Phowa: Consciousness, Death, and the Practice of Letting Go

How do we prepare for a moment we cannot rehearse completely?

We spend much of our lives preparing for what comes next. We make plans, build relationships, gather knowledge, and try to create a little certainty around an uncertain future. Yet death—the one transition every life eventually meets—often remains outside that preparation. In Tibetan Buddhism, contemplating death is part of learning how to live. It brings attention to what we hold tightly, what we continually postpone, and what might matter when familiar supports begin to fall away.

Feeding the Unseen: Sang, Sur, and the Sacred Art of Reciprocity

Generosity usually begins with what we can see. We offer food to someone who is hungry, help a friend in difficulty, support a charitable cause, or simply give our time and attention to another person. Tibetan Buddhism expands this circle of generosity in an unusual direction. Traditional practices may include offerings not only to human beings, but also to Buddhas, bodhisattvas, protectors, local deities, spirits, beings experiencing suffering, and other forms of life described within the Buddhist cosmological world. Two practices that express this relationship with the seen and unseen worlds are Sang and Sur. Both involve fragrant offerings carried through smoke or aroma, but they are distinct practices with different histories, ingredients, recipients, and ritual purposes. Beneath these differences, however, they share a powerful principle: we live within relationships larger than ourselves, and spiritual practice can include giving rather than simply asking.

Yeshe Tsogyal and the Hidden Treasures: Wisdom Preserved for Those Yet to Come

There is something deeply moving about the idea of preserving a teaching for someone you will never meet. Not simply recording what you know, but caring enough about the future to ask:

What might someone need when I am no longer here?

How can wisdom remain available when the world around it has changed?

In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, these questions find a remarkable expression in the life of Yeshe Tsogyal and the teachings known as termas, or hidden treasures. Yeshe Tsogyal is remembered as one of Guru Padmasambhava’s foremost disciples, a realised master, and a central figure in preserving his teachings for future generations. In traditional accounts, she recorded and concealed teachings that would later be revealed when the circumstances were right.

Exchanging Self for Others: Śāntideva, Tonglen, and the Practice of Radical Compassion

There is a particular kind of Buddhist teaching that sounds beautiful until you actually try to practice it. Wishing happiness for others is easy enough when we feel generous.

But what happens when someone has hurt us? When another person's success makes us feel small? When we are exhausted, disappointed, afraid, or simply caught up in our own problems?

This is where the teachings of Śāntideva become much more challenging.

Breathing the Three Vajras: A Simple Vajrayana Practice for Reconnecting Body, Speech, and Mind

Modern life has a strange way of pulling us apart internally. You may have experienced it yourself. Your body sits at a desk while your mind races through tomorrow’s worries. Your speech becomes hurried, reactive, or emotionally charged because your nervous system never truly pauses. By the end of the day, you feel scattered — physically present, mentally elsewhere, emotionally depleted. In Vajrayana Buddhism, this fragmentation is understood through the lens of the Three Vajras: Body, Speech, and Mind. These are not merely philosophical ideas reserved for monasteries or advanced tantric practitioners. They are deeply practical ways of understanding human experience. More importantly, they offer a pathway back toward inner coherence — a way of becoming whole again. One of the simplest methods for reconnecting these three dimensions of ourselves is through conscious breathing. Not complicated rituals. Not hours of meditation. Just intentional breaths that gently reunite the body, the voice, and the mind into a single stream of awareness.

Before It Reaches the Body: Four Places the Lesson Asks Its Question First—a guest post by Shani Bahar Azulay (founder of Aligned Ink)

By the time a life lesson becomes something you can feel deeply, it may have already asked its question several times—in ways so ordinary that none of them sounded like questions at all. This is not a claim about illness, and it is not a promise about health. It is an observation about attention. A repeating pattern does not always mean something has gone wrong. Sometimes it is a pointer. It draws attention toward a life lesson, which is another way of saying it points toward the gap between the life you are living and the life you could be living. That gap can become the curriculum. And a curriculum rarely opens with its hardest test. It begins quietly, in places we have learned to call normal. Here are four of those places.

Living the Lesson After the Insight—a guest post by Shani Bahar Azulay (founder of Aligned Ink)

You may know the feeling... you understand something about yourself; you see a pattern; you recognise why a particular situation keeps affecting you. For a moment, something that has been confusing suddenly makes sense. And then it is Tuesday! Nothing dramatic... someone answers you in a tone you did not expect; the email you were expecting does not come; or you look at your own work and feel that small, familiar shrinking. Suddenly, everything you understood so clearly last week seems to have disappeared. This is the part almost nobody writes about. Not the insight itself but the ordinary week that comes after it.

Atman and Anatman: Two Ways of Looking Beyond the Separate Self

There is an interesting meeting point between Vedanta and Buddhism. Vedanta speaks of Atman, the deeper Self, and in Advaita Vedanta this Self is understood as not separate from Brahman, the ultimate reality. Buddhism, on the other hand, speaks of Anatman, or non-self: the insight that what we normally experience as a fixed and independent "I" cannot be found when examined carefully.

Touching the Earth: A Simple Buddhist Practice for Finding Calm in a Chaotic World

Life today can feel like a constant whirlwind. Between work deadlines, family responsibilities, social obligations, financial pressures, and the endless flood of notifications on our phones, many of us move through the day in a state of subtle tension without even realizing it. We wake up already thinking about what needs to be done. We scroll while eating, rush while driving, and carry conversations while mentally planning the next task. It is no surprise that so many people feel emotionally exhausted, anxious, scattered, or disconnected from themselves. In the middle of this modern intensity, there is an ancient Buddhist gesture that offers something surprisingly simple and deeply human: the earth-touching mudra, traditionally known as Bhumisparsha. At first glance, it may seem like a small symbolic gesture often seen in statues of the Buddha. Yet beneath its simplicity lies a profound psychological and spiritual practice that can help us return to steadiness, clarity, and presence.

When the Red Mist Descends: A Vajrayana Approach to Emotional Triggers and Wrathful Compassion

There are moments in life when everything seems perfectly ordinary. You are making tea in the kitchen. Walking the dog beneath a quiet sky. Sitting on the train scrolling through your phone. Maybe you are answering emails, enjoying a peaceful morning, or simply trying to get through another busy day. Then suddenly, something happens. A stranger says something cutting. A loved one misunderstands you. A driver swerves recklessly into your lane. A message arrives carrying bad news. Within seconds, your body changes. Your chest tightens. Your heartbeat quickens. Heat rises into your face. Thoughts begin racing at incredible speed. The calm version of yourself seems to disappear. Many of us know this experience intimately. We often describe it as “seeing red” or being consumed by the “red mist.” In modern culture, emotional triggers are usually treated as problems to suppress, avoid, or escape. We are encouraged to calm down quickly, distract ourselves, or push difficult emotions aside before they become inconvenient.