The Stormy Waves of Emotion

My dad, who is a long time meditator, told me recently that meditation is great for helping us deal with the difficulties of life, but that meditation doesn’t seem to work when we feel highly emotional. My experience tends to agree. When emotions threaten to drown me, I don’t think to go sit on a cushion. The waves are too powerful to swim through. But I think it is the fruition of the meditation practice that we should be able to ride the waves when they come by observing the emotions and not judging them too much. Later, when the storm has subsided, a clearer sky starts to emerge and the calm abiding of meditation leads to greater wisdom clarity.

Many teachers convey some variation of the statement, "every moment has its energy; either it will ride us or we can ride it." When our surfboard snaps in

When I Was A Werewolf

Sometimes my mind spins itself into a frenzy of negative thinking. It usually happens at night, when my body feels tired and the outside world is full of terrors. My mind transforms me into a werewolf. I go down this terrifying path and eventually fall asleep in a heap of fearful trembling. The next morning I awaken without fur or fangs. I wonder what the hell happened and how I can escape my mind when it gets like this.

This happened to me last night. I was angry

about something and then I went off to cool down. At some point I remembered to ask myself a question about how I wanted to proceed. I asked myself something like: “am I pursuing kindness or stress?” It didn’t work. I was up until late ruminating on the problems in my life I want to fix and one thought led to another.

Guest Post: Six Weeks Ago

This week I am excited to present a guest post from a dear DC Shambhala Sangha member, who also happens to be my meditation instructor. Jonathan Kirkendall offers a personal, moving and honest picture of impermanence, as he experienced when his partner suffered a stroke...

When you go to a graduate school founded by a TibetanBuddhist master, where the writing department was developed by the Beat Poets,it is not  surprising that the graffiti in the men’s room is poetic dharma. Written acrossthe metal stall all in caps in black magic marker, it reads:

ALL IS CHANGE

CHANGE IS ALL

I CAN REST IN NOTHING

I CAN REST IN NOTHING

I ran into this little piece of wisdom before classesstarted my first year there, and when I graduated three years later, I had it memorized.  Of course, at graduate school all IS change.  My long red hair morphed into a shaved headwhich became a red and gray buzz cut. Friends changed, classes changed, professors changed, mindschanged.  And soon, Boulder, Colorado changed to New York City, which two years later changed to Washington DC.

The Way in is the Way out

An old friend told me he felt like something was missing in his life. He talked about filling a void. He took a new job thinking that would solve it. But the void was still there. He talked about his lack of mindfulness, his habit of over-eating and the way he always feels like having the TV on to fill the silence.

I can relate to feeling like there is something missing. This is what led me to meditation. But what I've come to realize through the practice of meditation, is that this feeling of emptiness, which we might refer to as a void, is not the problem.

Three Reasons I'm Still On the Path

After about 5 years of meditating like my life depended on it, I hit a wall. For the past two months, getting my butt on the cushion has been a struggle and a constant internal negotiation process. Summer felt good. Life felt good. Samsara didn't seem so bad. I started asking myself why was I meditating so much.

I realized I had done most of the things I originally wanted to achieve through meditation. I meditated for a whole month this spring, and that felt like an achievement. I've experienced more

We All Want to Be Good Kings and Queens

I'm a big geek when it comes to stories about brave warriors battling the forces of darkness and tyranny. So naturally, I was excited about Game of Thrones, the mini-series on HBO about several medieval kingdoms battling for rule over a fantasy world full of aggression, fear and materialism. The House of Stark is the family you are supposed to root for. They are not perfect, but they are noble, take care of their people and believe in justice. 

At one point in the story, one of the Stark men feels lost. He doesn't know whether to march his army north or south. He is being pulled in different directions, not knowing whose counsel to listen to, not knowing whom he can trust. When a young maiden shows him kindness, he lets out his frustration. Then he apologizes. He says, "that's not the kind of king I want to be." When the maiden asks what kind of king he would like to be, he says, "I don't know... the good kind."

How to Be a Coward

I got snippy with a guy the other day. I could see the surprise on this face, so I realized I needed to turn down the volume. I felt a bit embarrassed and he felt a bit hurt. We went on with our conversation, pretending like nothing happened.

After the conversation I left, and then I thought, "wow, where did that come from? When did I become such an asshole?" I was uncomfortable. I could feel it in my chest. There was a battle going on inside my head, but I decided I had a lot to do, so I pushed the thoughts and discomfort away. It's easy to keep painful or disturbing thoughts away by finding other ways to distract your mind. That's how people with families become workaholics.

Experiencing Pain

Life is beautiful and full of pain. When we feel something painful in our hearts, our instinct is to escape. We can be like little kids, seeing a bee and running away in terror. But we could aspire to be more steady than that, a little more courageous.

When I was on retreat in April, I took a hike up to the purkhang where Chogyam Trungpa was cremated. It's in a grassy meadow, surrounded by pine forests and mountains on three sides that reach straight up to the clouds.

I was looking at the purkhang, taking in the space, when another woman on retreat, who was circumambulating the purkhang, suddenly broke out into tears. I knew what was on her mind because she told me one of her closest friends was dying.

