To one and all

Off for a week, in retreat. Keeping in mind the words of Obaku, one of the ancestors: I don't expect anything. I just bow. And so I do, to one and all.

Listen to the silence. Then Leonard Cohen last night. How marvelous: Everything has a crack; that's how the light gets in.

Summer in the city. I'm just going through the day, hot and sunny, blue-sky fine. What else is there to do? Somewhere across the Atlantic, Madoff gets 150 years in prison and the talk is still about Michael Jackson. And not just across the ocean. How strange that the saddest man made so many happy. [...]

Living in occupied territory? Revolt! Sit down and vacate with the Wild Flower Sangha. Practice, study, experience the art of everything-is-practice. Beginners welcome. Two summer retreats, in France and in Portugal: Aug. 1-8, Portugal info and registration: wildflower.pt@gmail.com Aug. 21-28, France info and registration: zenscribe@free.fr

Summer's good tonight. Not a cloud in the sky. The day birds are making their last calls, night birds not yet starting up. One of the orchids on my table - the bonus plant, I call it, a root replanted from another pot - lost a blossom this morning. It was time to go. Over [...]

It's Friday. There was work today, so much that I didn't stop for lunch. On a television in another office, weekly prayers in Tehran seemed loud amid what has until now been mostly silent upheaval. I imagine crowds swelling with hope again, day after day, along tree-lined boulevards in soft Persian afternoons. I think of [...]

Happy Bloomsday, one and all! Like Leopold Bloom 105 years ago today, you're the hero of this day. Look around! It's all worth celebrating, morning to night. As Molly said from beginning to end: Yes. And with Stephen, remember simply: Cease to strive. With a nod of eternal gratitude to that wily penman, Mr. James [...]

D.H. Lawrence said that the soul can get to heaven in one leap but that, if it does, it leaves a demon in its place. It could also be like this: The soul that thinks it has made the leap to heaven can only see the demon it has left in its place.

Realize it's been a week since previous posting. Much coming and going (nowhere): In the Métro, in the streets, in the newspapers, on the radio and television, everybody's coming and going (nowhere), too. A plane vanishes (nowhere). Obama quotes the Koran: Keep your eyes on God and tell the truth. What other truth than brilliant [...]

Welcome, O life! A weekend of sitting and study practice around James Joyce's Ulysses with Amy Hollowell Sensei June 13-14 Paris *** (version française ci-dessous) *** Jung called it so profoundly an "Oriental" book that it constituted a bible for the West; the British and American courts called it obscene and banned it, as did [...]