A guest post by Miriam Boleyn-Fitzgerald, author of Pictures of the Mind: What the New Neuroscience Tells Us About Who We Are. I saw my dad a month before he died. We went for breakfast at the restaurant where he liked to meet when I came through town — a place by the highway with [...]
Psychologists at the University of British Columbia have found that Tylenol can reduce anxiety associated with “thoughts of existential uncertainty and death” — two areas for which Buddhism, of course, is hailed for its efficacy. In the study, subjects taking Tylenol reported feeling less upset after discussing death and existential topics than those who had [...]
April 15, 2013 – 11:33 am
“A Good Death,” a new New York Times piece written by photographer/writer Joshua Bright, recounts the passing of John R. Hawkins, as “ushered from this life by a good friend, Robert Chodo Campbell, whom [Hawkins] had known for 23 years and who is a Zen priest and co-founder” of New York Zen Center for Contemplative [...]
It was “2 years ago today,” says the Facebook page of Mike DeStefano, that “we lost our brother.” DeStefano, you may recall, first came to national attention on NBC’s televised comedy competition, Last Comic Standing, and in “The Junkie and the Monk,” a famously intense and personal installment of the storytelling series, The Moth. (Video [...]
February 13, 2013 – 11:24 am
If you use your difficulties to create art, says Ruth Ozeki in “Nothing Is Wasted,” it will give them meaning. There’s no need to be a professional artist or writer to transform difficult situations into creative work. Poems, or journal writing, or quilts, or collages, or songs need never be made public. They can be [...]
February 7, 2013 – 4:10 pm
You may have seen Leanora McLellan‘s story “The Most Valuable Cups in the World,” in our March magazine — read an excerpt of it here. We’re pleased to present another one of her Zen stories, “Time to Die.” Ikkyu, the Zen master, was very clever even as a boy. His teacher had a precious teacup, [...]
December 19, 2012 – 1:48 pm
The talk shown in the video here is from earlier this summer, given in response to the mass shootings perpetrated by James Holmes and Wade M. Page. But — unsurprisingly, and sadly — its message is every bit as relevant, post-Newtown. After all, as the American-born Tibetan Buddhist nun Thubten Chodron notes in this BBC [...]
November 23, 2012 – 9:25 pm
The New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care and the Garrison Institute recently held their 2012 Buddhist Contemplative Care Symposium on Palliative & End of Life Care at the Garrison Institute. The symposium was a four-day gathering of researchers, spiritual caregivers, medical practitioners, and patients themselves, exchanging ideas on “contemplative best practices” and working toward [...]
November 5, 2012 – 10:41 am
There has, of course, been what seems like a never-ending rash of self-immolations in protest to Chinese rule of Tibet; these have been covered ongoingly over at Buddhadharma‘s Buddhadharma News page, with some 60-plus of these deaths taking place since 2009 alone. Seven of them occurred last week alone. People often wonder what the Dalai [...]
September 18, 2012 – 3:19 pm
The first ever Buddhist Contemplative Care Symposium is scheduled for November 8–11 at the Garrison Institute in Garrison, New York. Co-sponsored by the Shambhala Sun Foundation, the conference focuses on providing the most effective palliative and end-of-life care possible, drawing together neuroscience researchers, doctors, nurses, and other health care providers, Buddhist teachers, and patient advocates. [...]
September 6, 2012 – 3:25 pm
Today is the 22nd anniversary of the death of Issan Tommy Dorsey, a Soto Zen priest, from complications of HIV/AIDS. The openly gay Dorsey was a former drag queen who struggled with drug addiction for years. Dorsey was the first abbot of the Hartford Street Zen Center in San Francisco’s Castro District, established in 1981, [...]
As you may know, Raymond Taavel, a beloved Shambhala Sun staff member and dedicated activist for LGBT rights, was murdered outside a bar here in Halifax in April. (See our coverage of his death here.) Raymond was long involved with organizing Halifax’s annual Pride Week celebrations, and for this year’s Pride, Shambhala Sun senior writer [...]
It seemed like an ordinary hot summer day, but an inconceivable accident changed everything. For Marcelle Gilkerson and her community, compassionate togetherness would be the key to going forward. On July 4, my son Tucker and I were driving up High Street in Columbus, Ohio. At a corner we saw a familiar sight: Noah McGuire, on his bike, [...]
Meet my wife’s boyfriend. Well, not really, but: for two years now, she’s been talking about Andy Whitfield — the star of the TV show Spartacus — and she remains a cheerleader for him now, though Whitfield is no longer with us, having died after being diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Well, the late actor’s story [...]
In this, one of the newest contributions to the Finding True Refuge video series—which shares individuals’ stories of how meditation has transformed their lives—mom Lynne L. tells of the healing that she found through meditation after the death of her daughter. Also just added to Finding True Refuge is a new video featuring Krishna Das. [...]
