Valentine’s Day is the designated push for sweethearts. It's a day for heart-shaped boxes, long-stemmed roses, and cute cards. Every February 14th, we flock to florists and chocolatiers like ducks to water in order to engage in what has become the almost ritualistic practice of honoring an individual (or individuals) we romantically admire. But what [...]
Bodhisattva. For the non-Buddhist, it is almost certainly a foreign term. Maybe you recall the name of an old Steely Dan album, at best. Put simply, bodhisattva is “a Sanskrit term for anyone or anything motivated by great compassion.” It is a combination of two separate Sanskrit concepts: Bodhi—meaning awakening or enlightenment Sattva—meaning existence, reality [...]
Hi all. As I therapist, I have heard my patients begin to worry about the holidays as early as, well, about the time the lights go up in Bloomingdale’s, which is now in September. Even if you are not a worrier, there is a level of Shoulds, of stress, of pressure that our society places [...]
This was supposed to be a blog about Suzuki Roshi’s quote about making mistake after mistake after mistake. As often happens, wonderful mistakes occur when I search the Internet. First, I found this — a quote from Winston Churchill, “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” He was a Zen Master. And [...]
Jizo Therapy is in its infancy: an eclectic set of theories I have strung together since 1988 when I started graduate studies to become a psychotherapist. The therapeutic qualities of Buddhism were only spoken of by Thich Nhat Hanh and a few others. The brain-imaging of Tibetan monks was decades away and weekend workshops with [...]
