SAMPLE WRITING
Buddhistdoor Global | 2018-05-15 |
My father used to tell me that appearances matter. When I was a teenager, we fought about this often. He insisted that the way we present ourselves affects how others see us. In my stubborn idealism, I insisted that he was wrong. I told him that what mattered was what we carried on the inside.
Buddhistdoor Global | 2018-01-15 |
I knew to expect them. But it’s one thing to know something theoretically, and something else entirely to experience it for oneself.
My seven-year-old son and I made it to Borobudur just before sunset. We walked toward the ancient Javanese Buddhist complex in silent awe. The stupa rose before us like a haunted memory, unearthed from a mound of volcanic ash after centuries of isolation. It was more beautiful than I ever could have anticipated.
LIONS ROAR | 2019-06-06 |
A young monk in Nepal practiced so many prostrations that he left his handprint pressed into a mat. Vanessa Sasson can’t forget him.
Buddhistdoor Global | 2020-12-15 |
Every morning, I went to work by opening my computer. Like everyone else, I had switched my college classes to an online platform and was growing accustomed to my students as small boxes on a screen. Despite expectations to the contrary, teaching online had quickly become the most important part of my day.
Buddhistdoor Global | 2020-04-01 |
Like almost everyone alive on the planet today, I am consumed by the news. I have been watching, first with an ignorant disregard, then with disbelief, then with a slow dawning of comprehension as the world apparently stopped spinning on its axis.
Buddhistdoor Global | 2019-03-19 |
I was so young. Impossibly young when I think about it now. And yet I was convinced that I had already lived lifetimes.
I was in my early 20s and had spent nearly a year wandering around Nepal. I was on my way home (my visa had long since expired, so I had no choice), but decided to make one last stop before my feet were torn from South Asian soil. With romantic idealism, I boarded a bus bound for Dharamsala and drove through the mountains all night long.
