04.24.2026 Activate the Antidote A few months ago, despite all that was going on in America vis-à-vis politics and our usual preoccupations with sports and entertainment, it was a group of Buddhist monks that captured the country’s attention. Starting from Texas, the monks of Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center made their way, on foot, through cities and small towns, to Washington, D.C. Not to protest. Not to demand. Their “Walk for Peace” was simply that. In contrast to the greed, anger, and ignorance that plague modern citizenry, they offered the generosity of their presence. Even when face-to-face with those who found their presence challenging or even offensive, they were a model of open-heartedness, wisdom, and calm. It wasn’t mere spectacle that drove countless Americans to roadsides to support the monks. It was something deeper. In a time when so many of us feel we’re drowning in outrage and worn down by bad news, here were our fellow humans, choosing peace. They were offering a glimpse of the antidote for what ails us, in motion. Because that’s what these times demand: an antidote. All too often, greed, aversion, and ignorance — the three poisons to well-being the Buddha identified millennia ago — flourish unchecked in our institutions, our media, and our daily lives. We see greed in systems that prioritize profit over people and planet and in the attention economy that exploits our focus for clicks. We see aversion in our political tribalism, in the way we demonize those who think differently, and in our collective inability to listen across divides. We see ignorance in our fragmented attention spans, in willful denial of climate science and inequality, and in short-term thinking that refuses to take long-range consequences into account. Despite being more “connected” than ever, we find ourselves isolated, anxious, overwhelmed. Division deepens—socially, politically, personally. But as the monks show us, there’s an antidote. For over 2,600 years, Buddhism has offered practical, tested tools for transforming the heart and mind. Not dogma, but medicine. It leads us to cultivate generosity as the counter to greed, loving-kindness and equanimity as the counter to hatred, and wisdom as the counter to ignorance and delusion. But this “antidote” only works if we actually take it. It’s not enough to subscribe to peace as a concept; it’s something we need to practice. Compassion isn’t just a nice idea; it’s a quality in ourselves that we strengthen through use. Wisdom doesn’t arrive through wishing; it develops through our attention and insight. We must actually engage the practice. The challenge is that it takes time, care, and commitment. Your practice may falter. You may feel tired or discouraged. The good news is that these tools are always available. What matters is showing up again, sticking with it. The alternative — living with fear, negativity, exploitation, and division — is unsustainable. Everything we can do to counter it is worth doing. The monks’ trek didn’t fix everything; it didn’t heal all our divisions. But it offered living proof that another way is possible, that we can choose steadiness rather than reactivity, wisdom rather than confusion, compassion rather than contempt. That possibility is at the heart of the May 2026 issue of Lion’s Roar magazine, where we explore how to transform the three poisons into clarity, compassion, and freedom. You and I probably won’t walk across America. But there are many steps we can take. The practices are here. And they’re needed now — individually and collectively. Thank you for reading, and thank you for your practice. —Rod Meade Sperry, Editor, Lion’s Roar Foundation The Antidote to Greed, Hatred & Ignorance Buddhism teaches that the three poisons — greed, hatred, and ignorance — are the root causes of all suffering, yet through practice we can learn to recognize these forces and respond with clarity and care. Rev. Marvin Harada, Karen Maezen Miller, Alisa Dennis, and Pamela Ayo Yetunde explore ways to cultivate inner peace, break free from harmful cycles, and create a more compassionate world. So, how do we overcome our greed, or any of the three poisons? Is there a cure, a remedy, an antidote? Various Buddhist traditions offer differing ways to approach this problem. Some might say you have to suppress or squash those poisons. I find that difficult, if not impossible. For example, if you are on a diet and your weakness is chocolate cake, you may say to yourself, “Don’t eat chocolate cake!” But you end up thinking of chocolate cake all the time. Does it really work to suppress or squash our desires? ADVERTISEMENT Detox Your Mind: 5 Practices to Purify the 3 Poisons Five Buddhist teachers share practices to clear away the poisons that cause suffering and obscure your natural enlightenment. The poisons are symbolized by three animals: rooster (want it — attachment), snake (don’t want it—anger), and pig (no effect on me — don’t care). These metastasize into what are called the eight worldly concerns, ways we divide the world into what’s good for us and what’s not. Traditionally these are described as four pairs — happiness and suffering, fame and insignificance, praise and blame, gain and loss — but in reality the worldly concerns are infinite, because ego divides up everything that way. Of course, this doesn’t mean we seek out suffering or there’s anything wrong with happiness or pleasure. The problem is that we are slaves to our basic self-centered orientation and the poisons and suffering it creates. What is it like to detox our mind of ego and these three poisons? We already know. Pema Chödrön’s Three Methods for Working with Chaos Pema Chödrön describes three ways to use our problems as the path to awakening and joy. How do we work with our resentment when our boss walks into the room and yells at us? How do we reconcile that frustration and humiliation with our longing to be open and compassionate and not to harm ourselves or others? How do we mix our intention to be alert and gentle in meditation with the reality that we sit down and immediately fall asleep?

