tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7412276583563588632024-03-13T15:08:21.104-07:00Fierce DandelionsA blog about the spiritual life and collective liberation. Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.comBlogger881125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-49805754484496652372016-12-26T13:09:00.000-08:002016-12-26T13:09:11.963-08:00The Buddha Taught Rahula: "This is Not Mine, This is Not I, This is Not Myself."Life has a way of swooping in with heat, and drying out the noise that flies from your mouth. Since I left Minnesota, and my home sangha, my Zen practice has become something else. Still Buddha, still Zen, but not really visible as such. I've had a lot of internal knots unwind over the past year and a half. Limiting stories and emotional tangles that have defined me for decades. That unwinding Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-5897602910738606262015-11-17T14:11:00.001-08:002022-08-19T14:27:41.995-07:00The Ups and Downs of the Holiday SeasonToday's article is a guest post from Gregg Krech. Several years ago, I had the opportunity to take a weekend workshop with Gregg on Naikan, which is a powerful practice of self reflection and cultivating gratitude with roots in Jodo Shinshu Buddhist teachings. The basic practice is deceptively simple. You focus on your interactions during the day, and take time to reflect on the answers to each Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-80842334578920153662015-09-16T13:36:00.002-07:002015-09-16T13:36:30.252-07:00Letting Your Opinions Fly Like Birds
We humans tend to cherish our opinions. Sometimes, we'll do anything to either protect them or make them known in the world. It can get so bad that people will destroy relationships and even kill each other over their differences.
It doesn't have to be this way.
"If you wish to see the truth,
then hold no opinions for or against anything."
"Trust in Mind" (Xinxinming), Zen Master Seng Ts'anNathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-42182836593294296742015-08-23T16:45:00.000-07:002016-12-26T12:00:38.476-08:00Buddhist Tensions: the Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong Picking Flowers
If you want to pick flowers, you have to hike.
Climbing up, don't worry about your weary bones.
Pluck the low branches, pull down the high.
Enjoy alike the spent blossoms, the tight buds.
Ho Xuan Huong (1772-1822 / Vietnam)
Vietnamese poet Ho Xuan Huong was a powerfully independent and outspoken woman living at a time when that was very rare. The energy and mastery of her Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-48997083737976315452015-07-21T12:46:00.002-07:002022-08-19T14:28:06.364-07:00Study the Whole Self, Not the Marketed Self Marketing of the self. Aren't we taught to do that pretty early on in life? You gotta stand out or you'll be forgotten, right? You better promote or you will never be successful, right?
I believe there is a double bind around all of this in modern societies. The human tendency to self cherish is the main dish. Humans have been eating it, probably since the beginning of our species. In addition Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-68961022881691705302015-06-23T08:32:00.001-07:002022-08-19T14:28:38.542-07:00Green Zen Today's post comes from my herbal medicine blog at NGTHerbals. Here is an excerpt.
Sometime in the middle of the 8th century, a Zen hermit living in China penned a now famous poem entitled "Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage." It begins with the following lines:
"I've built a grass hut where there's nothing of value.
After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap.
When it was completed, fresh weeds Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-38211737729273522662015-06-19T18:00:00.001-07:002022-08-19T14:28:57.613-07:00On Charleston, Terrorism, and the Future of AmericaNothing short of an extended, ritual purification and reconciliation will do at this point. Removing and burning Confederate flags is only a starting point. We must burn the entire house of white supremacy to the ground. Every last root needs to be dug up, and held high to the sky until the sun of our hearts dries it to a crisp. All the laws, institutions, and national myths that uphold a largelyNathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-25458780776272598722015-05-02T10:48:00.003-07:002023-11-14T14:51:40.973-08:00On Systemic Racism, White American Buddhism, and the #BlackLivesMatter Movement
Unless you've been totally asleep or hiding under a rock, you're probably aware of the unrest in Baltimore over the police murder of Freddie Grey. Odds are that some of you are upset about the property damage that happened during the peak of the protests, and are amongst those calling for peace, just as was the case last fall when protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri.
