Here in the Champlain Valley we got the first dusting of snow. The mountains are open for snowboarding and winter is announcing its arrival with stalwart force. It’s been slow to arrive and much of our “stick season” has seemed more like “mud season.” If the snow persists and is followed by more we’ll be…

Pema Chödrön said, “Since impermanence defies our attempts to hold onto anything, outer pleasures can never bring lasting joy. Even when we manage to get short-term gratification, it doesn’t heal our longing for happiness; it only enhances our shenpa (getting hooked). As my teacher Dzigar Kongtrul once said, “Trying to find lasting happiness from relationships or possessions…

In the poem “Fire in the Earth,” David Whyte tells us of Moses receiving the command to “take off his shoes” as he approached the burning bush. This act of humility brought him closer to the earth, to the ground, and we learn that he “never recovered/ his complicated way of loving again,” and that…

Fall is an easy reminder of impermanence — anicca— in Pali or anitya in Sanskrit. Change is the rep of autumn. We expect it; we relish it. The changing season can be a great teacher, and metaphor, to the moment-by-moment changing of our experience. Every breath we take is a complete cycle of change–death and…

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