Archives: BD Articles
Is Your Life Too Busy for Loving-kindness?
One small word in the Metta Sutta raises a question that modern practitioners may prefer not to ask: What if meditation cannot compensate for the lives we have constructed?
U Po’s Five Hundred Years
In 19th-century Mandalay, a physician's reading of a single Vinaya passage put him at odds with centuries of commentary — and cost him his life.
Who Wrote This? On Buddhism & Agency in the Age of AI
When AI writes your emails, edits your prose, and so on, where does "you" end? Hajeong Park finds that Buddhism has been sitting with this question for centuries — and that its answer, rooted in non-self and dependent origination, gives us a useful framework for navigating the age of AI.
The Taxi Was the Teacher
Thirty days of silent retreat didn't prevent a flare of anger when a driver failed to show. The Buddha's Simile of the Cook explains why — and what to do about it.
Devotion in Three Keys
At a monastery's grand reopening in Kathmandu, Justin Kelley watches three very different expressions of Buddhist devotion sit side by side — and finds, in his teacher Mingyur Rinpoche, a living example of what it looks like when they meet.
Pre-midterms virtual town hall to examine how Buddhism can address political anxiety, issues
Tara Brach, Ben Connelly, and Kaira Jewel Lingo will appear as panelists, exploring how Buddhist practice can support democratic values.
Equanimity Is Not Detachment
Nichiren Buddhist teacher Mark Herrick argues that equanimity isn't stoic composure — it's homeostasis, the same balancing function that lets a single cell survive change.
The Mother Mountain
Zen, Pure Land, and Nichiren all trace to one mountain outside Kyoto. James Gritz on Mount Hiei, his own teachers, and a trip that returns to the source.
What My Body Taught Me When It Stopped Working
The late Zen teacher Darlene Cohen was athletic, fearless, and self-reliant — until rheumatoid arthritis took her strength, her independence, and even her ability to care for her own child. What she found on the other side of denial wasn't peace. It was curiosity. An excerpt from the new collection, Alive For It All — Wisdom for Everyday Life: The Teachings of Darlene Cohen, by Cynthia Kear.
Ground Yourself from the Inside Out
Working with the subtle body's inner wind can calm restlessness, restore emotional balance, and anchor you in the present — here's a practice to begin.
The Healing Practice of Cultural Humility
Charlene Leung discusses the importance of using Buddhist practice to become aware of our biases and develop cultural humility.
Tibet’s Lelung Tulkus — Shaping Peace for 700 Years
In advance of the 700th anniversary of Tibet’s first Lelung Tulku, Tenzin Wangmo offers an appreciation of the lineage and its current-day incarnation, whose work is decidedly nonsectarian.
Remembering Venerable Shwe Nya War and his Work for Democracy
Political-activist monk Venerable Shwe Nya War Sayadaw, who died in July 2025 after years of imprisonment under Myanmar's military junta, embodied a form of Buddhist nationalism that championed democracy and solidarity with Muslims rather than scapegoating them. Hein Htet Kyaw remembers a monk whose legacy challenges comfortable assumptions about religion, resistance, and belonging.
Why I Ordained — And What It Was Like
Rev. Dr. Aaron Shōken Proffitt shares his experience of tokudo shurai — the ordination training for priests in the Jōdo Shinshū Hongwanji-ha — and learns that "everything is tokudo."
Khanti, or Patience, as Relational Practice
Khanti is one of the parami, and an antidote to anger. How can we bring it to bear in our relationships — meeting conflict, hurt, and intensity directly — without flinching, shutting down, or acting out?
Great Compassion Takes Form
Karen Greenspan takes us to Kathmandu to witness the immersive, nine-day Avalokiteshvara Drupchen ceremony. Featuring photos courtesy of the Drukpa Nuns and photos and video by the author.
84000 opens new gateway to the Tibetan Buddhist canon
At the heart of the new site is an open-access library of thousands of canonical texts, organized according to traditional categories and searchable by topic.
A Bigger Umbrella
Rev. José M. Tirado on working with the spiritual longing “for the complete thing, the practice that would hold all of me, the teacher who would see everything I was bringing and say: yes, this too belongs.”
Is This the Spiritual Awakening that We Seek?
In the introduction from his new book, Loving the World as Our Body: The Nondual Path in a Dangerous Time, David R. Loy asks us to consider what we could have learned from our religions, and how we might bring about what we need today: a spirituality that loves this world.
The Worst of Times, the Best of Times
In this excerpt from Girl in a Box: Seeking Enlightenment as a Tibetan Buddhist Nun, Paldrom Catharine Collins discovers that sometimes it’s bad times that lead to big breakthroughs.