How to Dissolve Resentment

It's easy to get fixated on resentment in life. We resent not being loved; we resent snarky remarks; we resent our talents going unnoticed; we resent prejudice; we resent not being perfect. But resentment is the ground for us to work from, when we realize that resentment is a cowardly and ineffective attempt to avoid pain.

To be clear, I'm not talking about anger or saying we shouldn't be angry sometimes. When we see people being oppressed, anger seems the appropriate response. What I'm talking about is petty resentment, which often leads us to talk a lot of smack in the face of something we interpret as a personal affront.

It takes courage to work with our resentment, and it takes a mind that is aware of the object of resentment, our fear and the impulse to escape from it. At the bottom of resentment is pain and we need the courage to run straight into that pain. The way in is the way out.

6 Ways to Approach Lust and Monogamy

Jeff Bridges (who is a Buddhist and a big fan of Chogyam Trungpa) did an interview with Tricycle Magazine in 2010. He described how he develops intimacy with the actors he works with, which leads to convincing performances. He discussed how his wife allows him to develop these deep relationships and how there is no sex involved, because then it would just get weird.

This interests me because I've often had a sad feeling about being in a relationship, since it seems like you aren't supposed to be curious about or attracted to anyone other than your current partner. Inevitably, I have been curious, and often this feeling made me feel like I needed to put a leash on myself and nip the whole thing in the bud.

Guest Post: Fearlessness through Fear

I had always been fine flying until one particular flight in August of 2010. I was going to Tanzania to give some presentations and expected it to be a difficult trip, my first time to Africa, hostile audience (people who weren't happy with the strategy my team was developing), you get the idea. I boarded the plane and sat down my seat in the very back row. All of a sudden, I just began to feel trapped, like I couldn't breathe, hot, legs shaking, and panicked.

4 Buddhist Ways to Loosen the Bully's Grip

Whether in the schoolyard or in the workplace, bullies seem ever-present in the United States. Competition, aggression and our tendency to be hyper-self-critical are aspects of our culture that contribute to this. 


The behavior of the bullies you confront will change as you get older, but at any age, a bully is someone who tries to break your spirit. Bullies pump themselves up by teasing or terrorizing others, exposing the painful fact that their victims are weaker. They may lock kids in the wood-shop tool shed (my own personal experience), steal lunch money, or continuously undermine their co-workers to make themselves look more important or competent. 

Clinging to Hope and Fear

In the second of the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha taught that clinging or attachment is the root of suffering. On Christmas Eve I was reminded of this.

My wife and I had plans to go over to a close friend's house for Christmas Eve dinner. I was extra excited because usually DC empties out for Christmas and we have no friends around. Christmas eve has seemed kind of lonely over the past few years, but this year would be different. 

I eagerly planned out the side dish I would make for the occasion. Then, just as I was about to go out and buy a bottle of wine and the ingredients for my side dish, I got a phone call from my friend. 

What is Being Present?

Being present is the best gift we can give someone. It doesn't matter whether you are being present for someone that is deeply suffering and has asked for your help, or you are being present for someone that pushes all of your buttons and throws you into fits of rage. The most generous thing you can do for that person is to be present. Actually, being present might be the best thing you can do for society!

A lot of people are talking about "being present" these days, and that is potentially very good, but there is also the possibility that few people know what it means and for this to become an empty phrase. If this notion of being present sounds elusive to you, you definitely need to question what it means. So the question should arise: what are we being present with?

The Instinct to Be Decent to One Another

I have a few pet peeves. One of those is when people cut in line. I have lived in countries where old ladies will elbow you out of the way to get to the front of a line. 

Another peeve comes up when I see someone get on the metro who obviously needs a seat. Maybe the person is on crutches, but the seats are all taken by young and able people absorbed in their iPhones, so the person that needs a seat is forced to stand until someone speaks up.

Despite the way it sounds so far, this isn't meant to be a moralistic rant. I have been absorbed in thought and failed to open a door for a guy with his arms full of boxes, so I'm not always better. But when we touch into our basic humanity, we are better.

Remembrance of Things Past

Beautiful memories are like comets hurtling through space, dazzlingly brilliant, but growing ever distant. I fear the stories that encapsulate my most beautiful memories will travel so deep into darkness that they will disappear from sight. Eventually they will become imperceptible even to the most powerful telescope, forever lost in the vastness of space.

That's how it feels to think about old friendships, or the feverish days of solidarity and angst in the punk scene, or the glory days on the high school football team, when things seemed intense, alive, maybe even perfect.

Prejudice Meets Bravery

A friend recently told me about the stories she tells herself about other people, like the lady with the $3,000 handbag and the perfect hair and nails, the lady that smokes in front of her baby, the right-wing-wackos that drive her nuts, fat people, skinny people, poorly dressed people, smokers, health nuts, scary looking men on dark streets, etc. I know she doesn't mean any of this maliciously. She was being brave and honest by admitting that these thoughts exist, like they do in most of us. Prejudices can be a disturbing facet of our selves and its hard to know what to do with them if we struggle to do more good than harm while hanging out on planet earth.