Category: Meditation For Success
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Book Review of David McMahan’s Rethinking Meditation
It is hard to know how to even begin to review of a book of the beauty, depth, nuance, and complexity of David McMahan’s excellent Rethinking Meditation: Buddhist Meditative Practices in Ancient and Modern Worlds (Oxford, 2023). David’s previous book—his seminal The Making of Buddhist Modernism (Oxford, 2009)—is undeniably the most important book about Buddhist…
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Book Review: The Garden of Weeds and Flowers
Two years ago a representative from the Monkfish Book Publishing Company based in Rhinebeck, New York asked if I would review The Garden of Weeds and Flowers: A New Translation and Commentary on The Blue Cliff Record (2021) written by Korean Jogye Order Zen teacher Matthew Juksan Sullivan. I let the publisher know I…
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possession
I had just turned 17 when my older sister and I went to see a movie that had taken the public by storm. It was called “The Exorcist,” and it was based on a bestselling book by the same name. Since at least half of the world’s current population wasn’t born by 1974, you might…
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goodness and mercy
A good person produces good out of the good stored up in his heart. An evil person produces evil out of the evil stored up in his heart, for his mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. — Luke 6:44-46 The other day I was working the New York Times crossword when one of…
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Book Review of Revamp: Writings on Secular Buddhism
Winton Higgins is a prominent Australian secular Buddhist, and Revamp: Writings on Secular Buddhism (Tuwhiri, 2021) has been hailed by Stephen Batchelor, as “the most comprehensive account of secular Buddhism currently available.” Since Stephen Batchelor’s name is, in some ways, almost synonymous with secular Buddhism, this is high praise indeed. Higgins has been influenced…
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Book Review: Reflective Meditation
Linda Modaro and Nelly Kaufer’s Reflective Meditation: Cultivating Kindness and Curiosity in the Buddha’s Company (2023, Precocity Press) is a lively written conversation between the authors on their understanding of meditation and the meditative path. Linda Modaro is the founder and lead teacher at Sati Sangha, a Southern California based online meditation community, and Nelly…
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I am not free
There are a few things I need to fill you in on. First, I am not free from fear. I am terrified. Second, I am not free from anger. I am furious. And third, I am not free from greed. No, I am furious and terrified that I will never see a penny from Social…
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the whole of the world is blooming
There is a grapefruit tree in my front yard that isn’t the picture of a grapefruit tree, at least not anymore. It has been old and sick-looking for all of the 27 years we have been here, and perhaps for many decades before. Its shrunken trunk is pitted and scarred. The bark, mostly gone. The…
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Some thoughts on the Israel-Hamas War
I usually only write on Buddhist topics for this blog, trying my best to avoid political statements of one kind or another. But I’ve been thinking about the Israel-Hamas war for seven months now and watching the campus protests that have sprung up in its wake. I’ve struggled back and forth between sharing…
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Buddhism and Authenticity
We want our Buddhist practice to be “authentic” in two different senses of the word: First, we want it to be authentically Buddhist—a genuine part of the current of thought originating with the life and teachings of the historical Buddha and remaining, in important senses, faithful to it. Second, we want our practice to be…