lara simmons

"A violent dragon met a bodhisattva on the road one day. The bodhisattva told the dragon that he should not kill anymore and should instead adopt the Buddhist precepts and care for all life. The bodhisattva inspired the dragon and afterward the dragon became completely nonviolent. But now the children who tended to the animal flocks nearby, seeing that the dragon had become gentle, lost all fear of him. And they began to torment him, stuffing stones and dirt into his mouth, pulling on his tail, and jumping on his head. Soon the dragon stopped eating and became very sick. When the dragon encountered the bodhisattva again, he complained, 'You told me that if I kept the precepts and was compassionate, I would be happy. But now I suffer, and I am not happy at all.' To this the bodhisattva replied, 'My son, if you have compassion, morality, and virtue, you must also have wisdom and intelligence. This is the way to protect yourself. The next time the children make you suff...

  The Great Buddha of Kamakura (Daibutsu) "Ichi-go ichi-e." --from the Japanese meaning “every encounter is but once in a lifetime” Every so often you get a "once in a lifetime" opportunity. Our recent trip to Japan was just such an opportunity. To travel alone with my fifth grader, to a country where he speaks the language and I do not, with his former classmates, many of whom will be off in new directions in the fall, to send him off to be hosted by a family who accepted him (and me) sight unseen, truly was a "once in a lifetime" trip. This week I would like to attempt to share some of the trip with you through words and pictures. This will not be an exhaustive account of all that we saw and experienced, but rather an attempt at capturing the spirit of the trip through a few shared stories. "Ichi-go ichi-e" was a phrase I learned on the plane. I think it might have been in the in-flight magazine. I immediately connected with...

"Only by accepting full responsibility for our own nature – as events and relationships serve to reveal it to us – can we awaken the true compassion we need towards others. Everyone hopes; everyone hurts; everyone needs love and forgiveness. In the end, it's only by being exactly what we are that we can start to see how much we are all the same." --Guy Finley in New Spirit Journal