Blog

Every year we celebrate Tibetan New Year (Losar). Today, February 24th, begins the year of the iron mouse. May this New Year usher in robust health and boundless joy!

I’ve been reflecting a lot lately about how crucial it is to identify where we have “agency” in our lives, and why we sometimes forfeit our agency either knowingly or unknowingly to make choices that don’t support our own or other’s wellbeing. By “agency” I am referring to our ability to make sane and conscious choices that allow us to bring our actions together with our intention to lead a sane and healthy life.

This entire book hinges on the word faith. You may assume that you know what that means. You may think that it has a single, clear definition. But words are not definitive structures: one word can have limitless—even opposing—meanings. Language morphs over time and words take on different meanings depending on their contexts. You’ll likely find as many definitions of faith as there are people to define it. Try asking around.

It's National Pie Day and I have just the right thing to share. A few years ago a dear friend of mine, knowing about my deep interest in the teachings on pratityasamutpada, shared a Carl Sagan quote with me about pie that would prove to be so thought-provoking it served as the inspiration for one of the chapters in my upcoming book, The Logic of Faith. 

This month I want to share something personal with you that took place in my life at the end of last year: the death of my beloved father. At first I wondered how this topic would go over as a New Year’s blog...but there is something so poignant and relevant about loss for everyone.

You might say that you have always been searching for grace. Whether or not we make a conscious choice to follow a lineage of wisdom or not, it has always been our natural inclination to bend toward wellbeing. Our search expresses itself the moment we are born into life and instinctively cry out to suckle and find comfort in our mother’s arms. From there, we have so much to learn, which requires lots of playful experimentation.

This month I want to share with you something remarkable that has been going on in my life. Some years back Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, at the request of Anam Thubten Rinpoche, gave me the transmission of Jigme Lingpa’s Chod practice, called the “Sound of the Dakini’s Laughter.”

Doesn’t it seem that something positive always emerges from a broken heart? A tender heart has unlimited “give” while a brittle or contracted heart—a heart focused solely on me and mine—has no choice but to break. If we allow our heart to continuously break as a practice, we will make space for the infinite suffering and beauty of our world, excluding no one. So I say: let it break.

“Myths are not lies...nor are they detached stories. They are imaginative patterns, networks of powerful symbols that suggest particular ways of interpreting the world. They shape its meaning.”
- Mary Midgey, Myths We Live By

The way we respond to the stream of momentary experiences we call “our life” determines our move toward our habitual search for security or toward awakening. The Buddhist tradition has many ways of explaining our tendencies to shrink from experience, but all these explanations have one thing in common: pain and suffering proliferate when we can’t stay present with what we encounter.