The meditation\discussion group I sit with on Thursday evenings is going through the mind-training (lojong) sayings of Atisha, a 9th century Indian teacher who was influential to Tibetan Buddhism. Last week’s saying was quite simple:  Be grateful to everyone. As we began to discuss it we realized that although the saying is simple, it is not easy.  Grateful?  Sure, can do.  To everyone?!  Hmmm…  As a group we all immediately went to the same place:  Can I be grateful to... Read more

  I’m going to write a few posts to attempt to explain what Buddhist-Christian-Quaker means to me.  In this post I’ll focus primarily on the Buddhist part of that. Let me begin by clarifying that I have been a Christian for 30+ years.  I became a follower of Jesus as a young adult in the mid-1980’s (while traveling through Texas as the bassist for a heavy metal band–but that’s a story for another post).  I prayed the “Sinner’s Prayer” to... Read more

I don’t believe God has a plan. That is to say, I don’t believe that everything happens according to God’s plan, or that God predetermined all that occurs. The belief that God ordained everything that happens has its roots in Plato’s and Aristotle’s speculations about the Monad–the “unmoved mover” of the universe.  A great many theologians and leaders of the Christian church in its first few hundred years (as well as Medieval theologians like Aquinas, Calvin and Luther) were steeped... Read more