Michael Pollan Wants You to Rethink Consciousness; Guided Open Awareness Meditation; The Wisdom of Animals

 

04.21.2026 Michael Pollan Wants You to Rethink Consciousness Michael Pollan, whose new book tackles the mystery of consciousness, sits down with Andrea Miller to explore why our usual assumptions about the mind fall short and how new research is reshaping the way we understand awareness itself. READ MORE Guided Open-Awareness Meditation with Noliwe Alexander In this guided open-awareness meditation, Noliwe Alexander invites you to return home to the breath and body. READ MORE The Wisdom of Animals Kate Siber on the wild teachers who show us how to let go and persevere, listen deeply, and begin again. READ MORE ADVERTISEMENT How to Step Out of Your Stories and Into the Present Leslie Gossett shares the power of creating and changing your own story. READ MORE Satipatthana and the Field of Relationship Most practitioners, says nico hase, understand the Buddha’s Satipatthana Sutta as a framework for individual practice. But the instructions are more layered than that. The Buddha directs attention internally, externally, and both internally and externally. That third mode is almost never emphasized in contemporary teaching — and it maps uncannily onto the actual work of relationship. READ MORE Live Event Best Practices for Wholeness Join our April resident teacher, Qalvy Grainzvolt, on Thursday, April 23, at 5:00 p.m. PDT / 8:00 p.m. EDT for a conversation with Rev. Robert Grochowski on spiritual care and pastoral wisdom. SEE DETAILS

 

04.17.2026 Listening as a Way of Being When I started meditating, I believed the only way to experience mindfulness was by sitting crossed-legged and listening to a meditation session for a number of uninterrupted minutes. It wasn’t until I read Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Wherever You Go, There You Are that I realized mindfulness can be achieved through the art of intentional listening. I started noticing my mindfulness growing when I took a simple walk outside without my phone. Listening to the sounds of the natural world, with kids playing, birds singing, and cars passing by, brought me a sense of peace. My mind soothed, and I felt present in my body. It became a habitual practice of mine — anytime I started feeling overwhelmed, and couldn’t get out of my head, I took a no-phone walk. I always felt lighter afterward. But this isn’t the only way I practiced mindful listening. Listening to music has always been a refuge of mine. But with all the different streaming options, I felt overstimulated by the endless choices. So, my favorite way to listen to music is by playing vinyl records, and intentionally listening to an album from start to finish. That’s what mindfulness is: the ability to direct your attention fully to whatever is in front of you. To my surprise, this practice translated into my listening habits with people as well. I found myself having conversations and truly listening to what they were saying, without thinking of what to say next. Without feeling agitated if their opinion differed from mine. I wanted to genuinely understand where they were coming from, why they held this opinion, and what brought them to this conclusion. Instead of defensively responding, I listened, not as a means to an end, but as the end itself. Intentional listening permeates every aspect of my life and helps me experience a deeper facet of living — of being. The three articles below explore mindful listening in its various forms. —Sarah El-Chaar, Editorial Intern How to Get Lost — and Found — in Music Music connects us to the present moment like nothing else, says Miguel Chen. He explains how to really listen to music. Let’s spend some time connecting to our deeper selves by mindfully listening to music. Instead of just throwing music on as background noise and doing a hundred other things, let’s really listen. Find a space without distraction near your stereo. If you have a record collection, bust out the vinyl. If you don’t, don’t worry about it. I’m not a vinyl purist like many of my friends, though I agree it might help in this particular practice. It’s totally not necessary though. Grab your favorite record, or CD, tape, mp3, whatever. Headphones might help for this practice, but again they are not completely necessary. The important thing is to set yourself up to just listen to music and do nothing else. Turn your phone off for a minute. Put away any other distractions. It’s time. ADVERTISEMENT Listening to the Sounds of the Earth with Larry Ward Larry Ward shares the daily meditation he uses every morning and every evening to ground himself with the planet. While I am waiting for the sun, I practice listening to the sounds of the planet — the birds, the movement of prairie dogs, cars on the road, trucks and buses, the wind, the hawk talking, the magpies chattering — the silence in between and underneath all those things. Every morning I just take 10 or 15 minutes to ground myself on the planet, with the planet. Then I simply notice what I notice. I’m often delightfully surprised by the sounds of new birds with new songs, new beauty. My sensory experience of being an earthling is affirmed. Listening Deeply for Peace Peace will only become a reality, says Thich Nhat Hanh, when world leaders come to negotiations with the ability to hear the suffering at the root of all conflicts. The secret of creating peace is that when you listen to another person you have only one purpose: to offer him an opportunity to empty his heart. If you are able to keep that awareness and compassion alive in you, then you can sit for one hour and listen even if the other person’s speech contains a lot of wrong perceptions, condemnations and bitterness. You can continue to listen because you are already protected by the nectar of compassion in your own heart. If you do not practice mindful breathing in order to keep that compassion alive, however, you can lose your own peace. Irritation and anger will come up, and the other person will notice and will not be able to continue. Keeping your awareness keeps you safe.