It is often said in Chan literature that there are 84,000 doors to the practice and 84,000 obstructions. The door that resonates with my practice are the teachings of Master Lin-Chi. “Teachings” is a misnomer, however, as there is nothing to teach and no one to learn. 

A growing community of Mormons in Salt Lake City, in the US sate of Utah, known as the Lower Lights Sangha, is practicing Buddhist mindfulness to deepen their spiritual lives. Meditation teacher Thomas McConkie,  an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, guides the group through their mindfulness exercises.

The far-reaching benefits of meditation and mindfulness, as long recognized by many spiritual traditions, are gaining increasing traction in the West, both within and outside the Buddhist world. Perhaps nowhere is this postivie impact being more keenly felt, and with the greatest potential to improve the future, than at the growing number of schools that are incorporating these practices into their daily curriculums.

The beginning of the holiday season and the end of the school year means there are kids at home all day. It means dealing with moments of boredom and mayhem, and having friends over to play. Recently, the sangha children were playing water tag around the house, running happy and wild in the sun, and there was a special feeling of camaraderie between them. There had been no teasing or conflict all afternoon, just a steady stream of snacks and fun.

New research conducted at Britain’s University of Sussex has shown that a single session of just seven minutes of loving-kindness meditation—the Buddhist practice of cultivating unconditional love and compassion for oneself and other sentient beings—is effective at reducing racial prejudice in the practitioner.

New York City’s Rubin Museum of Art will host a series of sessions by Buddhist author Sharon Salzberg and other teachers from the New York Insight Meditation Center in August and September to teach mindfulness and discuss the relationship between meditation and art.

A few years ago I traveled to Nepal to hike in the Himalayas, learn a bit more about myself and about the world from the Buddhist spiritual teachers.

At 9,000 feet in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, surrounded by long-haired hippies chanting, praying, singing, smoking marijuana, ringing bells, and waving vajras, I was born. Although my parents were not Buddhist in the traditional sense of having formally committed to the sources of Refuge as the supreme truth, they gave me the name Dorje. Dorje as a name is highly symbolic, with many levels of meaning in the Tibetan language. It is Tibetan for the word vajra, or the thunderbolt symbol held by the Hindu god Indra.

Over the last two months, America has struggled with its identity concerning racial and religious prejudice, highlighted by a national dialogue over the killings of several unarmed ethnic minorities by police officers. Currently, in relation to the Charlie Hebdo shootings, the world is looking at how society and the individuals within it bring prejudices into their relationships. Much light has been shed in the last decade on the benefits of Buddhist-derived mindfulness meditation and its application in a wide range of mental and physical health conditions. In a timely fashion, on 24 November 2014 researchers at Central Michigan University released the findings of a study on the effects of mindfulness meditation on preconceived out-group bias.

March 21 -- What miracle product gives you happiness, compassion, and perhaps more surprisingly, toned abs, a fulfilling sex life, and a healthy bank balance? The answer will amaze you. It's the same product that connects the Dalai Lama and Rupert Murdoch; meditation.