Space aliens, robots, and clones don’t have belly buttons—this is a common trope and test of otherness on TV and in the movies. Yet I remember finding this devastatingly clever when I first encountered it on TV as a child. You could be perfectly human in every way, but if you lack this one tiny,Continue reading “Three Marks”
Tag Archives: Allowing
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”
Entering the Temple
Late yesterday afternoon, ten of us sat in a sunset-washed yoga studio, practicing being still together, noting in the barest, sparest way how it feels to be in a body. By noting in a bare and spare way, I mean we practiced gently restraining thought, allowing our sensations and feelings to arise and present themselvesContinue reading “Entering the Temple”
Samadhi
Last Sunday evening, a group of us meditated and exchanged about what the Buddha meant by the word “samadhi” — a word usually translated as “concentration.” I don’t know about you, but I dreaded the word and the state that I thought went with it. I associated concentration the kind of grim mental effort IContinue reading “Samadhi”
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””
Tracy Cochran 