Here's what I think. Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-19546517850327084132015-04-13T17:19:00.001-07:002015-04-13T17:19:53.677-07:00Mansplaining Away Rape Culture: Waylon Lewis' "Strange" Partial Defense of Yoga Guru Bikram Choudhury
Waylon Lewis of the popular spiritual webzine Elephant Journal has a history of ... ahem ... troubling behavior. In 2011, I wrote a post about racism on EJ, which Waylon sought to defend as humor. The same post and comments section goes into other problematic editorial choices, as well as pointing out how criticism tended to receive a combination of snarky and inflammatory responses from WaylonNathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-91755642354742471572015-04-07T16:23:00.001-07:002022-08-19T14:29:20.014-07:00We Are Becoming Strangers to Each OtherThe other day, I was on a bus heading to work. There was a guy sitting near me with his headphones turned all the way up. Across the aisle, another guy talked loudly into a cell phone about banalities to some other guy he'd never met before. At one point, head phone dude turned to the woman sitting next to him and said, "This is why I got these headphones. For idiots like that," pointing to the Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-21461942813560636152015-03-15T09:55:00.001-07:002022-08-19T14:29:51.869-07:00Yoga Culture and the Biomedical Centric Narrative Having just completed this long response to a Facebook thread about yoga, the use of pharmaceuticals by yoga teachers, alternative medicine, and the problematic nature of "New Agey" responses to health and wellness issues, I decided it was worthy of a blog post. The original post by a yoga teacher who was shocked to learn of two long time yoga teachers that used meds to treat their depression wasNathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-45722495445875098122015-03-14T15:29:00.002-07:002022-08-19T14:30:13.278-07:00The spring breeze is our every breathThe world before my eyes is wan and wasted, just like me.
The earth is decrepit, the sky stormy, all the grass withered.
No spring breeze even at this late date,
Just winter clouds swallowing up my tiny reed hut.
Zen Master Ikkyu, 1394-1481
Many years, we here in Minnesota are still being swallowed up by winter clouds. This year, not so much. All around, the trees are budding. The lingeringNathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-62904323799728868062015-02-17T18:58:00.002-08:002022-08-19T14:30:56.559-07:00Diving into FreedomOne of the great temptations of human existence is to base your life on contingency. That you will actually take the courageous step once all the conditions are absolutely and utterly right for you. When you have the right boss, when you have the right job, when the car payments have been made, when the kids are through college, when you're on your deathbed. When you're dead. It would be Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-27673777836466224712015-02-09T18:39:00.001-08:002022-08-19T14:31:10.318-07:00Notes on the Yoga Industrial ComplexThis article came across my blog feed a few days ago. I read it, found myself nodding in places, and also resonating with some points in the comments section. Then I chose to let it sit, and see if it interested me enough to return to. It did, so here we are.
In 2011-12, I completed a 200 hour yoga teacher training, following a good decade of yoga (and Zen) practice. I knew full well upon Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-83688221725193929282015-01-27T16:57:00.001-08:002022-08-19T14:30:42.847-07:00Brief Meditation on an Increasingly Deranged Planet This has been bubbling up for me today. Noticing how warm this January has been, after record cold last January. Thinking about our ancestors. How they looked to the patterns of the natural world for wisdom. And then a knowing that so few of us do this today, followed by a feeling that even if the majority of us return to these patterns, what if what we are picking up is at least partly deranged?Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-81556926125353876542015-01-20T08:56:00.002-08:002022-08-19T14:31:29.303-07:00The World Inevitably Exposes Our False Identities There is no I and there is no other.
How can there be intimacy or estrangement?
I recommend giving up trying to get there by meditation,
But rather, directly seizing the reality at hand.
The message of the Diamond Sutra is:
Nothing is excluded from our experienced world.
From beginning to end,
It inevitably exposes our false identities.
