September 4^th, 2026

I Was Born of Immense Strength and Fearlessness

There is a quality of faith in Buddhism that is often misunderstood. Not blind belief but a real amount of knowing. The kind of knowing that can arise only from bringing something into the laboratory of your own life. It’s called ehipassiko—it asks us to “come and see” for ourselves rather than accept some thing or many things on blind faith alone...

Buddhism teaches that attachment is the root of suffering, but I have never understood that teaching to mean we should not love deeply. Only that we must understand the fragile nature of all things. Every bond changes shape. Every relationship asks to be renewed again and again. Every role can and might end, and might be returned to... Nothing stays fixed, not even mother and child... I think this practice is less interested in certainty than intimacy. Koans... are not riddles meant to be cracked or even answered. They are invitations to sit inside something until it rearranges you...

Emptiness is not a void in the Western sense. Emptiness is not just what remains when everything is taken away. Emptiness is the potential to become anything.... The understanding that no thing exists independently from any other thing. ... A cloud becomes rain. Rain becomes trees. Trees become paper. Paper becomes this essay...

The question is: How should you live if everything is deeply interconnected? If nothing truly disappears? If your actions echo far beyond the visible edge of your own life?

Christopher Rivas, Tricycle, August 4, 2026