truth – Page 2 – Tracy Cochran

Courage

Martin Luther King Jr. and Family, Source Unknown

I never tire of remembering that “courage” comes from French and Latin words for heart. We encourage each other to get out of our lonely, individualist heads and remember our hearts, which are so much bigger than we think. This year, at a retreat on St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, I had the honor of listeningContinue reading “Courage”

Our Common Fire

Life is difficult. This is true for everyone. Always. Beautiful people who appear to have the easiest of lives suffer inner torments. We tend not to see this because we tend to compare our insides with other peoples’ outsides. But every so often a story breaks that makes us glimpse the truth that suffering isContinue reading “Our Common Fire”

Light in the Bardo

Tara Protecting from the Eight Fears, Kham Province, Eastern Tibet; 19th century Pigments on cloth, Rubin Museum of Art, Gift of Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, F1997.15.1 (HAR 237).

I would have died if I hadn’t died. This sentence has been as consoling and informing to me as whole spiritual books and courses. For a long time I attributed it to the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Yet so far Internet searches have turned up nothing. I can almost remember hearing it in a classContinue reading “Light in the Bardo”

Wisdom from Martin, 2018

The Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn taught people to take good care of their anger, not to push it away but to hold it with kindness, as we would a wounded child. This is a pretty good description of the practice of mindfulness: we offer ourselves the gift of nonjudgmental awareness. This is awareness isContinue reading “Wisdom from Martin, 2018”

Be Like Scrooge

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”

Be Straw

Oda Krohg, "By the Oslofjord," 1886 (Detail)

Once a poor miller was summoned to meet with a king. The summons itself must have filled him with terror. Evolutionary biologists tell us that we fear public speaking and other ways of being on the spot because we are all wired to link survival with acceptance by the tribe. And this king was theContinue reading “Be Straw”