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. So read a page or two or more of that remarkable tale of awakening today. Or raise a toast, with [...]
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 West, she a beacon of our White Plum lineage. They said her last words were, "This too is wonder..." How [...]
Suddenly Monday already, and yet another holiday here in France. The day began with a surprise when I flipped the switch for the light in the bathroom: suddenly no electricity. Whatever I might have been expecting at that moment, it was definitely not that. All the potential explanations that I could think of for the [...]
Came across this tonight, a wonderfully rich summary of practice and life, life and practice from Shunryu Suzuki: Without any idea of time, your practice goes on and on. Moment after moment you become you yourself. Sit with that awhile, toss it around as you walk down the street, or whenever, wherever you are! There's [...]
A day of sitting today in the summer garden, graced with the right amounts of shade and sun and wind. Our lunch table, too, was filled with the right amount of the right ingredients contributed by each to make a feast of generous abundance. The cat comes and goes. In the heat of deep afternoon, [...]
Amid talk among friends at a dinner party in the delicious garden last night, someone asked the question: Is an "awakening" experience irreversible? Everyone seemed to have something to say about it, whether a question, a comment, a challenge, an argument, a doubt. It all got a bit heady. Having come to the discussion late [...]
Saturday afternoon at the movies can change your mind... if you see Terence Malick's new film, "The Tree of Life." It's just things as they are, start to finish, or finish to start, the "beginning" is at the "end," and nothing is what it seems to be in this film and yet it is all [...]
Almost feels like I never left. I felt so much "here" wherever I was. And yet... New York is a big, hard, tall city, without round edges or cushions, constantly busy and in motion. It is known as the city that never sleeps, after all. Although sometimes I think it is really the city that [...]
Moonlight on the canal as we left sitting tonight. Lovely, easy, quiet evening in spring. Dark, yet not dark, almost a velvety violet. Meanwhile... Heading off to America tomorrow, leaving the "old" continent behind for 10 days. Always have mixed feelings about travels, about coming and going, about stepping away from "home,'' even if for [...]