Dharma explorations by Stephanie Noble

From over fifteen years of sharing her understanding of Buddhist concepts

  • Happy Winter Solstice!

    I hope you in the Northern Hemisphere are enjoying this dark period. The further north you live, the more intimate you are with darkness. And it might be depressing. Because of that, many people celebrate Winter Solstice as a returning of the light. Which is true: It will get lighter every day from here on…

  • It’s so easy to see other people’s delusions!

    The definition of awakening (or enlightenment) is ending greed, aversion and delusion — The Three Poisons. It’s pretty easy to recognize greed: ‘If I just had fill in the blank I would be happy.’ It’s even easier to recognize aversion, finding fault and making an enemy of people, things, situations and aspects of ourselves. But,…

  • The skin-deep divide

    I read an article in Tricycle, titled ‘Brown Body, White Sangha’ by Atia Sattar, a woman of color who found it difficult to be part of an otherwise all white sangha. This was not because people were unfriendly, but because it didn’t address her deepest concerns. She gave the example of being led through the…

  • The pursuit of enlightenment: One more thing to let go of

    One of my students said that the least interesting thing to her in the study of Buddhism is enlightenment. ‘That’s funny,’ I said, ‘because that’s exactly what I planned to talk about today.’ But maybe not the enlightenment she was imagining. If we think of enlightenment as some goal of miraculous transformation, I agree with…

  • Thanksgiving, a look at the tradition

    I don’t know about you, but I am feeling especially thankful this year, especially for the rain yesterday and the fresh air that is pouring in every window and door after two weeks of stale air as we holed up from the smoke in so much of California. May the rain fall gently on fire-scarred…