Reading Archive (Suffering)
Call Me by My True Names
Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive. Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bud on a...
When You Don't Choose Love You Choose Fear
If we could literally reach into you and remove all your fears – every one of them – how different would your life be? Think...
Before You Know What Kindness Really Is
Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth....
You Carry Your Wound
You carry your wound. With the ego, your whole being is a wound. And you carry it around. Nobody is interested in hurting you, nobody is...
To Be Worthy Of Our Suffering
Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to...
My Misgivings About Advice
My misgivings about advice began with my first experience of clinical depression thirty-five years ago. The people who tried to...
The Shenpa Syndrome
Someone criticizes you. They criticize your work or your appearance or your child. At moments like that, what is it you feel? It has a...
Inner World of Moods
“Give me a place to stand on," said the Greek mathematician Archimedes, “and I can move the world.” He was...
Addiction
It seems that a believed thought (most often unconscious) underpinning addictions goes like this: ‘something outside of me can make...
We Move in Infinite Space
It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished...
Difference Between Healing and Curing
In my thirty years of working with cancer patients, I've seen a profound distinction between curing and healing. Curing is what a...
Every Sensation Comes to an End
I wonder if you know what it means to be aware of something? Most of us are not aware because we have become so accustomed to condemning,...
Don't Go Back to Sleep
To be human is to be lost in the woods. None of us arrives here with clear directions on how to get from point A to point B without...
Shifting Your Relationship With Pain
Have you ever noticed that your awareness of pain is not in pain even when you are? I'm sure you have. It is a very common experience,...
Love Like Water
Water in its clear softness fills whatever hole it finds. It is not skeptical or distrusting. It does not say this gully is too deep or...
Lessons From An Accident
For the last forty years, I have been a somewhat compulsive caregiver. However, I found an appropriate niche in medical school, and have...
Lessons From 25 Years of Meditating
I did meditate nearly everyday for about 25 years of my life, and some days, for hours on end. [...] Here's what I found. ...
The Place That is Free of Suffering
The world promises fulfillment somewhere in time, and there is a continuous striving toward that fulfillment in time. Many times people...
The Test for Meditation in Action
When we first come into this life we form a self in order to cope with the world. The baby has a rather scant self and commensurately...
Emptiness And Compassion Go Hand In Hand
The word “emptiness” is a fair translation of shunyata, but it has the drawback of sounding negative, even despairing....