As the Buddha was about to become enlightened, his enemy Mara - and Mara's forces - arrived and shot 40,000 arrows of doubt at him. Who was he to be awakened to the Truth of Our Existence? I have heard two stories about what happened next. First, the Buddha calmly looked upon Mara and the [...]
I have been plagued by food cravings since I was eight years old. You might say my drug of choice was toast with cinnamon, sugar and butter. Ugh! Yet these cravings serve as a path to enlightenment. Lately, I have been putting into practice a meditation technique that has lead to a deep awareness within [...]
This morning in meditation, I was doing deep restorative yoga. I breathed in compassion to myself. Kindness toward the light, lovable parts of me as well as the darker, self-loathing parts of me. As I envisioned a warm yellow sunlight enveloping my middle, I heard the words, "Yoga... is a hug." Hug me. I went [...]
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 [...]
We rarely acknowledge the pelvic floor...It's like a dark room no one wants to talk about...and yet, it is a foundational element of the body. Pelvic floor meditation is meant to bring you emotionally, physically and spiritually into this oft overlooked area. Imagine Jizo, the Earth Womb Bodhisattva, holding this part of your body with kindness and patience, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
A voice arises often in my meditation. And when the same phrase is repeated, quietly, periodically, urgently, I pause and write it down. I don’t ignore my Muse. “There is a screaming child in the body of America,” she told me. […]
A funny thing happened when I decided to write a memoir of my journey of photographing, meditating and knowing Jizo. For years, I was on what I guess you would call a spiritual path, a seeking kind of thing. It started when I was 8 years old but heated up in my late 20’s. [...]
