octobre 2011
Love in the métro
Came across this quote today: "The entire cosmos is a cooperative." I suppose that says it all. What would happen if we each realized only that? In the métro, I had a taste this morning. [...]
Telling the tale
Tonight a new month suddenly looks like a wonderful opportunity to "settle down" after a crazy, scattered September: What have I been doing all these days and weeks? All and nothing. I can't even remember [...]
septembre 2011
Nothing special
All quiet on Indian summer night as a car rumbles by in the street outside and the dishwasher hums in the kitchen. A lot of coming and going out there; and probably a lot in [...]
Breathless like a miracle
Here at my desk at this late hour. What is it now? And who? Perched before me is an image of Giacometti's sculpture L'Homme qui chavire, his Tottering Man, a thing of such wonder that [...]
Cat and mouse
It's Sunday night. Already? Or again? Temperatures have fallen, with precipitation (or rain, as they say), as have the shares of French banks and financial markets everywhere. Someone is gaining, someone losing. Which is which? [...]
Do you remember?
Do you remember? It was stunning: A perfect morning. Planes cruising across an impeccably blue sky and crashing into shining towers standing tall and invincible under a brilliant sun in the symbolic heart of the [...]
Happy and back, mutually
After all these weeks away, here I come again. Summer was deep and wide and full. I loved the sun, the sea, the moon, the trees, the forests, the darkness, the light, the heat, the [...]
juillet 2011
Retreat, vacating, retreat: Disappearing into the landscape
Off to Portugal for retreat. Then disappearing into the landscape. Before returning for more retreat in France. No words here until end of August. We're all in this together! And à bientôt all the same. [...]
Give and let live
In the course of doing some translation work this afternoon, I come across a reference to an Indian people of the Pacific Northwest of North America, a people called the Kwakwaka'wakw, for whom wealth and [...]
Modern in a summer lull
A lull in postings corresponds, it would seem, to lazy summer. Perhaps a kind of "retreat" from the usual patterns of my days? And then suddenly it is obvious: Whatever I write or don't write [...]
World whirled/Whirled world (Summer)
In the middle of all this daily doing, hectic with activity, I long to just not "do" a thing. My time will come, I think. Playing tourist guide to a visiting relative day after day [...]
Befriending heat and rain
After another hot day, a storm appears to be brewing. I sit down for a moment with that. Just that: accumulated heat and impending rain. I rest in it, "befriend" it as someone said to [...]
Méditation hebdomadaire/weekly meditation
Les lundis soirs, 20h-22h méditation et entretiens (interviews) avec Amy Sensei 4 Passage Courtois 75011 Paris (porte gauche, interphone 'maison', dernière étage) Tél. 06 10 87 82 19 (Joa) Les vendredis soirs, 19h45-21h15 méditation et [...]
Program Autumn 2011, Winter-Spring-Summer 2012
Autumn 2011 One-day retreats, Paris: 2 Oct. 17 Dec. Weekend retreats: 4-6 Nov. Lisbon City retreat, including a museum meditation led by Frank De Waele Sensei 19-20 Nov. Paris In Full Bloom: The Bodhisattva Way [...]
juin 2011
Parting together (Je est un autre)
Leaving sitting tonight, we see a sharp, clean graffiti painted in red on a wall: Je est un autre, it reads, quoting Rimbaud's famed line. I think of Marguerite Yourcenar... I is another, it is [...]
This human adventure
From Marguerite Yourcenar's notes for the writing of her beautiful Mémoires d'Hadrien: "Tout être qui a vécu l'aventure humaine est moi." (Every being who has lived the human adventure is me.) What if we could [...]
Famous last words
Things change: Word has come that Joko Beck's last words before dying were not, as I noted in a previous posting, "This, too, is wonder..." The successor of Joko who had sent the first message [...]
Just this word
Off to Lisbon for a Zen Art workshop. What is Zen Art? The joining of creativity and awakening, simply the "activity of non-aggression," as Trungpa said. We sit and we open, we sit and we [...]
Happy Bloomsday
Today is the 107th anniversary of that fine day when Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus stepped out for their great adventures around Dublin in James Joyce's Ulysses. The world has never been the same since. [...]
Joko Beck
This morning at 7:30 in America the Zen master Joko Beck died, we are told. She of "Everyday Zen" fame, she who is considered a pioneer of a contemporary Zen for our times in the [...]
Alexis says:
Alexis says:
Alexis says: