Within the Japanese Buddhist community, this week marks a special Zen Buddhist celebration across Japan called Obon.

Have you experienced times of deep hardship and suffering? It's in those moments that peace can often feel elusive, leaving us asking: can peace and suffering coexist?

Like most of us, you probably find yourself scrambling to catch up to your life. It doesn’t matter if it’s with your job, the kids and all of their activities or even the laundry. There never seems to be enough time in any given day to feel somewhat accomplished. And then I realized the importance of […]

Here’s a great practice to incorporate to bring mindfulness into your daily life. Essentially, it’s “meditation in action.” I like to say that when we meditate on the cushion each day, it’s more of our “formal practice” but that the rubber hits the proverbial road when we are out in the world practicing mindfulness and […]

How can we access love, compassion and wisdom? I always tell my practitioners and clients that the entry into this is already within us. But what about when we aren’t feeling particularly compassionate, wise, or loving? How can we go about accessing these parts of ourselves that seem distant and somehow “out there” and unattainable? […]

Part 4 of 4 If you’ve been following this series over the past three weeks, we’ve been taking a very rudimentary look into the first three of the most basic and most fundamental of all Buddhist teachings: the Four Noble Truths. This fourth post brings us to Buddha’s prescription for how we embark on the […]

Part 3 of 4 In this third part of the Four Noble Truths, we’ll explore the truth of how to cease suffering. It’s in this third Noble Truth that we can find hope! You might remember from the First and Second Noble Truths that we begin to understand that life involves suffering. It’s only then […]

Part 2 of 4 Last week, we discussed the very foundation of Buddhist teachings, the Four Noble Truths (see Part One of this series to get caught up!). We explored the reality that life includes “suffering.” It’s simply part of what it means to be human. In essence, our suffering can only be caused by […]

Part 1 of 4 It's your soul that's hungry, not your body. Many of us are curious as to what Buddhism is all about. In my view, Buddhism is not a religion but rather a way of life.  In this four-part blog series, we'll explore the foundation of Buddhist teaching, the Four Noble Truths. Over […]

One of the greatest gifts we could ever give to our family, friends, co-workers, and even our pets is the gift of presence.  What does that mean? The gift of presence? You know the typical scenario we can find ourselves in: emails galore, text messages that need to be returned, kids, work, and family obligations […]

How many times when we’re feeling a bit “off” does someone ask, “What’s wrong?”. What about instead we ask “What’s good?” and working on noticing what's right? Is it possible for us to begin to notice the actual experiences we're having instead of our thoughts about the experiences? Notice the experience, not our thoughts about […]

You don’t need me to tell you that what is going on around many parts of the world is destructive, chaotic, unkind, and even sinister. All we need to do is turn on the news for five minutes to feel the weight of despair. Disease, war, oppression, discrimination, climate change, violence, intolerance, and unrest. What does […]

Are you feeling stuck, unmotivated and uninspired? Take your ego mind out of the equation! In Buddhism, all of the physical and emotional obstacles can be very powerful teachers.  If we allow ourselves to get caught up in the daily minutiae and stressors in our daily lives, it can almost be impossible for us to […]

For a lot of us, we may not be skilled at entering new or unfamiliar social situations or environments. Someone might invite us to a gathering and even though we say we’d like to get out and meet new people or try new things, we simply can’t seem to bring ourselves to break out of […]

Are you feeling fragmented? Scattered? Sluggish? Are you able to stay in the present moment? I can feel the seasons changing. I sense the onset of a slower, more sluggish time of year descending as the weather changes to fall.  But for some of us, this sense of sluggishness and feeling scattered isn’t merely seasonal. Instead, […]

We are excited to welcome honored Tibetan Buddhist monk the Venerable Zawa Tulku Rinpoche back to Satsang House! In addition to teaching and performing empowerment ceremonies, Rinpoche is also a master of the construction of sand mandalas and ritual arts. Rinpoche will be hand-designing and bringing to life a special mandala during his stay. For […]

There are seven energy centers or chakras in our body where nerve points meet. The third eye chakra, or ajna chakra in Sanskrit, is known as “the seat of intuition.” Translated from Sanskrit, ajna means to “perceive beyond wisdom.” Located in the center of the forehead in the pineal gland, it acts as your center […]

Oftentimes, people come to learn how to meditate because their lives have been overtaken by stress, they can’t focus, they can’t sleep, they feel anxious or depressed. These are wonderful reasons to begin a meditation practice. But meditation is much more than a good feeling. It is the union of body, mind, and spirit. Most […]

Our preconditioned views often distort reality. I’ve been doing a little reading on some of the Shamanic and Toltec traditions recently. In my research, I came across a concept they refer to as “the Smokey Mirror.”  The Smokey Mirror refers to the filter we all have when we view reality. When we see the world […]

I thought I was pretty relaxed, chill, easy-going and relaxed on a normal day-to-day basis. That was until I returned this week from my first weeklong vacation since prior to the pandemic. I was feeling completely drugged by nature's effects. Nature is a restorative drug. I spent six nights whitewater rafting down the Middle Fork […]