Category: Dharma Journal

I received a call to conduct a ceremony for someone unknown to me who was in the end stage of dying. The caller said the dying man had a connection to Tibetan Buddhism and...

We have a number of blue scrub jays that visit our back yard. We offer them shelled peanuts from our feeding area and they happily feed on the legumes, stuffing up to five in...

I never thought of myself as a gardener. Yes, I could plant things and they would grow, mostly. I could till and tend. But I never had the ‘bug’ to be serious about it....

Hackleman Creek winds lazily through the ‘old Cascades’ in a central portion of the Willamette National Forest. It is named for Abram Hackleman, one of the first settlers of Albany, who came to Oregon...

An interesting fact about the Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) is that it only takes as much water as it needs. This allows it to adapt to a wide variety of microclimates from seashore (where...

I am hiking in a dry wash on a beautiful warm day in the high desert. Puffy clouds cast intermittent shadows over the landscape and a gusting wind cools my sweat-moistened skin. At my...

Ominous slate-gray clouds fill the sky to the south of Bend as we head to Newberry Volcanic National Monument. We plan to hike the short trail through the lava flow to discover resilient wildflowers...

The mountain cottontail (Sylvilagus nuttallii) has a unique habit of evading predators. It runs for only a couple of yards and freezes, perhaps camouflaged in a clump of sagebrush. If a predator continues to...

As we drive a winding narrow dirt road into the Greenhorn Mountains of northeast Oregon, we come to a cattle guard and a “no trespassing” sign. Realizing there is no place to turn around,...

On either side of the Buddha statue on our altar, near his folded knees, stand two symbolic skullcups (kapalas) made of yellow metal. One represents the essence element of the male principle and the...