Sublime

Some people fight boredom in meditation, yet to be bored can be a good thing; it can mean the beginning of an appreciation for bare, plain qualities. Enduring your own consciousness is so valuable, I thought, Why shouldn’t a koan be there just to bore you? In this way, might not you appreciate your mind even when it is not being amused or having a

No one’s heart seemed to be changing, and though that might be the point of a boring koan, for me this koan was like an apple tree that had always been in the garden but had never flowered. Some passages in life seem plain or nondescript, yet they might make life sing, the way an anonymous brown bird hopping under the orange tree makes the garden

When a problem is intractable and you cannot conceive of a solution to it, you will just have to live through it without a neat story about how it is to be solved.

show a path in which kindness is part of the foundation of the mind; not one of its accoutrements, nor something to be cultivated. If it were an attainment, kindness could be taken away or lost. When you unpack all your motives and other people’s motives and get to the bottom of things, you find love. I know that this is a shocking thing to say but

A friend who is curious about the way the mind works for happiness or unhappiness spent an afternoon with a Hindu teacher. During their conversation, he asked the teacher, somewhat rhetorically, “Don’t you know for sure at least that you are a human being?” The teacher replied, “In part.” This was not the response my friend expected. His train of

to the masters of the present day.

Dr. Halifax is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist, activist, and author of several books on Engaged Buddhism.

Yantou said, “Don’t you know that the family treasure doesn’t come in by the gate? Let the teaching flow out from your own breast to cover the sky and the earth.” These ordinary words hit Xuefeng like a blow in the chest. His heart felt larger than all of space; he wept and shouted. He yelled out for joy, “Today Tortoise Mountain has finally

“Not gifted with genius but honestly holding his experience deep in his heart, he kept his simplicity and humanity.”