Category: Dharma Journal

Restarting Life

I saw a documentary about an organization called reStart, referring to restarting a life after escaping the snare of internet addiction. This was the first residential digital addiction recovery center in the U.S. Many...

I’ve Looked At Clouds …

As children, we stared upwards and saw clouds morph into shapes of bunnies and dragons, mountains and valleys, smiling gods and wrathful demons. We occupied a mind closer to the mythopoeic (myth-making) minds of...

Untangled

“Tangled within, tangled without: these people are tangled in tangles. I ask you this, Gotama: Who can untangle this tangle?” In the Samyutta Nikaya, Buddha is asked how we can untangle the mess we have created through...

Hidden Life

We live in a world where the most important things are hidden to our senses unless we have the inclination to refine our sensitivity. For instance, I walked desert landscapes for years before understanding...

Slender Thread

My dreamwork mentor, Robert. A Johnson, was told by Carl Jung not to join anything. Jung did not even think the Zurich Institute was an appropriate way to train as a therapist. You learn...

Comfort Zone

Many years ago, when I first began practicing in the Vajrayana tradition, I prided myself on making altars. I would build, arrange, and rearrange, the various Dharma items to make a perfect place for...

Tea

I am a tea snob. I mostly use loose leaf, free from the bonds of a bag. I pay attention to brewing temperature: boiling for most black, 195 degrees for oolong, 160 -180 degrees...

Weeds

Huge earthmoving equipment is tearing up the landscape, eliminating all trees, sage, rabbitbrush, and wildflowers to make way for a new road. Larger rocks are piled high in one spot to be fed into...

Herstory

I am sitting in a local Thai restaurant waiting to order my noon meal. At the table next to me, three women converse about family history. The grandmother leads most of the exchange with...

Lessons from a White Bird

I wonder if it knows it is different. It seems to act like all the other jays, hopping about, snagging a few peanuts we offer at our bird feeder. It also seems to interact...