A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
Imagine, for a moment, that you have died and now have a chance to return to this life. Now what? What would you do differently? This is a way of acknowledging how short and how precious our lives are.
You can memorize all the suttas you want, perform complicated rituals, receive empowerments from great teachers, but it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t find compassion in the heart of your daily life.
All the hardships of training teach you not only that nature can heal but also the importance of humility and surrender and recognizing that we’re part of something much larger. Surrender actually nourishes our sense of belonging.