Layman P'ang (740-808)
This is quite a jolt of a poem, Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-44512425963566158392015-01-05T10:09:00.000-08:002015-01-05T10:09:15.525-08:00The Continued Exoticization of #Asians and #Buddhism in America: On Brad Warner's CNN Interview About #NYPD Officer Liu's Funeraln
The recent funeral of NYPD Officer Wenjian Liu offered, among other things, a clear window into race relations here in the United States. Occurring in the middle of the current police "slow down," the funeral also was used as another opportunity for members of the more conservative wing of the NYPD to protest NYC Mayor DeBlasio's fairly mild reform agenda. With plummeting arrest rates, and no Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-28114863591392538812014-12-03T09:55:00.001-08:002022-08-19T16:02:19.025-07:00Is "Western" Yoga Cultural Appropriation? A Few Notes on the Confounding, Conflicting Efforts to Decolonize YogaBack in 2012, when I finished my yoga teacher training, I had already been practicing asana and meditation (the two most recognizable limbs of the yogic 8 fold path) for over a decade. Unlike many of those in my training class, yoga was a normalized part of my life. Something that had already sunk in enough to change me and also provoke a lot of questioning.
Several of my teacher training Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-76214102977725368902014-11-25T09:24:00.024-08:002023-11-14T14:49:48.996-08:00The Silence of White American Buddhists on Ferguson
"Not terribly long ago in a country that many people misremember, if they knew it at all, a black person was killed in public every four days for often the most mundane of infractions, or rather accusation of infractions – for taking a hog, making boastful remarks, for stealing 75 cents. For the most banal of missteps, the penalty could be an hours-long spectacle of torture and lynching. No Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-89037014039743909372014-11-19T13:59:00.000-08:002014-11-19T14:00:21.232-08:00A Winter Herbal Meditation
Last weekend, we set our clocks back, and early sunsets ensued. This weekend, the temperature has dropped. Way down. Below freezing at night, and barely above during the day. Even though it's only the second week of November, winter has essentially set in.
For plant lovers, this can be a tough time of year, especially for those of us living in Northern climates. Without access to a greenhouseNathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-81891847595534257692014-11-06T09:21:00.001-08:002022-08-19T16:01:56.985-07:00A Buddha Transfigures Transfigure is an interesting word.
to give a new and typically exalted or spiritual appearance to : transform outwardly and usually for the better
In a way, it sounds like another attempt to lie. To deceive. When I saw that definition, an imagine of a friend of mine sitting with a plastic smile on her face during an event she didn't want to attend arose immediately. That smile was about Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-65138682486788804332014-10-24T10:28:00.001-07:002022-08-19T16:03:02.533-07:00Did you hear the one about the Dalai Lama and Lululemon? Seriously, it's no joke. In an era of ever-expanding capitalist reach, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism is teaming up with a corporation well known for its sexism, sizism, and sweatshop labor practices.
Lululemon and the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education are partnering to “promote mindfulness…to foster heart-mind wellbeing in children and youth.”
Heart-mind well-being refers toNathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-90448693116655333522014-10-09T16:28:00.001-07:002022-08-19T16:03:27.945-07:00the basis for the bodhisattva work of non-violent interventionI was on the bus this morning and I saw a woman hurrying across the street in front of us. She was clearly anxious and as she passed the large, wide front bus window, I noticed a ball of tension rising within me. Looking at her struggling, I felt a resistance, a not wanting to "deal" with her appearance in my life.
And it hit me - this was the confused mix of compassion and control I often Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-36904023119191151462014-09-26T09:33:00.002-07:002014-09-26T09:33:54.318-07:00Che Guevara, Buddhism, and Jumping to ConclusionsWhat the hell does Che Guevara, the infamous Cuban revolutionary, have to do with Buddhism? I'm guess it's probably never been on the radar for most of you, and I'm also imagining that the very mention of the name sparks powerful reactions for some of you. Freedom fighter. Compassionate doctor. Communist troublemaker. Armed terrorist. Maybe one or more of these phrase fit how you place him. Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-741227658356358863.post-2104784573356150022014-09-14T10:44:00.001-07:002022-08-19T16:04:59.670-07:00Mainstream American Yoga Avoids Suffering After co-teaching a workshop on yoga and other movement practices in our social movements, I have been watching folks talk online about Yoga Journal and the state of American yoga these days. There's a lot that can be said in this regard, from the continued influence of colonialist narratives, to the heavy commodification of the practice. However, today I'd like to focus on this:
Much of the Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920234350446745482noreply@blogger.com11