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Beginner's Heart

Anger. Greed. Delusion. Ignorance. Attachment. Aversion. The three root Buddhist mind poisons. The first time I heard them, I knew immediately which one was mine. (Anger, just in case you’re wondering — this will come as no surprise to friends, family & colleagues who hear me rant far too often!) There are actually five kleshas,…

I keep a gratitude journal. It’s actually a tire grateful for a 2nd life as a journal cover, a gift from my younger son. Since it still smells, even now, of the tire-it-used-to-be, it became a journal I use, but don’t live with. My gratitude journal. But more than a year after I began it,…

When I was a child, living in Việt Nam, Tết (Việtnamese New Year) was celebrated with Chinese New Year. We (children were welcome — even American children!) burned clothing for the dead, brilliantly red  dresses and robes and hats and even shoes, each the colour of luck, gilded w/ prosperous gold. We also burned paper…

I couldn’t tell you which came first: my concern for folks on the margins, my belief that we’re all connected (a kind of nascent Buddhism), or my didactic teacher-self. I remember teaching my 2-year-old younger sister to ‘read’ by having her memorise what I read to her. I remember looking at the young mother &…

So you may be thinking: New Year’s resolutions? It’s the middle of January! But it’s also (almost) Chinese New Year (January 23rd, just FYI). And this is a big one for me — my birth cycle returns. Born in the Year of the Dragon, the Dragon is once again at the helm of the year.…

For a number of reasons, this is my last semester teaching the class I’m teaching now. Which entirely changes the dynamic. Teachers know that every class — every class period — is different. But we often attribute this to our mercurial students. This semester is no different in that sense: my demographics are different (although…

The other day I was ranting about some injustice, and the way people were so unbalanced in their perceptions, and my husband stopped me cold. “You know the Middle Path is just a Buddhist myth, don’t you?” he asked, only half in jest. WHAT! It’s like he told me, when I was a vulnerable 6-year-old,…

In Buddhism, it’s about the moon. At least for New Year’s. 🙂 Mahayana Buddhism — the Buddhism of Vietnam, India, China, Japan, Korea, and Tibet, among other countries — celebrates New Year’s  Day the first full moon of January. This year on January 9th. However, Theravadin Buddhists (Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and others) celebrate New Year’s…

Few Americans are Buddhist — between 2.5 and 4 million, according to at least one source. A similar number are of Chinese ancestry — a scant 3 million. This makes the celebration of Buddhist New Year in the US a kind of moveable feast :). So if you’d like to celebrate Buddhist New Year in…

We don’t use phosphates in our dishwasher. They cause algae bloom, and lower the oxygen in water, suffocating fish if the bloom is excessive. But their replacements — phosphate-free detergents —  transform your originally clear and/or white dishes into cloudy, powder-covered trophies of environmentalism. I’m making peace with that. But I had this epiphany today,…
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