The turning of the year is a natural time to pause and reflect on our lives, be it for the lunar or the Gregorian calendar. Many people prepare by cleaning or making resolutions. Some are excited about a new job or a new child, while others are living without food or shelter. But one thing holds true for everyone: none of us knows what the New Year will actually bring. The Buddha’s teaching on impermanence may seem redundant here, but I think this is the perfect time to examine it it more closely.

Imagine a difficult situation that many of us experience: an aging parent is beginning to forget things, to have difficulty speaking, to struggle physically, and is diagnosed with dementia. As they lose the capacity to function independently, their family begins to make decisions for them, to respond to emergencies, and to support them financially. While helping aging parents is often seen as a filial duty, dementia brings other, more tangled aspects to the relationship. For family members, the stressful role of caregiving can often lead to depression, guilt, and anxiety, diminishing the quality of life and the care that is being provided to the beloved parent.

Deforestation remains a major threat to Cambodia’s forests, but a group of Cambodian Buddhist monks from the Independent Monk Network for Social Justice is battling to save these forests by lobbying lawmakers to protect them and by publicly exposing illegal logging.

Since 2005, Canadian Zen Buddhist monk John Stevens has dedicated himself to bringing education to dozens of remote rural communities across Myanmar. Working through 100 Schools, a UK-registered charity based in the northern city of Chiang Mai in neighboring Thailand, Stevens has so far enabled more than 10,000 children to attend school.

As our pilgrimage through central Tibet proceeded towards Samye prior to our long journey across the Western Tibetan plateau to Mount Kailash, I noticed a palpable excitement building—a sublime, devotional version of boyish glee. As if the two epic days visiting Drak Yerpa and Gangri Tokar (documented in the first part of this series)* were not vast enough, we were now approaching the sacred site of the primary transmission of realization to the early Tibetan masters who established the authentic Buddha Dharma in Tibet. This was the site of the nexus, the initial gateway for the profound teachings that Vajrayana practitioners the world over are receiving and practicing today. 

San Francisco, CA (USA) -- There’s a lot that used to frustrate me about communicating. Well, if I’m honest, it was that I didn’t know how to do it. I knew how to speak and string words together, but no one ever sat me down and taught me the purpose of communication or how to effectively express myself so I was heard and how to listen so I could understand. A lot of times it seemed that because I knew how to talk, that automatically meant I should know how to communicate.

Buddhism’s remarkable receptiveness has enabled it to evolve into a tradition of great diversity. Through pragmatic absorption and negotiation rather than conquest or imposition, Buddhism has enriched both itself and the cultures in which it has found a home. This receptivity was amply demonstrated when monks filtered into China from northern India and Central Asia, and when Japan and Korea adopted Buddhism from Tang dynasty (618–907) China and made it uniquely their own. One interesting phenomenon over the past several decades has been the proliferation of Buddhism in the West, Latin America, and Africa. In these traditionally non-Buddhist regions, Buddhism must be even more receptive in order to navigate established, globalizing cultures and trends. In the West, these established cultures are based broadly on a Christian heritage that is both complemented and contradicted by an increasingly normative secular, scientific worldview and social liberalism.

On Tuesday 2 June, the Chokgyur Lingpa Foundation (CGLF) will be organizing a candlelight vigil for all those affected by the recent devastating earthquakes in Nepal. All students and affiliated centers, groups, and individuals worldwide are invited to conduct their own vigils at the same time as the main event, which will take place at 8 p.m. Nepal time (+5.45GMT) at the Great Stupa of Boudhanath in Kathmandu, at the organization’s mother monastery of Ka-Nying Shedrub Ling, and in all the mountain villages where monks and nuns from the monastery have been delivering aid. As well as offerings of lights and incense, prayers and sadhanas will be recited throughout the night.  

Around the time I first became interested in the Buddha’s path, I was doing a construction internship in the southwest of the United States, living and working with 15 other people in the middle of nowhere. We got to spend a lot of time with each other. One woman on our crew, whom I’ll call Jessie, drove me nuts. In fact, I remember writing in my journal, “She makes me want to gouge my eyes out!” I can’t remember why I felt so agitated, but I still remember Jessie because of it. At the time, I was reading The Art of Happiness by HH the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler.

Pilgrimage is a mysterious thing. It has a very simple outer level that is sheerly pragmatic. One makes a journey to a particular place in a particular timeframe, with all the logistics involved. And yet . . . there is something that makes a pilgrimage different than most journeys or ordinary travel. Somehow a transformation occurs, one similar to that which takes place in committed, long-term meditation practice. One’s outlook changes. The place one looks from is altered somehow; everything is seen differently. This involves a transformation not only in perspective, but in the very clarity with which one sees, with which one acts, and with which one experiences the world.