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Beginner's Heart

Most religions have a version of the Golden Rule: love others as you love yourself. Treat others as you would be treated. Do unto others as you would be done by. Here’s the catch: It means ZIP if you don’t love yourself. Respect yourself. Treat yourself with kindness. And another ‘secret’: most of us DON’T…

I’m working on it, Snoopy. Trying to remember that putting what’s important to me ‘out there’ (out here?) doesn’t mean I have to engage to people who aren’t respectful in their responses. But sometimes I’m the one who forgets to be respectful. Right now, I’m seething over the Texas state school board’s decision to load…

I’m fairly certain that my son’s violin was the reason he stayed in school. That and orchestra. Oh, and photography, later. And maybe the Simpsons Club, during free period. In other words, not academics. Not English, per se, nor science nor math nor history (although he liked history, and turned me on to Jared Diamond,…

When your own baby — never mind that he has two master’s degrees, is happily married, and moving all the way across the country — has a baby, it’s weird. Wonderful, but weird. Just sayin’. There’s a kind of disconnect: baby/ son/ son-as-father/ son-once-was baby… It’s kind of a strange loop. And yes, I did…

I’m sure everyone knows that the Dalai Lama says his religion is kindness. But you may not know it’s highly contagious, kindness (so is meanness, for that matter, but we aren’t going there). The graphic shows what happened, in a research study, when people were kind/ generous in a game. Over the next rounds of…

Today my grandson comes to stay for a visit! And we’ll be together for … weeks! Oh — and my wonderful elder son, and his super-cool and wonderful wife, and Silas-the-wonder dog, and Rufus-the-cat-with-attitude. Because we are doing a caravan/move from Tulsa to Virginia, where N&E both have new jobs, beginning SOON. In the meantime,…

When I was a little girl, I was completely smitten with Louisa May Alcott. And while Little Women was wonderful, I was possibly even more enthralled by Little Men. The character of Nan — wild romp of a girl, always in trouble — was so vivid, so real. And so much of her was me.…

The venerable and much-beloved Thích Nhất Hạnh has written out 14 precepts (think: instructions) for those of us interested in engaged Buddhism. None of them is horrifically difficult, in itself (well, I suppose that depends on what you mean by ‘difficult’…). But taken as a whole? They’re world-shattering. Or perhaps I mean world-building? But that’s…

I saw this today, and flinched. Literally — a kind of internalised wince that shook me. I have been so angry lately … There are signs from the universe (I really do believe the universe talks to us — but you do have to listen) that I need to work on this. The anger, I…

July 22nd is Dharma Day for observant Buddhists. There are three ‘jewels’ in Buddhist tradition: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. The Buddha is the easy one. 🙂 Sangha is the community on the Buddhist path with you, as I’ve discussed elsewhere. ‘Dharma‘ is commonly understood to mean the Buddha’s teachings, but it’s more…
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