Michael Harding is one of our best-known writers; author of 15 plays, three novels, and a regular column for The Irish Times. He has won a number of awards for his work, both as a writer and as an actor. His most recent book is Staring at Lakes, an unflinchingly candid account of a prolonged period of debilitating physical illness and depression which afflicted him in the winter of 2010 and well into the following year. But the book is not just a memoir of this illness; Harding writes with humour and honesty of his entire life’s path; his time as a priest, his marriage to sculptor Cathy Carman, remarkable encounters with Buddhist monks and ordinary Irish country-people, his inner restlessness, and his eventual finding of peace through acceptance of love and the importance of now.

I Adapt your daily life so as to be conducive to practising mindfulness of the breathing Lead an uncomplicated life — reduce or eliminate unnecessary activities such as eating, working, traveling, and social functions. Don’t worry about losing friends; some old friends may move away, but you will gain new good friends (kalyanamitta).

A statue of a Bodhisattva from the 2nd Century will star at Sotheby's NY in September.

Since we are subject to birth, old age, sickness, death, and we suffer from dissatisfaction and unhappiness, we are sick people. The Buddha is compared to an experienced and skilful physician, and the Dhamma is compared with the proper medicine; but however efficient the physician may be, and however wonderful the medicine may be, we cannot be cured unless and until we ourselves actually take the medicine. It would seem that many of us are in need of some medicine to cure us of our misunderstanding of one another, our impatience, irritability, lack of sympathy and metta.

When we started putting this list together it seemed like it was going to be nothing more than a shallow, trivial — although perhaps welcome — distraction from all the news about disastrous wars and sordid political scandals, but as we dug deeper into the web we found that we felt at times inspired by reading about the practice of famous Buddhists, some of whom have had their trials. We hope that you too will be inspired — and entertained — by Wildmind’s Top Ten List of Celebrity Buddhists.

The picture above is claimed to be of Alvaro Munera, a Colombian bullfighter who could not continue on slaughtering bulls. The picture, which has been burning up Tumblr today, is accompanied by this quote:

Rechard Gere, an Oscar-winning star, and best known for his performance in Pretty Woman, Runaway bride, and an Officer and a Gentleman, is today considered a serious Buddhist practitioner.

Once upon a time, the King of Benares went on a picnic in the forest. The beautiful flowers and trees and fruits made him very happy. As he was enjoying their beauty, he slowly went deeper and deeper into the forest. Before long, he became separated from his companions and realized that he was all alone.

(NaturalNews) - Perhaps the biggest impediment regarding the acceptance of alternative medicine in the United States is the fact that Americans have been conditioned to believe that only traditional methods of healthcare are effective and acceptable.