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...
View ArticleChe 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...
View Articlethe 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...
View ArticleDid 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...
View ArticleA 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...
View ArticleA 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...
View ArticleThe 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...
View ArticleIs "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...
View ArticleThe 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...
View ArticleThe 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...
View ArticleBrief 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...
View ArticleNotes 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...
View ArticleDiving 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...
View ArticleThe 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...
View ArticleYoga 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...
View ArticleWe 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...
View ArticleMansplaining 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...
View ArticleOn 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...
View ArticleOn 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...
View ArticleGreen 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...
View ArticleStudy 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...
View ArticleBuddhist 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...
View ArticleLetting 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...
View ArticleThe 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...
View ArticleThe 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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