I don’t give a damn about Ancestry.com.You are my brother. And I don’t give a damn if it’s on a census orfamily tree. You belong to me and I belong to you. We are both spear points among the foundbones of our children’s great grand-children. We both work to figure out the clues of expansion-those […]
The Mud Softer Than Ivory
There is a forest that I return to when I can’t get away from the pulsationsof thinking. A forest of tombs as still as dead tree trunks and melodious as raindropson red pine needles. The paths of my ancestors. In this forest, I am not alive like I usually am. Stepping in mink tracks, I know this place […]
Oyungerel Tsedevdamba’s “The Green-Eyed Lama”: A Literary Window into Mongolia’s Pain and Healing
One does not usually expect a politician and policymaker to be a breakout novelist, but that is exactly what Oyungerel Tsedevdamba has managed to achieve. Her novel, The Green-Eyed Lama, is for many Mongolians the first novel about Mongolia itself, specifically the Mongolian experience of a particularly painful period: the 1930s purges under Stalin. Ms. […]
The Buddhist Practice of Right Intention
Right Intention is the second tenet of the Noble 8-Fold Path. It represents the strong resolve that practitioners develop to end suffering for themselves and others when they walk the Buddhist path. On the surface, this seems like a no-brainer. No one wants to suffer, and everyone hopes for a peaceful life. So, why is […]
Marichi, Goddess of the Dawn
Marichi. From theyoginiproject.org Marichi (from Sanskrit “ray of light”) is the Goddess of the Dawn, who is revered in the Buddhist tradition as a heavenly warrior and powerful protector. Her name in Tibetan is Oser Chenma, which means “Goddess of the Great Light.” Marichi protects human beings from physical dangers and harm, sudden death, thieves, […]
Mendon Ponds
Life is just beginning todawn on most of us. But that happens here quickerthan most other places. Even though here, the glacierswere lured into a dead end,as the huge claws of timehauled across the ground likea long pause in someone’sconversation, leaving shoulder humpslike a bison’s, in looselyformed spherical organisms. Here, I feel the improbabilityof our connected minds.Codes in the […]
The Heart is a Constellation
Dying almost assoon as it is born,the heart dances ingroups of newborn stars. The heart isa constellation- a great disk shaped systemof gas, a retinue of unlit planets: An accident by the standards of the cosmos. Like a colossal swarm and a starsimply spluttering its way througha long series of ordinary eruptions. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work […]
Always Ringing
To make the headempty is such a heavything to do. For our minds are like a set of clear bucketshung out to gather rain. To be free of the distance betweenour father’s voice is such a close sound-one always ringing from the void. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in […]
What the “Buddhist Poker Player” can teach us about Buddhist Ethics
Buddhist ethics can be a difficult topic to study or discuss in the contemporary age. Ethics as a category of peoples’ lives has come to seem too prescriptive, too authoritarian, too distant. The communal and developmental ideals embodied in traditional systems of thought, from Buddhist to Aristotelian to Christian, have been largely set aside by […]
Yashodhara: The Buddha’s Wife in Many Lives
Buddha begging for food in front of his wife Yashodhara and his son Rahula. Cave 17, Ajanta. From personal.carthage.edu Yashodhara, which means “Bearer of Glory,” was the wife of Prince Siddhartha and the mother of their son, Rahula. She was born in the Sun Clan, to the daughter of King Suppabuddha and Amita. Amita was […]