Barbie’s Journey to Enlightenment with Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

Stacy McClendon, teacher and co-founder of the BIPOC Sangha at Common Ground Meditation Center, talks with Lion's Roar's Pamela Ayo Yetunde about how mindfulness can transform the way we work.

White Lotus and Sopranos actor Michael Imperioli is also a novelist, screenwriter, director and musician. He and his partner Victoria Imperioli, a well-known interior designer, talk about how Buddhism informs their life together as artists and entrepreneurs.

Judy Lief, a Buddhist teacher in the Tibetan tradition, talks about how you can work with your desires to find peace. Then Cheryl Fraser, a sex therapist and dharma teacher, shares her article, How to Have Mindful Sex. To close, professor, minister, and author of Living Nembutsu: Applying Shinran’s Radically Engaged Buddhism in Life and Society, Jeff Wilson, talks about the radically inclusive founder of the Jodo Shinshu tradition, Shinran.

In this episode, Catherine Bailey talks about the characters in her children’s book Dinos Don’t Meditate and shares a 30-second meditation you can do with your kids. Then, author and Zen teacher Vanessa Zuisei Goddard talks about her children’s book Weather Any Storm in which the “Wildering Billies” are a metaphor for waves of emotion that create an inner storm, plus a short breathing meditation for kids.

In this selection from Lion’s Roar’s online course, Medicine for Fear, dharma teacher Mushim Patricia Ikeda talks about the art of “feeling all the feelings” without causing harm to yourself and others, and why the smallest act of kindness can be a powerful form of activism.

The Center for Humane Technology is featured in the Emmy award-winning Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma and co-founded by Randima Fernando. He talks about the promises and pitfalls of artificial intelligence, the existential questions it inspires, how Buddhism is uniquely suited to answering them, and how you can approach this new technology that has the…

Jane Hirshfield is the author of ten poetry collections, the most recent being The Asking: New and Selected Poems. She talks about creativity in the liminal state, and then Anouk Shambrook—an astrophysicist turned meditation teacher—discusses the intersections between science and spirituality. First, a short reading from Buddhadharma’s Rod Meade Sperry of an article by world-renowned…

Dean of Students at the Institute of Buddhist Studies, Scott Mitchell, talks about his book The Making of American Buddhism and how Western scholarship has largely ignored the role of Japanese immigrants and their American descendants in developing Buddhism in America.

In the Greta Gerwig-directed box-office hit movie, Barbie, the iconic doll embarks on a pink-tinted journey toward enlightenment not unlike the historical Buddha’s. When author and pop culture writer Jennifer Keishin Armstrong saw Barbie, she couldn’t stop thinking about the film’s explorations of suffering, impermanence, and awakening. Here, in conversation Lion’s Roar associate editor Mihiri Tillakaratne, she discusses the surprisingly Buddhist lessons of Barbie’s journey to enlightenment.

Buddhist teacher, author, and founder of Tara Mandala retreat center, Lama Tsultrim Allione discusses the meaning and urgency of embracing the sacred feminine as a way to resist the destructive aspects of patriarchal society.