This poem is all the more remarkable when you know the story behind it. The Elder Gotamī is the very same KisaGotamī who was at the heart of the mustard seed tragedy. As a young woman she was married into an abusive family, who scorned her for being so skinny (kisa) and for not bearing children. She finally did give birth to a fine healthy son, and was then treated well by her relatives. Alas the child had some sort of terrible accident as a toddler and was killed. This drove Gotamī mad with … [Read more...]
The Nature of Compassion
This article is excerpted from a talk given at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies on July 27, 1994. My colleague Joseph Goldstein and I just returned from teaching in Boulder, Colorado at the Naropa Institute. Naropa was celebrating its twentieth anniversary, and it was also the twentieth anniversary of our beginning to teach in this country. It was a time filled with nostalgia and also a time for a lot of reflection: what have we done over the last twenty years? Have we done what we … [Read more...]