On retreat (wherever you are)
Off on retreat in Portugal for a week. Join us, sit where you are, walk feeling your feet embracing the earth, breathe the sun, clouds and sky.
juillet 2010
Art of life, life of art
"Genuine art - dharma art - is simply the activity of nonagression." There's more to this statement from the late great Tibetan master Chogyam Trungpa than meets the eye. And yet... It opens every moment of life to the possibility of "art." Which is the truth, no doubt about it. Meanwhile, the getting and spending [...]
Radical plunge
City is hot, sticky yet less congested. Little by little, the population is shifting, any residents who can going elsewhere, tourists who can staying. Always the come-and-go. And yet, here we are amid events of the day. There's always a spark, never a dull moment as they say, if we stay right where we are. [...]
What is your one obstacle?
Summer is well on its way. Last night we sat together for the last time this "season" in our Friday night place, the Red Earth Centre. My question for everyone was: What is your one obstacle? I talked a bit, others shared their thoughts and impressions. Then we each went our ways. A true meditation [...]
Sweet summer night
Other outages, and now a return "online." Like the basement that flooded yesterday for the first time after heavy rain. Now it's a delicious evening, the beginning of the national holiday in France, people wandering toward street parties for drink and dancing. Certainly nothing like Spain the past few nights, though. We knew that kind [...]
Connected? Yes. And no.
Baking in the heat. Remember the Zen tale of going where there is neither heat nor cold: When it's hot, just be hot; when it's cold, just be cold. Now it seems a storm must certainly be brewing. Technology has played havoc again with my best intentions to make a record here of the days. [...]
juin 2010
In a plunge
Have been absent from this space for far too long. Rather, I have been present, just without words. Tonight, a sweet evening deepens. I'm recalling the "writing" and "sitting" day shared with Paris Wild Flowers on Saturday, in and out of the sun and shade. So many words emerging, floating, soaring, searing, singing, ringing, jingling [...]
It wouldn’t be it
At the office, a colleague likes to talk about "Buddhism" with me. He stops by my desk the other day. He's reading sutras, he says. There's a soccer match playing on the television nearby. He likes what he reads, he says, but he adds that he's discouraged because he can never remember what he reads. [...]
Joyce’s bodhisattva on Bloomsday
Amid all this busy-ness, round and round, only one thing to say, in honor of Joyce's bodhisattva, that hero of basic goodness: Happy Bloomsday.
In the rain, dancing on and on
A roundabout discussion in the rain with a friend who is passing in the street early this morning as I head to another day at the office. The subject of structure (or lack thereof) is addressed somewhere in the middle, or perhaps it is the end. We agree on the merits of structure in relation [...]