by Bo Lozoff on May 01, 2011
Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven!
- Jesus
There is a popular notion of “prosperity consciousness” going around which I’m sure has helped some people to stop limiting themselves. It’s not good to feel always lacking, as if there isn’t enough to go around. There is certainly an abundance of [...]
by Bo Lozoff on Apr 15, 2011
Dear Family,
We live in a great time; we’ve come so far. Because of transportation, mass communication, the world is becoming a single village. Most of us have access to the sacred teachings of basically any tradition, any religion that has ever existed. We can use that access, not to scatter ourselves, but to see “My [...]
by Bo Lozoff on Mar 15, 2011
Angulimala was a notorious bandit who lived at the time of the Buddha. Once he stalked the Buddha on a trail through the forest with the intention of robbing or killing him. The Buddha walked along slowly, peacefully, just a short distance ahead of Angulimala. But Angulimala could not overtake him. The Buddha continued at [...]
by Bo Lozoff on Mar 01, 2011
On June 17th, 1744, the commissioners from Maryland and Virginia negotiated a treaty with the Indians of the Six Nations at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The Indians were invited to send their boys to William and Mary College. The next day they declined the offer as follows:
We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught [...]
by Bo Lozoff on Feb 15, 2011
Terry Dobson, an American martial arts master and former U.S. Marine, was a big, powerful man who learned nonviolence by studying the Japanese discipline of Aikido, which means “Way of Harmony.” In Aikido, the emphasis is on restoring peace rather than winning a battle. Terry told many stories to illustrate that the “enemy” is usually [...]
by Bo Lozoff on Feb 01, 2011
Go ahead, light your candles and burn your incense and ring your bells and call out to God, but watch out, because God will come, and He will put you on His Anvil and fire up His Forge and beat you and beat you until He turns brass into Pure Gold.
- paraphrased from Saint Keshavadas
Dear [...]
by Bo Lozoff on Jan 15, 2011
A Simple Path, a book about Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity, describes some of the prayers they use in their spiritual practice. One especially caught my eye, because it seems to be specifically geared to letting go of our whole sense of the personal self.
I urge you to spend time with this prayer, [...]
by Bo Lozoff on Jan 01, 2011
I looked at the jail that secluded me from men and it was no longer by its high wall that I was imprisoned; no, it was God who surrounded me. I walked under the branches of the tree in front of my cell but it was not the tree, I knew it was God. It [...]
by Bo Lozoff on Dec 15, 2010
Jesus in word and deed was almost violent in his call for death, for denial, for stripping, for abandoning, for letting go, for leaving all, for the journey up by going down. . . . This whole dialogue runs deep in us and all things. One could say, with complete honesty, that life is really no [...]