Blog

Dear Common Ground Friends, Wishing everyone tender ease at this time of year. For those celebrating the holidays may your time with family and friends be wholesome and joyful. It seems an appropriate time to reflect on how our hearts relate to both the...

Dear Common Ground Friends, Contemplation has long had an important role in spiritual practice. We’re encouraged to bring a wise and loving attention to our experience, gently investigating the nature of what's happening in each moment with a sense of ca...

Dear Common Ground Friends, In our world animated by so much greed and hate, history teaches us that power often does what power can get away with doing, regardless of the harm caused. Now we see the tremendous suffering that follows from those with power...

Dear Common Ground Friends, Thanksgiving arrives each year as a complicated invitation to grow our capacity to be right in the middle of life on life's terms. We may gather with our friends and family to express gratitude, to share meals and to rest and ...

Dear Common Ground Friends, For many of us these are disturbing times. I have experienced real fear and heartbreak due to the violence and mistreatment being acted out in our community and our wider world. I feel at times, both the impulse to hide and the...

Dear Common Ground Friends, I imagine the Buddha had a nuanced understanding of power and likely recognized power as neither inherently good nor bad. Power is something we are all familiar with. In fact, we use power every day in small and big ways… power...

Dear Common Ground Friends, As much as the internet has made aspects of our lives more convenient, I am guessing that I am not alone in finding that in many ways we have become addicted and dependent on media in ways that are not essential to fulfilling o...

Dear Common Ground Friends, I feel a great debt of gratitude to the people of Burma or Myanmar and more generally the Buddhist culture of Southeast Asia for being such faithful stewards of the Buddha’s teachings for so many centuries. We are the direct be...

Dear Common Ground Friends, The Buddha’s teachings on wise view can be a gift when our lives feel challenging or overwhelming. Wise view offers an opportunity to know that even in challenging moments, we are not broken, not beyond repair, and not separat...

Dear Common Ground Friends, I am out at Common Ground Retreat Center in Western Wisconsin leading a retreat and renewing my appreciation for this important human ritual of retreating. I am always impressed and grateful that folks are willing to voluntari...