Tonight I am recalling how the snow fell not so long ago on cars and trees and stairs and streets in my neighborhood, and how the chill made my boots creak. It was all here. But it might have been another continent or year, for now there is no snow here and the bite has [...]
Stumble upon this quote from Immanuel Kant last night; it grabs me: "I have no knowledge of myself as I am, but merely as I appear to myself." And then woke up this morning to learn that the earth had shifted beneath Haiti. Everything "stable" suddenly was not, everything "constructed" came crashing down in a [...]
In the newspaper this morning, this sentence: "In the name of science, Westerners may have done more harm than good, several studies have found." Oh really?! "Science," of course, is not to blame. Rather, the question is: What do we do with "science"? Do we put such knowledge to destructive or constructive use? All actions [...]
After lunch, dishes, paperwork, just going about the life I lead, just as it is, I come across this in a work about the bodhisattva ideal: "In whatever life we are already leading, just as it is, we can choose to direct our energies toward accumulations of worldly power and material wealth, either with well-meaning [...]
This message is already circulating on my mail circuit, but a repeat can do no harm. And feel free to pass it on! As we ring out an "old" year and ring in a "new" year... What better time to take that step back and look within? May you experience the richness of life and [...]
I’ve been thinking about a question someone asked: Is there ever any mention of compassion in this Zen practice? Is there any emphasis on compassion? I was thinking about how best to address that question, all the while asking myself that question. I have many answers for it, and I offered some of those answers [...]
This Zen teaching unfolds like a fan. (I use these two words, Zen and teaching, as tools to limit something that has no limits.) The more we become aware, present, openly, selflessly, the more it unfolds, and the more it unfolds, the more the many dimensions of life unfold. And in each of those dimensions [...]
Someone who knows little about "Zen" asked today whether I "practiced" everyday. Well... I thought of saying, "I'm practicing right now." But I didn't. I asked him, "Do you mean formally?" Which was not really what I was thinking, but it was what he was thinking. Launching into something about nonduality and not creating artificial [...]
What if everyone at rush hour in the Paris Métro really listened to that recorded voice that says sometimes, "Attention à la marche en descendant du train," (Watch your step when leaving the train)? That is, what if each person paid attention just for a second to one step? What if everyone just for a [...]