This week, Bodhipaksa, my former teacher and long-time Dharma-friend, posted an in-depth article on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, a central practice in Buddhist meditation. I’m glad to see it and hope it, along with my thoughts below, spawn some interesting discussion. Indeed, this teaching has spawned some different interpretations over the years, but Bodhipaksa’s approach of pulling together the process-nature of the first three foundations is, to my knowledge, a completely new way of approaching the practice. I’ll start... Read more

Well I’m up and running again, and finally getting into the 10+ mile range, but just barely. The last two weekends I’ve made it out of Helena a few miles to a tiny town called Birdseye, where a plot of BLM land with a little map and a parking area make for perfect trail running. Here’s an overhead, courtesy REI.  In doing some online scouting a while back, I found this pdf flyer for a bike race at the site.... Read more

(a post I wrote over at my other blog exactly 6 years ago today)Well, there are probably many reasons, but this article in the New York Times and on CNN reminded me of how wonderful England truly is. The gist of the story is that some doctors are moving to ban long, pointy kitchen knives because they are the most common murder weapon in England. It’s a dicey topic in the states, but it could only remind me of the murder problem that plagues... Read more

The New York Times’ Gretchen Reynolds reports today that researchers have found a strong link between exercise and promoting memory in aging brains. While aging tends to lead to a decline in memory-skills, there is a way to stave this off, according to Dr. Michael A. Yassa, lead researcher in the study: “Exercise is one of the things that might directly change this process,” he said. In other experiments, exercise has been found to jump-start neurogenesis, or the creation of... Read more

Here are some new, some not-so-new blogs I’ve come across (or returned to) lately that I hope to follow in the coming months and years: INDO-TIBETAN BUDDHISM: By Mr. DDZ, a cyber-friend of mine for going on 6 years now, who is currently “attempting a Ph.D. in Pali-Sanskrit-Tibetan philology & Buddhist intellectual history.” It seems to be a place for Mr. D to work out bits of thought and translations en route to that Ph.D. Lots of great stuff. Love... Read more

Tricycle’s article on the “Truest” Buddhism. Many of you will have seen this recent article from Tricycle, Whose Buddhism is Truest? If not, I highly recommend it, both for those studying early Buddhism and for all practitioners of Buddhism – both of whom will inevitably run into sectarian superiority hogwash from time to time. Many a time I’ve seen Tibetan Buddhists claim to have perfectly categorized and analyzed the Buddha’s teaching, including developing and standardizing the “faster way” of tantra.... Read more

Now that the “birther” conspiracy has apparently been quelled (though the birthers live on!), I thought it might be time for a deeper, more Buddhisty-philosophicalish question: What about Obama’s past lives?  What secrets to Obama’s life could we unlock by demanding long-form birth certificates for the last, say, 7 lives? Maybe he’s not a Muslim now and is an American, but what about last time? Or before that? Perhaps Obama loves God and America, but what does he think about... Read more

Well, for the record, that’s a yoga instructor (sister), mechanic (brother), and Buddhist scholar (me). Growing up in rural Montana – about 10 miles north of Helena, the capital city, neighbors had horses, dirt road, cactus in the back yard – we were introduced to guns fairly early in life. I think I skipped the “you’ll shoot your eye out!” bb-gun that many friends were getting and moved on to a pump-action single shot pellet-gun around the age of 8.... Read more

livingpeace on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free Just giving this a try mid-stream. Hope it works and sorry I didn’t get it up sooner! via the Center for Living Peace, Orange County Read more