Lion's Roar Meditation Oklahoma

01/08/2026

✍️ The Hardest Person to Forgive - We can forgive others with surprising ease sometimes. A friend hurts us, and eventually we let it go. A stranger wrongs us, and we find a way to move past it. But when it comes to forgiving ourselves? That’s where we become stuck.

Regret holds us like nothing else can. We replay our mistakes endlessly—the words we shouldn’t have said, the choices we wish we could undo, the people we hurt. We carry these memories like heavy chains, dragging them everywhere, unable to walk forward, trapped in a past that cannot be changed while life continues flowing around us.

Forgiving ourselves does not erase what happened. It does not pretend our mistakes don’t matter or that we caused no harm.

What it does is release the weight so we can actually do something meaningful with what we’ve learned. It frees us to become better, to grow from our mistakes rather than being crushed by them, to walk forward with the lightness we need to bring peace to others.

How can we offer peace to the world when we are still at war with ourselves? How can we extend compassion to others when we withhold it from our own hearts?

Peace begins within—not just with calming our minds, but with learning to treat ourselves with the same gentleness, the same understanding, the same mercy we so readily offer to everyone else.

We are human. We may make mistakes. This is not a failure—this is simply what it means to be alive, to be learning, to be walking a path we’ve never walked before.

The question is not whether we will stumble. The question is: Will we allow those stumbles to define us forever, or will we learn from them, forgive ourselves, and keep walking?

Let us be gentle with our own hearts. Let us forgive ourselves—not as an ending, but as a beginning. Not as permission to repeat mistakes, but as freedom to become who we are truly capable of being.

You deserve your own compassion. You deserve to walk forward, lighter and freer, carrying wisdom instead of chains.

May you and all beings be well, happy, and at peace.

01/07/2026

May all beings everywhere be free from hatred, be healthy, be safe, be peaceful and at ease in body and in mind, and may they meet no obstacles in their daily lives.

May you and all beings be well, happy, and at peace.

01/06/2026

Enjoy this song! 😊🙏🎼🎵🎶

01/06/2026

✍️ Peace on the Silent Road - Sometimes, the road we walk is not lined with crowds or filled with welcoming voices. Sometimes, it is just us, the silence, and the path ahead.

Yesterday, we walked on a red clay road—wet from recent rain, muddy beneath our feet, with no one watching, no one waiting to greet us. Just quiet earth and open sky.
But even there, especially there, peace was still shining.

Because peace does not depend on applause or recognition. It does not require witnesses or perfect conditions. It does not fade when the road becomes difficult or when we walk alone through the mud.
Peace walks with us in the silent moments just as much as in the celebrated ones. It is there in the steady rhythm of our steps, in the breath we take while navigating slippery ground, in the choice to keep moving forward even when no one is watching.

The world may not always see our journey. The path may not always be smooth or clear. But the work of cultivating peace continues—in the quiet, in the challenge, in the simple act of placing one foot in front of the other, again and again.

Yesterday’s muddy road told us this: peace is not about where we walk or who sees us walking. It is about what we carry inside, what we nurture within ourselves, what we choose to be regardless of circumstances.

So we keep walking. Through mud and sunshine, through crowds and solitude, through roads that are easy and roads that test us. Because peace is not conditional. It is a choice. And it shines brightest not when everything is perfect, but when we choose to carry it forward anyway.

May you and all beings be well, happy, and at peace.

01/04/2026

Here's to New Years, and new beginnings in every moment!

Please join us tomorrow in friendship for Taking Safe Direction, a Buddhist meditation group at The Mystique Emporium in lovely downtown Henryetta. We start at 1030am till about noon. Everyone is welcome! 😊🧡🩵📿

01/03/2026

The holidays are over, and the new year is here! Start it off with peace and calm - join us tomorrow morning at 9am at the Okmulgee Public Library for Meditation for Everyone- a mindfulness meditation group. We'd love to meet you!

Photo: Philbrook Museum 12/2025

01/02/2026

✍️ Let there be peace on earth—and let it begin with me. Not with someone else. Not somewhere far away. Not when conditions are perfect or when the world finally changes. But here, now, with me.

