The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat…

Look at you two, he said. And we did.

A poem about finding dignity and connection in illness and dying.

Master Gotama, I have four sons. At their wives’ order my sons chased me out from my house.

The Buddha gives him a verse to recite in the village council, contrasting his faithless sons to his trusty wooden staff. Ashamed, the sons take back their father.

Over Canada / or two hours of frozen waves I assume is Canada /
I’m surrounded by babies / so many babies…

I raise a finger to a point in the night…

How much our minds live (and live on) in the people around us.

That summer we’d hop fences
and call them gates…

You know how it goes. You love something dearly…

Look at the body with wisdom and realize this. If your house is flooded or burnt to the ground, whatever the threat to it, let it concern only the house. If there’s a flood, don’t let it flood your mind. If there’s a fire, don’t let it burn your heart. Let it be merely the house which is outside of you that is flooded or burned. Now is the time to allow the mind to let go of its attachments.

Ajahn Chah gives an inspiring talk to a dying disciple.

… praised in this life by the astute,
they depart to rejoice in heaven.

The Buddha gives encouragement to a brahmin seeking alms for his parents.

I am only kind to my father
in poems he will never read.

When villages, towns, and cities are burning up, there is sometimes an occasion when the mother finds her son and the son finds his mother.

Perils that tear mothers and children apart.

If they listen to your advice, you should establish them in the four factors of stream-entry.

You should encourage your friends in the Dhamma.

Aśvaghoṣa twice refers to a story in which the ṛṣi Vyāsa was kicked by a prostitute…

Visiting a family with nine factors is worthwhile

Nine factors in how a family should relate to the Saṅgha.

i open the screen door slowly
n wait for Abuela n her red walker
to begin the procession
from the back door out to the street

When the doctor suggested surgery
and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled…

Imagine my first moon
wasn’t a moon at all
but a crescent incision
in my mother…

Each year, Ma collects more and more superstitions

To contend seriously with the problem, you first have to let it in. And when I say “let it in” I mean “drag it towards you, press it down and sit with it.” Sit with it past the point of discomfort and pain and dispair until you can observe it without blinking, until its weight is just another thing about about you. In a way, “letting in” is too passive. What I’m talking about is fitting a hyperobject into your heart without it breaking.

A conversation about hope and despair as the effects of climate change bear down upon us.

When we think about spiritual formation, I think it’s done best when it’s amplified through a community.

A full-throated defense of teaching children (and adults!) the Dharma as a “first language.”

The fishing is good. Ma Be can be proud of his young pupil.

A short film about a tribe of hunters in Vietnam.

I can have more economic opportunity and can therefore cultivate this generosity

The role that remittances play in international development—spiritual as well as economic.

That tree doesn’t need to be more than the tree. A tree just needs to be a tree. But our society always asks us to be more, right? Can’t we just be a human? Can we just be who we are?