It’s that time of year again. I will be teaching my annual workshop at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies entitled: “I, Me, and Mine: Untangling the Dharma of “Self” through Metaphors and Mindfulness. I invite you to join me for a heartfelt, intellectually stimulating, and contemplative weekend in the peaceful surrounds of BCBS. The…

A recent piece in the New York Times “The New Mantra: Replacing ‘Om’ With ‘Glam'” caught the attention of Tricylcle blogger, Emma Varvaloucas. She screamed “noooooooooooooooo.” In my book, Wild Chickens and Petty Tyrants: 108 Metaphors for Mindfulness, I quoted Thoreau who said, “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of…

When are mind is going in high gear, mindfulness can seem like a futile option. No matter how many times we return attention to breathing, it is yanked back to whatever concerns we are preoccupied with. It’s as if the mind is a gushing faucet and one whose handle is broken. Each time it is…

I am reading the lovely volume of excerpts from Rilke’s voluminous letters, Letters on Life, edited and translated by Ulrich Baer. Rilke wrote thousands of letters during his lifetime and seven thousand were reviewed for this volume. Rilke was a complex character. His biography, in some ways, parallels the Buddha’s. Like the Buddha he found…

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