country that many people misremember, if they knew it at all, a black person was killed in public every four days for often the most mundane of infractions, or rather...

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Is "Western" Yoga Cultural Appropriation? A Few Notes on the Confounding,...

Photo credit: jllfitness from morguefile.com Back in 2012, when I finished my yoga teacher training, I had already been practicing asana and meditation (the two most recognizable limbs of the yogic 8...

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The Continued Exoticization of #Asians and #Buddhism in America: On Brad...

The recent funeral of NYPD Officer Wenjian Liu offered, among other things, a clear window into race relations here in the United States. Occurring in the middle of the current police "slow down," the...

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The World Inevitably Exposes Our False Identities

Photo credit: Penywise from morguefile.com There is no I and there is no other. How can there be intimacy or estrangement? I recommend giving up trying to get there by meditation, But rather, directly...

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Brief Meditation on an Increasingly Deranged Planet

Photo credit: snowbear from morguefile.com This has been bubbling up for me today. Noticing how warm this January has been, after record cold last January. Thinking about our ancestors. How they looked...

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Notes on the Yoga Industrial Complex

Photo credit: mantasmagorical from morguefile.com This article came across my blog feed a few days ago. I read it, found myself nodding in places, and also resonating with some points in the comments...

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Diving into Freedom

Photo credit: Sheron2482 from morguefile.com One of the great temptations of human existence is to base your life on contingency. That you will actually take the courageous step once all the conditions...

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The spring breeze is our every breath

Photo credit: immaster from morguefile.com The world before my eyes is wan and wasted, just like me. The earth is decrepit, the sky stormy, all the grass withered. No spring breeze even at this late...

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Yoga Culture and the Biomedical Centric Narrative

Photo credit: kakisky from morguefile.com Having just completed this long response to a Facebook thread about yoga, the use of pharmaceuticals by yoga teachers, alternative medicine, and the...

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We Are Becoming Strangers to Each Other

Photo credit: JessicaGale from morguefile.com The other day, I was on a bus heading to work. There was a guy sitting near me with his headphones turned all the way up. Across the aisle, another guy...

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Mansplaining Away Rape Culture: Waylon Lewis'"Strange" Partial Defense of...

Waylon Lewis of the popular spiritual webzine Elephant Journal has a history of ... ahem ... troubling behavior. In 2011, I wrote a post about racism on EJ, which Waylon sought to defend as humor. The...

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On Systemic Racism, White American Buddhism, and the #BlackLivesMatter Movement

Unless you've been totally asleep or hiding under a rock, you're probably aware of the unrest in Baltimore over the police murder of Freddie Grey. Odds are that some of you are upset about the...

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On Charleston, Terrorism, and the Future of America

Photo credit: erdenebayar from morguefile.com Nothing short of an extended, ritual purification and reconciliation will do at this point. Removing and burning Confederate flags is only a starting...

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Green Zen

Photo credit: schmitee from morguefile.com Today's post comes from my herbal medicine blog at NGTHerbals. Here is an excerpt. Sometime in the middle of the 8th century, a Zen hermit living in China...

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Study the Whole Self, Not the Marketed Self

Photo credit: mensatic from morguefile.com Marketing of the self. Aren't we taught to do that pretty early on in life? You gotta stand out or you'll be forgotten, right? You better promote or you will...

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Buddhist Tensions: the Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong

Picking Flowers If you want to pick flowers, you have to hike. Climbing up, don't worry about your weary bones. Pluck the low branches, pull down the high. Enjoy alike the spent blossoms, the tight...

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Letting Your Opinions Fly Like Birds

We humans tend to cherish our opinions. Sometimes, we'll do anything to either protect them or make them known in the world. It can get so bad that people will destroy relationships and even kill each...

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The Ups and Downs of the Holiday Season

Photo credit: MrSickboy50 from morguefile.com Today's article is a guest post from Gregg Krech. Several years ago, I had the opportunity to take a weekend workshop with Gregg on Naikan, which is a...

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The Buddha Taught Rahula: "This is Not Mine, This is Not I, This is Not Myself."

Life has a way of swooping in with heat, and drying out the noise that flies from your mouth. Since I left Minnesota, and my home sangha, my Zen practice has become something else. Still Buddha, still...

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