Tomorrow is the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the day when the North Pole is tilted farthest from the sun. Ancient people observed this day, watching the stars and the shortening days, patiently abiding and taking note until one day…it changed. They learned that the darkest day is followed by a little more light.Continue reading “Winter Solstice 2017”
Tag Archives: a refuge
The Art of Returning
Dear Noble Friends, I’ve been away a long time. Now it feels good and right to come home. Late yesterday afternoon, a group of us gathered to practice mindfulness meditation and do a bit of yoga and talk in a beautiful yoga studio in Tarrytown (Yogashivaya.com). The yoga studio was filled with the golden naturalContinue reading “The Art of Returning”
The Sunlight of Awareness
“The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty, “ taught Mother Teresa. “Loneliness is the most terrible poverty.” Every year in Japan, the ancestors are remembered and hungry ghosts are fed in a ritual called Oban. I once experienced a Western Soto Zen version of this practice, including among theContinue reading “The Sunlight of Awareness”
Life Preserver
I dreamed I was being carried along by life like a leaf on a stream. In the dream I was wearing the royal blue dress I wore at my daughter’s wedding in England last November, which seemed strange because moments before I was holding my daughter’s tiny hand as we walked down steep brownstone stepsContinue reading “Life Preserver”
From “I” to “We”
“‘Each one, on his own, wouldn’t be able to do it,’” said a policeman whose job it was to guard some 7 million people bathing in the icy Ganges last February, 2013. “‘They give each other strength.’” Can being with others–even in conditions of dense crowding and pollution–actually be good for our bodies, hearts, andContinue reading “From “I” to “We””
India, At Last
From the time I was a little girl, I dreamed of being in India. I remember creeping around the living room on a bitterly cold day in Northern New York (no kidding about the cold, as I write this it is -23 degrees, F. in Watertown, -37 degrees factoring in wind chill). I remember knowingContinue reading “India, At Last”
Tracy Cochran 