Emotional Needs of the Animals We Care For An Excerpt from Kindness for All Creatures Core Needs What do animals need? Basics include food, water, shelter, rest, safety from undue fear and harm, opportunities for play, company, solitude, territory (a nest), enrichment (stimulation), toys and activities, and healthy interactions. Most pets need praise and positive feedback.

"It's My Karma" An Excerpt from Choosing Compassion by Anam Thubten Rinpoche One of the strongest impulses we all have is our desire to experience transcendence. When we tap into transcendence we rise above all of our concerns. We are no longer dominated by fear and we are no longer caught up in the web

Insightful Reflections Excerpts from Awaken Every Day 65 Keeping Our Hearts Open Let’s strive to cultivate love and compassion for other living beings regardless of whether they’re receptive to our help and advice. When we see someone going down the wrong path and there isn’t much we can do because they don’t want our advice,

Following the Green Practice Path An Excerpt from Green Buddhism Understanding Our Impact Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, cancelling clean-water regulations, stalling on clean-energy projects—the recent years under a climate-change-denying political administration have been very discouraging, indeed. Day after day, we seem to hear only about backward steps and policy losses on environmental issues. The

The Secret Is Nonattachment Getting Hooked In Tibetan there is a word that points to the root cause of aggression, the root cause also of craving. It points to a familiar experience that is at the root of all conflict, all cruelty, oppression, and greed. This word is shenpa. The usual translation is “attachment,” but

In the world of religion, some things stay the same, while many are constantly adapting to meet our new world of the internet and cell phones, scientific discovery, increasing awareness of gender and race dynamics, multiculturalism, the numbers of people identifying their religion as “none” or “spiritual but not religious,” and so much more. We

Rejecting the Idea of Gender Roles The Prison of Gender Roles What “it” has a greater hold on people’s imaginations or limits them more than ideas about what biological sex must mean, what I call “the prison of gender roles”? Almost all conventional people—often called “ordinary worldlings” in Buddhist texts—as well as many Buddhists hold

The Buddhist, Black Experience Originally published in 2014 What I propose is a spiritual revolution. —His Holiness the Dalai Lama The State of Black America In his 1970 work, Buddhist Ethics, Hammalawa Saddhatissa writes in the preface, “Strictly speaking, Buddhism is not a religion in the generally accepted sense of the word, and it would

11 Books for Working with Difficult Emotions With the rise of global disasters, political conflict, and social unrest, alongside increased distractions that negatively effect us mentally and emotionally, it's difficult to find peace inside and out. Many of our books are geared toward learning how to reframe our mind and heart to work with unsettling

Michael Stone (1974–2017) was a prominent and innovative Buddhist teacher, yogi, psychotherapist, and author. He was the founder and director of the Centre of Gravity Sangha, a community of yoga and Buddhist practitioners based in Toronto, and he taught widely and had a large international following. For more information visit michaelstoneteaching.com. In his own words...