Lion's Roar

Our March online summit, In the Footsteps of Thich Nhat Hanh drew nearly 100,000 viewers. And now we're thrilled to invite you all to our next summit, from October 22 to 28. This historic global event celebrates the life and teachings of one of the w

IT STARTED BEFORE I was born. It began before you were born, too, this turning wheel of racialized consciousness. Its tracks are evident across the face of time and the threads of human connection. Let us propose this is not an intractable condition

I WAS SITTING AT the cluttered desk in my home office teaching an online class on my laptop when a text from my friend Annie popped up on my phone. “Can you give me a call this morning? It’s important,” it said. Annie was a longtime friend, and I exp

ANDREA MILLER: In your new book, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win, you share lessons from high level poker about luck and decision making. Why don’t more people embrace the idea that our lives are greatly dete

ON ITS SURFACE, the term pop star goddess tends to conjure the image of an objectified woman valued primarily for her looks and sexuality who churns out disposable music, is admired by millions for her material success, and is known mainly for her ta

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE FREE? I found myself returning again and again to this question while reading two books out this fall. One is about and one is by Jarvis Jay Masters, a death row inmate who found his path to freedom through Buddhist practice.

HAD SOMEONE TOLD Susan O’Connell, when she started her Zen journey over thirty years ago, that one day the San Francisco Zen Center would be a partner in a retirement community, she would have politely questioned their sanity. And yet today that very

“WHICH WAY TO Seto Gumba?” my taxi driver calls out the window every few minutes. Amid the morning cacophony of honking horns, construction buzz, and the grating of metal shop gates being pushed open for business, we wind our way up the narrow, snaki

VEN. BHIKKHU BODHI unpacks the Buddha’s original mindfulness manual. THE BUDDHA’S MOST DETAILED teaching on the practice of mindfulness is found in the famed Satipatthana Sutta, “The Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness.” The Buddha opens this

MINDFULNESS IS A BASIC CAPABILITY of mind, and it is practiced for many different reasons, both spiritual and secular. Buddhism uses mindfulness in a unique and powerful way—to develop wisdom. This combination of mindfulness and insight is the basic

HOW DO WE NAVIGATE the overall unruliness of life, so filled as it is with urgencies—tasks left undone, friends who need help, health problems, financial pressures, family crises, community crises, world crises? How do we sustain ourselves, our sanit

JOURNALISM IS A TOUGH PROFESSION. At this very minute, there are reporters out there who are risking their lives in war zones to report the news. Meanwhile, my assignment is to eat lunch at one of the best dining establishments on the planet. I screw

Of all the people who have ever lived on our planet, one could argue that no one has been more influential than the person known to us as the Buddha. He was a remarkable individual who discovered valuable truths and spent a long life sharing them sys

In these uncharted days of Covid-19, it seems appropriate to consider the metaphor of the Buddha as physician. As a physician of the human condition, the Buddha provided us with a diagnosis of our suffering (the first noble truth) and an etiology, or

In Sanskrit, the word buddha can mean “awakened,” “expanded,” and “understood.” It was the title bestowed on an itinerant teacher about whom little is known, apart from the teachings that have been attributed to him. The Buddha first appears in the r

With the earth touching gesture (bhumisparsha mudra), also known as the earth witness mudra, the Buddha calls on the earth to witness his enlightenment. By touching the ground, he expresses his deep connection to the earth, where he and his dharma fu