For meditator and dharma teacher Jo-ann Rosen, Buddhism has been a vital lifeline in helping her transcend the wounds of the past. An almost 30-year practitioner in the Plum Village lineage established by the late Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, Rosen says the tradition’s teachings and rituals have supported her in understanding and having compassion for her own suffering, including intergenerational trauma and parental neglect.  Rosen is also a psychotherapist who has studied the brain extensively, specializing in research related to the importance of a well-regulated nervous system in tran ..read more

I recently went back to my journal from early 2016, when I began my meditation practice, hoping to gain some understanding of my internal life during those first periods of daily sits. Unfortunately, my journal entries offer zero context. They skip from dread and doldrum to endless notes on the Four Noble Truths, Eightfold Path, and page upon page of dharma. I’m not surprised that I was at a loss for words. With the privilege of hindsight, I can say that I was experiencing the rousing stir of my awakening mind. I was beginning to get some space between myself and my thoughts, realizing that ..read more

Joy is an incredibly important aspect of all Buddhist practice. It is one of the four immeasurables, the characteristics of the enlightened mind. Joy is also one of the seven factors of awakening—the qualities of mind that, when cultivated in a balanced way, lead to total enlightenment. Whether we are beginners or more advanced, it is impossible to accomplish any of our dharma practices without it. Quite simply, without joy there is no enlightenment. Joy is the fuel, the nourishment, that helps our practice grow strong and stable. Jamyang Tenphel, my teaching partner, often says: “If we imag ..read more

Joy is an intentional practice. So often our minds are running on autopilot when it comes to happiness, with all-too-familiar story lines. Have you ever thought, “I’ll feel good when I get that new cute fall jacket or finally get this work project done” or “I’ll be happy when I have a certain amount of money in my bank account” or “I’ll be happy when I have a specific number of followers on social media or get recognized in my career”? We can unearth these grooves in our brains with the intention to show up in joy and rejoice for others.  The Buddha talks a lot about joy for this reason ..read more

Joy is a radical act. That’s not how people usually think about joy, which is neither considered radical nor an action. Joy, as we typically understand it, is passive and reactive; it’s caused by something else. A new promotion, a “yes” to a marriage proposal, or a sudden fortune makes us feel joy. Then with time, that joy fades into a dull memory. That type of conditioned happiness is part of what the Buddha called dukkha, or suffering. But there is another type of joy, a much subtler and more sustainable joy that we can uncover. This joy—which I will refer to here as innate or unconditiona ..read more

Metta (lovingkindness) is that sense of openness when we feel connected to everyone and everything in the world. In some ways, it’s a natural outgrowth of mindfulness practice and just the general cultivation of happiness in our lives. When the Buddha talks about lovingkindness, he’s clearly pointing to something different from what we usually call “love.” In fact, his teachings point to the problems with selective love, and how that leads to clinging and ultimately suffering as things change. The Metta Sutta tells us to spread love over the entire world to everyone, no matter what we think ..read more

Lovingkindness (Pali, metta) can never exist unless it flows from the heart. As long as it’s just embedded in a word it is nothing; it is worthless. It doesn’t mean anything on its own in the same way that the word “river” is only a description that one has to experience in order to know it. If you say to a small child, river, they won’t know what you are talking about. But if you put the child’s hand in the water and let them feel the flow, then the child knows what a river is, whether they are familiar with the word or not. The same goes for lovingkindness. The word is meaningless. Only wh ..read more

You can’t simply dictate the heart. Lovingkindness, goodwill, and compassion naturally arise from our meditation practice, but feeling compassion is not the end of the path. The next step is love in action. The disarming power of metta (lovingkindness) and karuna (compassion) is this onward-leading interplay of appropriate responses. This great medicine of the heart and awareness has the capacity and the power to nurture your inner life, creating belonging like nothing else, revealing more of our humanity, more of our kindness. And as we deepen into the nonself nature of interbeing, leading t ..read more

Over a decade ago, when I was a relatively new meditation teacher, a friend told me about a Tibetan Rinpoche who instructed his students to practice “extreme” letting go. He told them to stop whatever they were doing, let their limbs and muscles go limp, and literally fall down wherever they happened to be so they could “taste” the experience of releasing their clinging mind-states. He suggested doing this practice several times a day, and so they would crash to the floor or the earth on sidewalks, in office hallways, and in their kitchens. At the time, I thought it was a ridiculous and maybe ..read more

I’m going to try to convince you not to be a jerk. I mean, you’re probably already not a jerk. I’m sure you’re usually basically a very nice human. But if you’re anything like me, you’re usually a nice human who flips out sometimes, says things he doesn’t mean, or maybe even says things he does mean and then encounters the rippling layers of consequences of those things down the line. My goal is to persuade you to do less of the jerk-like stuff you might be doing in your everyday life, and more of the prosocial, happy-making stuff you’re probably also already doing. Please take a minute and t ..read more