When I was fourteen, we evacuated for our first hurricane. We loaded our tiny Toyota with clothes, bottled water, and food, and packed up our Springer Spaniel, Harvey. We boarded up the house and sandbagged the doorways, hoping all would be safe when we returned, aware that it might not be. Though space was tight, Mom suggested we each take something that mattered to us, just in case the worst happened and the powerful storm surge took out our small house situated between Houston and the Gulf of Mexico.  Mom packed up the box of family photos, some so old that they were printed on tin ..read more

Singing the key instructions Isn’t meaningless, It’s the lineage tradition¹ —Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche They sing! This joyous thought sparkled in my mind amid a crowd of happy students packed into a shrine room at Marpa House in Boulder, Colorado, in the fall of 2003. It was my first encounter with Khenpo Rinpoche’s blissful presence and the profound practice of singing songs from the Kagyu lineage forebears. Easy to remember, these songs pass down instructions we can apply to our lives. As a lifelong performer and aspiring singer-songwriter, I knew I was in the right place. The feel ..read more

If you think about it, you can’t really have community or sangha without a sense of generosity. Being part of a community is all about sharing. So, what are we sharing? In Buddhist communities, we are sharing wisdom and kindness, walking together the journey of letting go of ego-clinging. We support each other as we let go of self-centered short-term goals that don’t bring any lasting benefit. Here, I would like to focus on sharing verbally or talking together. Naturally, we always are sharing something with others. Whenever we meet, we talk about what is going on for us, and we listen to ..read more

When I was probably four years old, my best friend was Michael who lived next door. Our favorite game was to stand a few feet apart and spin and spin like tops, our arms flung outward, until we lost our balance and then, dizzy and stumbling, landed with a hard flop in the thick St. Augustine grass.  For a few moments, I couldn’t get up again. All the world was open sky and drifting clouds. I could only surrender to the weight of my body on the ground, gaze into the high blue expanse, and wait for a sense of balance to return.  Then we’d hop right up and start the game all over agai ..read more

“Whether that is an object, a person or a state of mind, whatever it is, we long for it, but it remains out of reach. Then, at the very point where we totally give up and let go of it, we get what we have been wishing for.” ―Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, Mind Beyond Death When we are totally lost and suffering, what would it be like to give up? If we no longer wanted the things out of reach, would we see that we are free?  Our preferred version of ourselves (what we want, what we don’t want, who we think we should be) is not an inspiration, it is a tyranny. How we think about giving u ..read more

There’s an old expression: “Home is where the heart is.” I prefer to say, “Heart is where the home is.” I repeat this silently as an affirmation whenever I am caught in self-doubt or when I’m looking outside myself for validation. It is a potent reminder. Buddhism teaches that things are always changing and that the only constant is our heart of basic goodness. We forget this, however, and we tend to close our hearts when we are feeling hurt or fearful. Nonetheless, our open-heartedness is always there, just under the surface of our hurt or fears. I think of home as warm and inviting, but w ..read more