LSD Articles

"Life in Buddha Standard Time" The Huffington Post, June 4, 2011 The fourteenth-century Christian theologian and mystic, Meister Eckhart, said: To reach the now, where one is present to oneself and to God therein, I say to you, be awake.” It's so simple that it's complicated. People often ask me: How can I make time for meditation, yoga, prayer, and retreats when there is no time? Should I get up earlier? Stay up later? Work faster or less? What about my family and relationships? How do I create spiritual space for myself? But there’s an underlying question: How can I give anything...

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Letting Go While Leaving Room For Hope September 2005 By Lama Surya Das Dzogchen Center Austin, Texas     I remember wading through thigh-high monsoon flooded streets in Chang Mai, northern Thailand, when I lived in Asia during the Seventies, and finally seeking asylum at a hotel above the floodline, along with other tourists and foreign journalists. Having an American passport helped, of course. Yet this week I was unprepared for the searing images of carnage and chaos in a great city in our own rich, proud and powerful country, even though my assistant has five...

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The Backyard Bodhisattva A car mechanic's over-the-top generosity taught Lama Surya Das that bodhisattvas come in all guises. By Lama Surya Das Excerpted from "Buddha Is As Buddha Does; The Ten Original Practices for Enlightened Living," (HarperSanFrancisco, 2007). Reprinted with permission. "The bodhisattva is like the mightiest of warriors but his enemies are not common foes of flesh and bone. His fight is with the inner delusions, the afflictions of selfishness and ego-grasping. . . . He is the real hero, calmly facing any hardship in order to bring peace, happiness, and liberation...

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Published in The Dragon magazine- July 2006   SPONTANEOUS MEDITATION: HIS HOLINESS’ 2006 VISIT TO DZOGCHEN CENTER IN BOSTON AND NEW YORK   by Lama Surya Das   His Holiness the Twelfth Gyalwang Drukpa flew into Boston on Sunday, April 30, from Mexico City, following upon weeks of teaching in Peru and Mexico. What a joy it was to meet him and his two attendant monks, Ngawang Zangpo and Khenrab, at Logan airport, and drive them to my home in Cambridge. It had been eighteen months since I last saw His Holiness at our retreat center Dzogchen Osel Ling outside Austin,...

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Buddha’s Inner Science of Mind and The Joy of Awakening   By Lama Surya Das Dzogchen Center     For “Science of Mind” mag., March 2004                 “The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of al things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description…. If there is any religion...

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Should Humanity Have Been Created? This has long been a debate among learned Jews. In fact, long ago in the holy land, several centuries after Jesus’ time, the most learned rabbis of the two rival schools of philosophy, Hillel and Shammai, met  together to discuss this critical issue. After two years of intense debate, they decided by majority vote--in true Jew fashion, pessimistic realists to the end, that…It would’ve been better if it hadn’t ever happened! But then, again true to Jewish form, they decided that given the obvious fact that we have been created—shit happens!—we must...

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"The Higher Power is fine, as far as that term and the common usage of it goes. However, mostly its a placeholder for something beyond ourselves that we long for but don't understand very well. Personally speaking, I'm far more interested in cultivating the Common Power to be found within each and every one of us, the recognition of which transforms all of our lives and relationships. Twelve Step folks and others of Buddhist or agnostic and atheist persuasion say that in their attempt to participate in their programs,  they often founder on the shoals of talk about God and the Higher Power, which...

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I like someone who is young and fresh, represents diversity and the new rather than the Old Guard; is innocent of the cynical cronyism and partisanship of the nation’s capitals; and might be able to carry off true change-- and change for the better, for they are still growing and evolving themselves. Who can say: "Out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope; and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond that we can.” Let’s say a resounding yes to life. Many want to change, or at least say they do; but who is ready, willing...

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As the holydays start coming upon us, fast and furious, I like to turn back to spiritual readings and teachings to refresh and remind me what it's all about. Of course, having been called the 'Ocean of Questions,' I like to start with questions and then live mindfully into them. So first my HolyDay questions: What is this really all about? Why are we here? What are we doing? And what is important and really matters? Aren't these all part of life's big questions, anyway? Let's start with Thanksgiving. It seems it's the perfect kick off for the HolyDays at the end of the calendar year. Thanks...

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I have been asking people around the country about what is their big life question. Many say in return, “What do you mean?” I say—“You know, the big questions of life and death, the afterlife, God, suffering, meaning and purpose, truth, happiness, love.” And they inevitably say, “Oh, those big questions.” For everyone is familiar with them. We are all faced with these questions throughout life, as well as with the many little quandries of daily life. How well and to what degree we attend to them varies from person to person and from decade to decade. I myself feel well endowed with...

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