Buddhist thoughts for a new world
Sep 1, 2018 · 3 min read
“Everything in nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
During my upbringing in New Zealand, my parents raised my sister and I as Buddhists. My family traveled regularly to a monastery in the Hutt Valley, situated on the edge of the city at the base of an expansive forest. A structure of stone and wooden beams composed on top of each other, the temple was surrounded by raked gravel gardens and a canopy of…

