Dharma in Action

The real meaning of Dharma practice is to transform our minds. The rubber meets the road when we get off the cushion and live our practice in daily life.

All Posts in Dharma in Action

A hand-made blue blanket with a white lotus in the center.
Prison Dharma

Dharma artwork by incarcerated people

People in prison express their creativity and devotion to the Dharma through beautiful works of…

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Jon Owen, reading a book at the Abbey.
On Refuge and Bodhicitta

A prayer for refuge to a light within

Faced with the drawbacks of worldliness, a student aspires always to remember where to turn.

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Blue sky behind prison razor wire.
Prison Poetry

Think about it

If you are incarcerated, are you necessarily in a prison?

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Venerable Chodron standing with inmates at SCCC prison in Licking, Missouri.
Prison Dharma

Photos with incarcerated people

Venerable Chodron has visited approximately 30 prisons in the US and several in Asia and…

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Cultivating Compassion

Moving toward compassion

The obstacles that we experience when cultivating compassion and how to overcome them.

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Transparent goldent Buddha.
Prison Poetry

Try again

Remembering the patience and determination of the Buddha during our own struggle for awakening.

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A man and woman sitting on a bench, arguing.
Cultivating Healthy Relationships

Trouble with relationships

How to work with negative emotions in relationships and when working with other people, cultivating…

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Placeholder Image
Living with an Open Heart

Healing with love and compassion

Counteracting the self-centered, self-grasping mind and confronting the emotional problems of this life through love…

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Winter retreatant, Isaac, cleaning snow from a walkway.
On Working with Afflictions

To choose or not to choose

A retreat helps a student to see that he has the freedom to choose to…

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Family and Friends

Raising a moral child

How to encourage morality in children and adults, and how to offer both praise and…

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Shadow of a Hiker
Ethics in the Modern World

A long obedience

Exodus isn't just about liberation from slavery, it's also about rebinding. Just laws, or taking…

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