This path of awakening is a process. The truth we seek is not a concept or philosophical formula. It is a felt experience of living, of consciously joining our experience, whether it is grief or laziness or anger, feeling it and seeing it from the inside. The truth begins to appear in those moments whenContinue reading “Be Like Scrooge”
Tag Archives: Happiness
Pickpocket Sutra
Last time, I wrote about practice as a way of return, of recollection, of remembering—coming down out of our thoughts and memories and dreams to experience of being in a living, breathing body here and now. I wrote about how this movement of return can feel like a last resort, something we turn toContinue reading “Pickpocket Sutra”
Three Marks
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”
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”
Including the Body
Parabola‘s upcoming “Embodiment” is being printed and packed for shipping as we speak. The frantic, last-minute push is over, and now a space opens, a time for collecting ourselves. It is now Passover and Holy Week, an especially rich time to contemplate being in a body. We invite you to try this gentle exercise, bestContinue reading “Including the Body”
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 