February 21, 2026 As They Are When you are with your childrenbe one with them.Let every part of your body relaxand become as supple as your child’sAllow all expectations and anxieties to melt awayso that you can see clearlyLove them as they areIn this very moment,without needing to change a thing When their lives are filled with troubleallow events to unfoldwithout pushing or straining, and you will understand clearlywhat your role should be.   You nourish them without possessing themYou guide them without controlling themYou help them without worrying The Parent’s Tao Te Ching, by William Martin Dear Friends, Happy Lunar New Year!  Recently, Tricycle magazine invited me to write a short reflection on what I am practicing. As a divorced mother of a teenage son, working full-time and teaching meditation on weekends, I have very little time for formal sitting. My mantra is “small moments, many times.” Some days I find fifteen quiet minutes on the cushion or lying on the bed. Most days, I find brief moments of awareness scattered throughout the day. As …

October 16, 2025 “Use the heart of leaving the world to do the work of entering the world.”  A Chinese saying Dear Friends, How are you? The foliage is turning gloriously in upstate NY the last two weekends.  One of weekends I attended a retreat called “Sacred Bridge: Uniting the Heart of the Amazon and the Peaks of the Himalayas” at Menla.  It brought together the leaders of the Amazonian tribe Yawanawá and members of the Tibetan community to share what it means to preserve and protect the rich heritage of indigenous cultures in today’s world.  It gave me hope and optimism as I listened to the young generation discuss activism and how they carry their culture forward.  I am still processing this experience and will share more when I can articulate it in words.  Since writing last month about cultivating creativity through curiosity, I have been sitting with the a quote by Elizabeth Gilbert, where she believes that one’s motivation to create art or writing does not need to be rooted in helping others. That idea …

September 3, 2025 “Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. The rest of it will take care of itself.” “Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome.” “What you produce is not necessarily always sacred, I realized, just because you think it’s sacred. What is sacred is the time that you spend working on the project, and what that time does to expand your imagination, and what that expanded imagination does to transform your life.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear Dear Friends, How are you? Can you believe Labor Day has already passed and the fall breeze is here? According to the Chinese lunar calendar, fall began in early August. I’m always amazed at how accurately the temperature shifts mirror that ancient rhythm. Lately I have been thinking about what creativity and authenticity mean.  We often associate creativity with the arts, but life itself is a creative act.  That means we are often confronted …

July 27, 2025 “If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear.” “It’s walking the razor’s edge of the sacred moment where you don’t know, you can’t count on, and comfort yourself with any sure hope. All you can know is your allegiance to life and your intention to serve it in this moment that we are given. In that sense, this radical uncertainty liberates your creativity and courage.” “The biggest gift you can give is to be absolutely present, and when you’re worrying about whether you’re hopeful or hopeless or pessimistic or optimistic, who cares? The main thing is that you’re showing up, that you’re here and that you’re finding ever more capacity to love this world because it will not be healed without that. That was what is going to unleash our intelligence and our ingenuity and our solidarity for the healing of our world.” – Joanna R. Macy, 1929 – …

May 25, 2025 “Remember the sky that you were born under,know each of the star’s stories.Remember the moon, know who she is.Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is thestrongest point of time. Remember sundownand the giving away to night.Remember your birth, how your mother struggledto give you form and breath. You are evidence ofher life, and her mother’s, and hers.Remember your father. He is your life, also.Remember the earth whose skin you are:red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earthbrown earth, we are earth.Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have theirtribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,listen to them. They are alive poems.Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows theorigin of this universe.Remember you are all people and all peopleare you.Remember you are this universe and thisuniverse is you.Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.Remember language comes from this.Remember the dance language is, that life is.Remember.” “Remember” from “She Had Some Horses” by Joy Harjo, 1983 Dear Friends, How are you all? These days my life is packed …

April 12, 2025 “An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, and kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.” James Baraz, Awakening Joy: 10 Steps That Will Put You on the Road to Real Happiness Dear Friends, How are you? At New York Insight’s weekly Wednesday community gatherings, this month’s theme is joy – one of the seven factors of awakening.  Why talking about joy when there seems to be so much suffering in the world right …

March 19, 2025 “There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.”– Margaret J. Wheatley Dear Friends, How have you been? What an intense first three months of the year.  As I journey through this year, I found the great antidote to separateness, anxiety and fear is building and being with communities, and restoring a sense of intimacy in our life.  When we are going through great changes and uncertainty, we can create a sense of agency and resilience through connections.  Real and authentic connections.  In the physical world, when possible.  It takes more effort to connect in the physical world – we may need to commute, carve out time, and we take risks in the vulnerability of connection.   We take risks in looking into someone’s eyes, seeing their vulnerability, joys and sorrows, inspirations and regrets, and how they reflect our own.  We take risks in making mistakes, saying the wrong things at the wrong moments, sometimes unintentionally harming or being hurt by others.  And yet, the intimacy …

October 1, 2024 Homecoming – An Impromptu PoemI left my hometown when I was young and came back in my old age. Although my local accent has not changed, the hair on my temples has turned gray.When the children in my hometown saw me, no one recognized me. They smiled and asked me: “Guest, where did you come from?” – He Zhi Zhang, written in 744, Tang Dynasty Dear Friends, How have you been this month? This past Friday night, I attended Anu Gupta’s book launch for Breaking Bias, and it was a profound experience. His deep exploration of various biases resonated deeply with me, prompting reflection on my own immigrant journey and my biases surrounding rootedness and stability. When I arrived in NYC at age 12 from China, my family moved six times within the first three years. I attended fifth grade in Brooklyn, sixth grade in Chinatown, and returned to Brooklyn for seventh and eighth grades. Each school defined graduation years differently, so I graduated three times in four years. This instability continued through high …

September 1, 2024 “Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants How are you all? I haven’t led a hike in a couple of years.  For our upcoming hike, Sebene wrote these beautiful questions for exploration: – How do we heed the call of indigenous communities who insist that land acknowledgements are not enough?– How do we forge a connection to the Earth that goes beyond ideas of ownership and extraction (even recreational extraction) to ones of reciprocity and stewardship? – How do we cultivate a restoration of relationship to nature?  As I am contemplating these questions, asking permission and making offerings come to mind as a starting point.  I first encountered the practice when I was learning to give tree meditation and solo retreat instruction from Johann Robbins, who learned it from …