Turning: Everyday Buddhism

In this podcast, I talk with Pamela Patton, Director of Pastoral Ministries for All Souls NYC. Pamela is a both a Unitarian Universalist and a Buddhist and she founded the Buddhism and Mindfulness program at the popular Unitarian Universalist church, All Souls, in Manhattan. In a wide-reaching conversation, we talked—among other things—about how important it is to keep your own practice strong if you want to help others. I think this is just as important for all of us to keep in mind, as it is for Pastoral Ministers.

I asked her what was one of the major issues people came to her to talk about with her over her tenure as a minister. She said, "connection." This just emphasizes how important connection has always been, even before the pandemic when we've all felt disconnected from each other.

This is such an important theme in Buddhism because, as we know, not only are we social beings, we are all interconnected or "interbeing" as the late Thich Nhat Hanh coined.

In this episode, we celebrate the Winter Solstice, Bodhi Day, and the light of the Buddha's Promise, meaning our enlightenment, too.

The message of the December darkness is a messenger of our own enlightenment. As Bhikkhu Bodhi wrote, "having discovered for himself the perfect peace of liberation, he kindles for us the light of knowledge, which reveals both the truths that we must see for ourselves and the path of practice that culminates in this liberating vision."

We don't chase the darkness away through external ritual or stringing lights, but by looking inside to find our own light.

Join me for an absorbing and inspiring conversation with someone who I now consider a personal teacher: Kaira Jewel Lingo, the author of the just-released book, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons on Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption.

Kaira Jewel is a gentle voice that quietly shares the deepest wisdom in the simplest way. It is my favorite kind of teaching. It shifts and moves inside you until you say ah-ha! And all the while you don't feel taught. I've used her book and her Insight Timer series to give me the courage and compassion to keep going in these shattered and dark times of mistrust, injustice, climate change, and an endless pandemic.

Kaira Jewel shares her story of beginning a new life outside the monastery, after 15 years as a nun with Thich Nhat Hanh's monastic community. But, most importantly, she shares convincing lessons that prove we were, indeed, made for these times because "every moment is our moment to be here as fully as we can be."

In this special repeat episode, we'll look at the overlaps between the pagan origination, rituals, and concepts of Halloween and Tibetan Tantric or Vajrayana Buddhism ... and also examine it all from an Everyday Buddhism perspective.

What scares you? What do you NOT want to look at? What masks do you wear? Do you show yourself as someone without a shadow or demon side? Is the so-called "spirituality" we want, we crave, and grasp onto something that is both grounded while reaching to the sky?

Buddhism is about seeing life as it is...seeing ourselves for who we really are...and all others for who they are. It is only then we can develop equanimity and compassion for all, including ourselves. Until then, we are living among apparitions like those on Halloween.

I can't stop talking about equanimity. So this episode is about the magic power of equanimity. What is it? Why is it important all the the time, but especially now? And how do we get it?

As I've mentioned in previous episodes, I've been focusing my practice on developing equanimity and compassion. In this episode, I share some of the things that have been helping me find balance and a bit more spaciousness from the "crazy" during this time where I believe we all feel like our lives have been up-ended.

I share six major tips to help you develop equanimity. The first is a foundational support for the rest: Mindful awareness of what causes us to be reactive or what triggers us. The next five are specific tips about our attitude toward the people and pets we love, our stuff, who to avoid, who to stay close to, and the importance of keeping up with your practice.

Join me for a conversation with Scott Snibbe, the host of the podcast, A Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment. Enjoy a free-flowing conversation between two long-time Buddhist practitioners and podcast hosts as we talk about the power of Buddhism and meditation to help enhance our good qualities, make us happier, and—ultimately—help make those around us happier.

Enjoy Scott's easy and fun style of explaining Buddhism and meditation. It will make you a believer if you weren't already. Like the smiling, joyful Tibetan Rinpoches, Geshes, and Khenpos, Scott's joyful personality is contagious. And if you are a skeptic and believe enlightenment is impossible, no problem. You are invited to dip your toe into this conversation and I'm convinced you'll want more!

To reiterate the obvious, life has been hard lately. Depressing and a struggle for many and devastating for so many others. All this suffering around us: plagues, violence, floods, fires. And those of you who follow this podcast know, I've been looking at how we might find a way to help ourselves and others through all this from many different Buddhist-oriented approaches. Finally, though, I personally came back to a practice and an attitude from my many years of Tibetan Buddhist study and practice: the practice of and—more foundational—the attitude of a bodhisattva. I came back to the beginning. In the beginning is intention or, for the purposes of this podcast episode, attitude. Right intention. Right attitude. It was as if I felt myself, in the midst of our ongoing "burning world", feeling around for a way out. And, without any conscious decision, I reached for and grabbed all my bodhisattva teachings and haven't let go. When looking outside at our burning world is too hard to bear, it's time—again—to look inside. Look at my motivation, my intention … look at what my heart was holding and where my mind returned … and look to see how my heart can be softened and how my mind can let go of its death grip on negative thoughts.

This is the sort of practice that is pulling me from a pattern I've been trapped in since early 2020, when the pandemic began. A pattern of bobbing to the surface, holding on to some sort of hope or thought of resilience, then​ being pulled back under when things don't seem to be getting better.​

For me, the trick was to keep practicing, with daily meditation on ​The 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas and/or The Way of the Bodhisattva plus doing Tonglen (taking and sending), metta, and/or Lojong practice. It isn't easy because it takes breaking a habit of reactivity and, well, laziness or avoidance of the practice.

Join the conversation with one of my first teachers, Frank Howard, as we talk about a little book called The 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas. I first met this book at the Dharma Center Frank directs and teaches, where His Eminence Garchen Rinpoche is a visiting teacher. Garchen Rinpoche says the entire Buddhist path can be found in the little book of The 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas. Rinpoche had one of the little books in one hand and his prayer wheel in the other hand.

I've read these 37 practices for more than a couple of decades ... but I haven't always practiced with them. This is what the conversation is about. It is a way to transform your life through transforming your mind.

Listen ...

Join me for a conversation—and a gentle teaching—with one of the most clear and inspiring teachers I've met. Rebecca Li, the author of Allow Joy into Our Hearts: Chan Practice in Uncertain Times, talks with me about her new book and the inspiration behind it.

I used her book—and will continue to use it—to help pull myself from falling into a dark world in my mind and a heart, as a response to the suffering of the pandemic and all the fear and mistrust that came with it.

When suffering arises, Rebecca teaches us "how to suffer better." She teaches us to use a practice of total clear awareness to suffer better by knowing that we're suffering. It is the remembering to come back to practice, for the mind to come back to the body, that allows fear or sadness to move through you and not bury itself in you.

And she teaches us not to focus just on the positive as a way to flee from the pain of suffering. That, she says, is a "form of violence to ourselves." Listen to an easy conversation with Rebecca Li, who provides insight into practicing with an "unbiased view of everything that comes before you."

It seems, sometimes, that when Buddhist and other religious teachers, and serious practitioners get deeper into practice, the more they seem capable of deluding themselves—either in a performative way, posing and positioning for others, or because they have completely deluded themselves about what is really happening within them.

They hide their humanness behind the beauty and strength of their words, or their teacher's words, and they hide their brokenness. They hide so well they begin to believe they aren't broken.

In this episode, I talk about my brokenness and about how, like the Japanese art of kintsugi, expressing the philosophy of wabi-sabi, we must embrace the flawed and imperfect to honor our whole self—in all its brokenness—rather than hide what is broken. We need to illuminate those broken parts.