Become An Everyday Buddhist

Lewis Carroll's Alice in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, is more like us than we think. Her story is actually quite Buddhist. Throughout her adventure, she learns valuable life lessons and is challenged to view the world differently, much in the same way the Buddhist path does. So today, I invite you to go on a little adventure with me as we explore the Buddhist lessons in Alice in Wonderland.

The Pure Land sutras spend a lot of time describing a place built entirely of what's precious — jeweled trees, lotus ponds, birds whose song is itself a teaching. It's tempting to read that as just a nice picture of where we’re reborn after this life, but it's also telling us something about attention. A description like that is asking: what would it look like if your surroundings reflected what actually mattered? What would your day look like, built the same way?

Don't let yourself get so worn down that a sad folk song like John Prine's tale of the Midwest housewife describes your Tuesday better than you'd like. You don't need a poster of an old rodeo. You already have something to hold onto — the Three Jewels.

Aspiration, when grounded in the Dharma, becomes a source of transformation. It helps us face life’s challenges with resilience. It turns our suffering into understanding, our mistakes into insight. It encourages us to turn ourselves upward, to expand, to grow—not because we are trying to be someone else, but because the light of the Dharma calls us to become more fully ourselves.

It is actually very easy to create habits. It only requires sustained, repetitive behavior. For both good and bad habits, the mechanism is the same: repetition. This process is known as Neuroplasticity. We create new neural pathways in our minds as we repeat behaviors, and each time it becomes easier to travel down those same pathways. Luckily, this is simply how the brain works. It requires no willpower or special training.

The easy path is not for the lazy. You’ve probably noticed how much easier it is to do something you really want to do compared to what you think you should do. Faith is like desire, and when you want something, you’re motivated to work for it.