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 [...]
Sugar. Childhood obesity. Adult onset diabetes. Makes one anxious. Feeling uncomfortable? Hey, h ave something sweet. Then, beat yourself up. Then try to get back in “control” of it. Then, eat it again. And again. Try to stop. Can’t? If this sounds familiar, you are so Not Alone. Me, I ask Jizo to hold the [...]
Most folks in the West don’t know who Jizo is; I don’t expect them to. They know even less about how the Buddhist bodhisattva relates to the health of our pelvic floors. Such things are never written about. But the relationship is much closer than even lovers of Jizo may realize. In Sanskrit, Jizo’s name, [...]
There is an underbelly to our most intimate relationships: the dark side of love. When people announce they are getting married, we might give our condolences along with our congratulations to offer a more holistic picture of the institution. Until then, let’s work out some of the awful kinks. […]
This could be a book. But right now I don’t have time to write it, and you might not have time to read it, so I’ll just send out postcards, aka blog posts, for now. I’ve been seeing families, couples and individuals for almost 25 years now, and I am sure of a few things, [...]
In the ongoing quest to mend our anxious minds, many of us are drawn to meditation. Once we begin, we find that we fidget, we get sleepy, we get bored. We don’t do it right, we fail, we quit, we start again only to quit again. Our expectations of finding peace are not met and [...]
In the movie Harvey, starring James Stewart, he has an invisible friend, a puka, who is a 6-foot-tall rabbit. In college, it was one of my favorite old films to watch. […]
A funny thing happens after sitting in meditation for a long time, gazing at my Jizos, who are gazing back at the not-me — my mind becomes at ease. I promise it only took around 20 years for me to stop controlling my breath and just let it be. For years, my mind would always [...]
I feel as if I need to explain that without having encountered Jizo on the hillsides of Kyoto in 2006, the stuff I write about would be more grounded in knowledge than experience. I had no idea how much I lived in my intellect, in my mind, and how little I resided within my body. [...]
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 [...]
