there's a mouse in the kitchen, so i've had to choose between murdering an innocent animal who never did anything to me and the health and safety of my family. would a good buddhist who knew what they were doing kill a mouse to protect their family ( Read more... )

" Each shadowy layer is a coat of informational and experiential impressions of the distorted and repressed areas of life. The Great-Black-One feeds off of our shadows as we offer them. He turns them into a mansion of rainbows. '"

Healing Image - The Great Black One by Walter Stablein,page 38

Any comments or clarifications you would care to offer, ( Read more... )

I've decided to estabish a residential Zen Buddhist temple here in Phoenix. Now I just have to figure out how to make it happen, but happen it will.

Anyone interested in helping in any way, please get in touch

The other day, I got an email from a friend. After telling me the problems that some people close to us are having, she wrote, "Life is bumpy, isn't it?"

I replied that there is no reason that life shouldn't be bumpy. Our suffering is not caused by the fact that life is hard, but by our belief that it should be easy. When we accept life as it is, ( Read more... )

There's a Buddha statue that's sat outside the front door of each of the different places I've lived in during the last four years. When I got home tonight after being out for an hour or so, it was gone.

My first reaction was to laugh, and then to feel a strange affection for the thief. Who was it? The tweaker neighbor? One of his many friends who ( Read more... )

Here's a link to a letter I recently had published on The Buddhist Channel.

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
    You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
- T.S. Eliot

Getting what you want doesn't make you happy. Not getting what you want doesn't make you unhappy. The former situation is not better than the latter. They're just different.

One afternoon, I sat in a restaurant with a close friend ( Read more... )

Note: The following might hurt your religious feelings.

Due to external circumstances I noticed that I actually have a very concentrated mind and very little empathy and a weaker notion of "myself". It's not that I have no desires but they are flat and sporadic enough to alienate me deeply from "the world".  I've come to suppose that my state of ( Read more... )

This past weekend I was in a Dzogchen retreat with Wangdor Rinpoche and he had us chant several prayers with him. After translation, the seemed to be the same as my daily practice. I was wondering if anyone knows where to find the Refuge vows, Four Immeasurables, The Seven Limbed Prayer, Brief Mandala Offering and Dedication of Merit in both ( Read more... )

Happy Saka Dawa!