Make Your Heart a Dowry

Be patient with your impatience. For no one wakes up one morning and finds himself suddenly patient. We learn patience only by experiencing the dangers of impatience. We lean a little too far into the future and start to fall. It is only then that we feel a strong hand grab us from behind and […]

Talk Radio

I had the good fortune to see Thanissaro Bhikkhu speak the other night. He gave a talk that revolved around the idea that the mind fabricates experience before it meets with anything outside of itself. He also said something I thought was very funny. “If you have any doubt about this,” he said, “the proof […]

Broken Bells

The Dhammapada says that when people treat you badly, you should make yourself like a cracked bell: not reverberating in response to what has hit you. This is a difficult image for us to accept, because there’s part of the mind that believes that reacting to pain pushes it away, and not reacting brings it […]

The Wild Deer

In the Buddhist tradition, there’s a story about a king named Bhaddiya who gave up his kingdom, throne, and worldly possessions in order to follow the Buddha. One day after Bhaddiya had ordained, a group of monks found him meditating in the forest. They noticed he kept muttering to himself, “What bliss! What bliss!” The […]

The Next Train Home

Not too long ago, I was running some errands in Manhattan when I realized, much to my alarm, that I had made an appointment for that same afternoon in Westchester, an hour outside the city. I calculated that if I sprinted up to Harlem, I could intercept the northbound train and get to my destination […]