“Pilgrimages are undertaken because people want to move beyond their normal, mundane life,” says Virginia Raguin, a professor at the College of the Holy Cross. Raguin is also the curator of a traveling exhibit on pilgrimages in Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. More →

November 4, 2011

Monks from the Dalai Lama’s private monastery in India spent five days building a sand mandala at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City. The mandala is a symbolic structure that represents a Buddha’s dwelling. It is said to bring peace and harmony to the area where it is being made. Karen Humphries Sallick, who organized the monks’ tour, explains. More →

July 8, 2011

“It’s a spectacular opportunity for cross-culture associations that are peace-based, that are based in the holiness of this land,” says Steve Lozar, a council leader of the Salish Tribe in Montana. More →

June 17, 2011

The Earthquake Thunder Fish, Yosuke Ueno Since its “opening” in 1854 by U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perry, Japan often has been defined in the West by a single, simple image. Sometimes that image has been one of exotic, romantic tradition … More →

March 18, 2011

The New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care is training chaplains, caregivers, and health care professionals in how to listen to patients and lighten the burden of their suffering. More →

November 12, 2010

“We can open up the question of financial incentives” for organ donations “without worrying about undue coercive pressures.” More →

August 20, 2010

“As the mind becomes a little more quiet the sacredness of everything, within and without, becomes clear,” says Norman Fischer, who has been teaching meditation for more than thirty years. More →

June 25, 2010

“There’s no such thing as a hermetically sealed religion or culture. We human beings have been talking to each other since the beginning, and every time we talk to each other we change each other.”
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June 25, 2010

“The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them,” said artist Mark Rothko. More →

June 17, 2010

Engaged Buddhism means “you must confront social suffering,” says Thai scholar and activist Sulak Sivaraksa, “and people suffer now because of the environment.” More →

January 15, 2010