How does one find the words to eulogize a true hero: a dear friend, a tireless mentor, a great benefactor, and a true inspiration?

When I did my first Pan-Mass Challenge charity ride back in 2001, my coworker Jeremy-who was doing the AIDS Ride-told me about a group training ride starting at Quad Cycles in Arlington. “It’s run by this guy named ( Read more... )

Since 2009, I’ve oriented my meditation practice around the brahmaviharas, the Buddhist virtues of lovingkindness (metta) and compassion (karuna). I’ve just completed a year of intensive karuna practice and thought I’d do a quick debrief, much as I did last October after twelve months of metta practice.

I certainly found compassion a more ( Read more... )

Back in October 2009, I kicked off a planned year of intensive metta (lovingkindness) meditation practice ( start, finish). Metta is one of the four Brahmaviharas, also known as the Divine Abodes or the Immeasurables. These are four key virtues that are absolutely central to Buddhism.

About halfway through that year of practice, two things happened ( Read more... )

I want to share a brief summary of the year-long intensive metta practice that I just completed. Metta is the Pali term for “loving-kindness”. If you need more of a refresher than that, you should go back and read the post I made last year when I kicked off my metta practice.

So yes, I did a whole year of metta. What did I get out of it?

One of ( Read more... )

Time for a grab bag of Buddhisty observations based on some recent readings, dharma talks, and workshops.

At a recent talk, Ajahn Geoff was asked about the Buddhist concept of Right Effort: specifically, how to cultivate the discipline to perform actions you don’t want to do, but which you know will have positive results. To my surprise, he ( Read more... )