Do be a do bee; Don’t be a don’t bee.

Do be a do bee; Don’t be a don’t bee.

I am contemplating the Buddhist paramita of discipline this month. Another facet of meaning of the word in this context is ethics and morality. Traditionally, there are three categories of ethics: refraining from negative actionsdoing what is positivehelping others...
Basic Discipline

Basic Discipline

The Buddhist paramitas are those actions that result in character qualities associated with enlightened beings. As I learned it, the word means to cross over to the other side. On that side is sanity and wisdom. The six paramitas are generosity, discipline, patience,...
what do you have to give?

what do you have to give?

A speaker at a conference I attended advised people to give people anything they asked for a day and watch what happened inside and out. He was encouraging people to play around with the idea of generosity. Generosity is one of the Buddhist paramitas. The way I...
What attitudes and actions support you?

What attitudes and actions support you?

When I’m feeling uncertain, I reach for structure. (Twenty years ago, in the days immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I cleaned my house. I realized after the fact that I was imposing order where I could on a disordered world.) Recent health challenges...
Forgiveness along the way

Forgiveness along the way

Each time I settle down to write about forgiveness, I realize that I am lucky enough not to have been attacked or damaged in any real way. So the forgiveness I write of here is the petty forgiveness of a privileged life. This is not to imply that small injuries don’t...