Buddhist Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

04/05/2026

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

04/04/2026

I’ve always considered mindfulness of nature an important part of practice. Monks in Thailand live and walk in forests, sleep in jungles, sometimes encounter wild animals. The recent Walk for Peace endured the various elements daily over thousands of miles. And nature can be incredibly healing to our bodies as well.

Hospital del Mar in Barcelona sits right across the street from the Mediterranean Sea.

Its medical team figured out how to use that.

For patients who have spent weeks or months inside intensive care — sedated, isolated, disconnected from the world — the hospital runs a program that does something unusual. They wheel selected ICU patients, still in their hospital beds, still connected to monitors, out to the beachfront promenade.

It's not a reward. It's part of treatment.

Dr. Judith Marín, who leads the program, calls it an effort to "humanize" intensive care. The team had been experimenting with therapeutic outings for about two years before COVID hit Spain. When the pandemic forced the hospital to expand from 18 ICU beds to 67 and cut off all visitors, the emotional toll on patients became impossible to ignore.

They restarted the beach program in June 2020.

Every outing is fully supervised. A doctor and at least three nurses accompany each patient. Vital signs are monitored the entire time. Only patients who are stable enough are selected.

The team found that even 10 minutes in front of the sea appeared to improve a patient's emotional state. They're now studying whether these outings can help with mid- and long-term recovery.

One patient, Francisco Espana, spent 52 days sedated in the ICU. His memories of that time are, in his words, "cloudy." When his team finally wheeled him outside, he closed his eyes, felt the sun, and said: "It's one of the best days I remember."

His friend came to the promenade to meet him. The first thing they talked about was soccer.

Sometimes recovery isn't only about what medicine can do. It's about remembering what you're recovering for.

04/04/2026

Last fall, during the widely followed 2,300-mile “Walk for Peace” from Texas to Washington, D.C., a quiet journey of compassion took a devastating turn.

A Georgia-based Buddhist monk, Bhante Dam Phommasan, was struck by a car. The impact changed his life in an instant—his injured leg later had to be amputated below the knee.

But what followed was not a story of loss alone. It became a story of resilience.

Four months later, he arrived at Mercer University, where he was fitted with a prosthetic leg through its “Mercer On Mission” program—an initiative known for restoring mobility and dignity to thousands of amputees around the world.

His presence there felt almost like destiny. Years earlier, when he first came to the United States in 2016, he had stumbled upon Mercer while searching online for colleges. Though life took him down a different path, he quietly carried it as a dream.

And now, life had brought him there in a way he never imagined.

After the accident, in the raw moments between pain and survival, it was his mindfulness that held him steady. He stayed present—breath by breath—meeting the pain not with fear, but with awareness.
“I remember everything,” he said softly. “I refused to die.”

Later, during a talk, someone asked him a question many might find difficult to answer:

“You lost your leg in the accident… is there anything you gained?”

He paused, then answered with a calm strength that filled the room:

“I lost only one leg.”

In that simple sentence lived something profound—a reminder that even in our deepest wounds, perspective can become our greatest power.

04/03/2026

🧡 Our handsome boy is at peace today. Just soaking in the morning light, Aloka reminds us to be fully present in the here and now.

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

04/02/2026

03/14/2026

Sarah lost her phone in the park—an expensive iPhone, but the cost didn't matter. It held the only photos of her newborn baby's first days, and they weren't backed up. She was devastated. That night, her doorbell rang. Standing on the porch was a homeless man, exhausted with worn-through shoes. He held up the phone. "It rang," he said raspily. "I saw the baby picture on the screen. I knew a mom would be crying." He had walked four miles to her address. He could have sold it for $500—enough to feed him for a month. Instead, he brought it home. Sarah tried to give him cash, but he refused. "I just wanted to do the right thing," he said. She packed him a bag of food and a warm coat instead. The story, shared widely on social media, touched millions. It became a powerful reminder that integrity has nothing to do with material wealth. In a world where honesty can feel scarce, one man's simple act of kindness proved that character matters most when no one is watching.