Discernment exists in many forms. For anyone who has ever considered becoming a lay person at your church or congregation, thinking about joining the cloistered life, in love with the Benedicts and the silent halls of their monasteries, or want to become ordained there is a level of concern that comes up. We often use different aspects of […]
I look back in the past fifty or sixty years, when kink was really starting to be documented for the Mainstream Average Joe, and there is a stunning amount of growth in different fetishes and kinks. Even the most vanilla person uses the word “fetish” now in a joking way. A few years ago, when I was […]
The meditation practice, and organization that I utilize, is openly GLBT friendly. This is, and has been, a very important reason on why I usually feel comfortable doing my meditation practice at that particular shrine. I have had my up-down moments, last year I went to a GLBT retreat weekend at a meditation center close […]
Wednesday was a really big day in the world. A good chunk of the world, non-Catholics and Catholics alike, stopped to see who the new pope was. This has been a popular topic among both religious and spiritual beings and atheists; I mean who knew a pope could retire, and although the pope’s jurisdiction only […]
A good friend of mine was talking to me earlier this week about prayer and meditation I will be honest that Buddhism is not my one and only spiritual practice. I use Buddhism as part of the spiritual outlook but I don’t use it 24/7 as the one and only way to view the world. […]
Knitting is as useful as a reminder that humbleness is as important as skill. Last fall I decided to go on a meditation retreat. I have some anxiety, and I have knit to calm my nerves, and took my knitting with me. This seemed like a simple idea, I would have something to go do […]
In Buddhism there is this concept of Dharma which is the law of nature and of suffering. I was at a meditation retreat this past fall about confidence and compassion when one of the teachers of the group made a joke that we weren’t just talking about clear dharma that weekend we were also talking […]
I decided to meditate before a play session earlier this month. I had a busy morning. I had some spiritual meetings to attend before I came back to being present for a play session, and since I was hyper-focused on everything going on, short of what I really should have been focusing on, I decided […]
One of the paramitas, which really bridges Buddhism and Kink together smoothly, is a continuous self-conflict for me. Discipline, needed in almost any long-term commitment be it relationships or spirituality, has a general definition that can either be taken one of two ways. During my last training course when there was time for Q&A, I dropped a […]
I recently had the experience of becoming friends with my fear. Fear can exist in many ways and in Buddhism, it is one of the key beliefs of meditation, and throughout your day, you have to sit with it. Not push it away, not try to block it out, but acknowledge that thoughts exist and […]