About

Welcome!

My name is Sam Forbes. I’m an undergraduate honors student at the University of Washington majoring in Comparative Religion at the Jackson School of International Studies. I’m a practicing Kadampa Buddhist and try my best to be vegan.

This is a blog about my experience with Buddhism, poetry, philosophy and mental illness. I hope to post links, poems, essays and so on to help myself and others. I wish to create peace in the world and fulfill my bodhichitta wish to benefit others as much as possible.

I got the idea for the title “Grove of the Mind” from the Buddhist theory on karma.  There is an analogy that every action of body, speech or mind plants a seed in our field-like mental continuum.  These seeds, when the right conditions come together, produce the crop of our spiritual realizations, along with the pleasant and unpleasant experiences life brings.  I view my illness as negative karma, or seeds, ripening in this life.    But the mind is an amazing thing.  This experience of serious illness has been a great motivating force to follow the path to enlightenment.  As a Buddhist, I now try to plant seeds that will ripen into the harvest of liberation and enlightenment by benefiting others both now and in my future lives.

May everyone find the happiness they seek!