by Celina Neilson
An essay about mindfulness and career discovery.
by Alex Tzelnic
My piece is about the many manifestations of the self, and how practice sheds light on what it means to be me; a young practitioner in the 21st century.
by Nathan Kross
This poem was written after spending a few weeks at a Catholic monastery in Indiana. I’ve always meditated on the intersection between Christianity and Buddhism, and know that living a compassionate, truth-loving life exceeds all boundaries. This is a story about what I experienced at the monastery — the mystery, the deep silence, and the love.
by Andy Acker
An auto-biographical anecdote of what happened after my first taste of intensive Zen practice collided with my 23-year old male libido. Written in December 2003 and formerly published at
www.the-manifest.org: a now-defunct e-zine of integral culture.
by Marnix van Rossum
My main point in text is about doing what is available and how to find release from negativity.
by Ven. William Van Gordon
These are 4 very short poems that I wrote whilst undertaking a period of solitary meditation retreat. They therefore reflect personal experiences and insights that arose in respect of practices/concepts such as impermenence, interconnectedness, patience and breaking the bonds of ego for example.
by Nyaniko Anagarika
This is an autobiographical essay of how I came to the Dharma, and how the path has been one of continually finding balance through the ups and downs of striving, ill health, love, and work in the world.
by Sarah Schneider
This essay is about how my 12 years of training conspired to override my survival instinct in a fire. It reveals the tension between the context of the teachings and the personal narrative of how we make choices.
by Emily Horn
A personal essay chronicling my life as I began to practice and transform my own heart. It covers my time on retreats, working at Naropa, and love for Buddhist Geeks.
by Bill B
A short piece on my misunderstanding of transcendence in my life and practice.
by Katherine Roubos
My over-achiever perfectionist tendencies display themselves to comic effect on retreat.
by Justin Luu
This is about my short stay at the Shwe OO Min Dhamma Sukha Tawya Meditation Center in Burma last year where I practiced Vipassana under the guidance of Ashin Tejaniya. I write about my experience living in the monastery, confronting the challenges in my own practice and what I have come to learn from them.
by Marco Seiryu Wilkinson
This essay is about my struggles as a farmer and how oryoki practice (Zen meal practice) informs how to understand ”failure” out in the fields as a kind of gift, that no effort is ever truly lost.
by Peter Fernando
A story about my experience of living in a Buddhist Monastery in my early twenties, and gradually having all my lofty ideals of being ’spiritual’ blown apart by the reality of my heart pain, and the afflictive tendencies of self-disparagement and alienation.
by Katherine Rand
Snapshot and reflection of a life and practice unfolding. Read about, in brief: lifelong inquiry and contemplation, time in the trenches, back to the marketplace, making meaning, and finally, my aspiration for the next generation. Warning: some opinions (ditthi) herein.
by Chris W.
A reflection on crashing a Thich Nhat Hanh retreat when I was three days clean and sober.
by Daniel Goldsmith
For this contest, I wanted to describe what a deep impact the dharma has made in my life. The more I tried to write about this, however, the more I realized just how I “my” path was interwoven with my partner’s. I started writing about our relationship from an objective perspective, but the words only felt right when I put them in the form of a letter to her. Thus, my work is a “dharma love letter” of sorts, describing the ways she has inspired me to put the dharma into practice.
by Katherine Roubos
Observations and experiences from my first formal meditation experience. I didn’t realize that I’d signed up for the equivalent of a marathon in the world of beginners meditation: The week-long silent retreat.
by Nyaniko Anagarika
This is an autobiographical essay of how I came to the Dharma, and how the path has been one of continually finding balance through the ups and downs of striving, ill health, love, and work in the world.
by Kelly Kantner
A personal reflection on how I am navigating the path of motherhood as a Zen practitioner, and the path of Zen as a mother.