Peace begins the moment we become mindful of our breath—that simple, sacred rhythm that connects us to the present moment. It begins when we bring awareness to our daily actions, to the way we move through the world, to the choices we make in each ordinary moment.

Let peace begin in the way I speak to myself when I make a mistake. In the breath I take before reacting. In the kindness I choose when patience feels difficult. In the forgiveness I offer when holding onto hurt feels easier.

Let it begin in my home, in the gentleness I bring to those closest to me. In my community, in the compassion I extend to neighbors and strangers alike. In my daily life, in every small choice to respond with understanding instead of judgment, with love instead of fear.

We often look outward, wishing the world would become more peaceful. But the truth is simpler and more challenging: the world becomes peaceful when we do. When each of us takes responsibility for the peace we carry—or fail to carry—in our own hearts.

One person practicing mindful breathing creates ripples. One person acting with awareness transforms their corner of the world. A family practicing peace becomes a refuge. A community practicing peace transforms a neighborhood. And slowly, quietly, persistently, the peace that begins with “me” spreads to “we,” and from “we” to all.

Let there be peace on earth. And let it begin with me—with my breath, my thoughts, my words, my actions, my presence in this world.

This is not passivity. This is the most active, courageous work we can do.

May you and all beings be well, happy, and at peace. 🙏

01/01/2026

Happy New Year to everyone!

In the coming year may all beings experience the awakening of deepest bodhicitta, profound peace, compassion and courage, and lasting joy - may all things be auspicious! 😊🧡🩵🙏📿

12/30/2025

12/30/2025

✍️ The flowers we received from you carry a meaning far deeper than their gentle fragrance or delicate petals. They quietly tell us something beautiful—that the Walk for Peace has reached beyond the road beneath our feet, and has made peace bloom within your heart.

Each stem, each color, each thoughtful arrangement speaks of a transformation we cannot always see but can deeply feel—the inner flowering that happens when mindfulness takes root, when compassion begins to unfold, when unity becomes more than just a word.

We do not walk alone. We walk together with every person whose heart has opened to peace, whose spirit has chosen kindness, whose daily life has become a garden where understanding grows.

Thank you for showing us that peace is not merely a destination we walk toward—it is already blossoming, right now, in you.

May you and all beings be well, happy, and at peace.

12/28/2025

🙏🙏🙏🩵🧡🩵

🙏 You may have seen this prayer we often share on our page: “May all beings be free from hatred, be healthy, be safe, be peaceful and at ease, and may they meet no obstacles in their daily lives.”

Sometimes a question arises in hearts that hear this: Does this mean we’re wishing for a life without difficulty? Without challenges? Without the need for courage and strength? We want to share what this prayer truly holds.

We’re not praying for life to become easy. We know—all of us know—that life brings what it brings. Loss comes. Heartbreak visits. Change arrives uninvited. No prayer can stop the rain from falling or make the road short. This is simply the nature of being alive, and we don’t ask for it to be otherwise.

What we’re praying for is something far more profound: May we all see clearly that the real obstacle is never the situation itself, but only how our minds meet it.

When our minds are tangled with fear, clouded by anger, or grasping at what cannot be held, every challenge feels like an insurmountable wall. Every difficulty looks like the end of our path.

But when our minds rest at peace, when we cultivate mindfulness like tending a garden, something beautiful unfolds. The walls we thought were solid begin to dissolve like mist in morning sun. We stop seeing difficulties as obstacles blocking our way and begin to see them simply as part of the path we’re walking—not enemies to fight, but conditions to move through with grace.

The venerable monks show us this truth every day on this walk. Rain falls, cold bites, miles stretch long, uncertainty lingers—yet these are not obstacles to them. They are simply the path. And so they keep walking, steady and calm, present with what is.

This is what we offer in our prayer: not a life free from difficulty, but a mind free from seeing difficulty as an obstacle. When we find this kind of peace within ourselves, we discover true freedom—not the absence of challenges, but the presence of an unshakeable calm that walks with us through everything. May we all find this peace. May we all know this freedom.

May you and all beings be happy and at peace. 🙏✨