Summer is underway, and there is still space for a week of intensive practice, in Portugal or in France. (Nous sommes en plein été, et il reste de la place pour faire une semaine de pratique intensive, au Portugal ou en France.) Portugal: 1-8 August France: 23-30 August 250 euros Beginners welcome. (Débutants bienvenus.) Infos [...]
Someone dear to me, my dharma brother Frank de Waele, calls this morning to announce the birth of his daughter, Hannia. His joy shoots through the phone line, we are happy together across the kilometers, tears fill my eyes. We share this ancient transmission of life. There is no transition when he then announces the [...]
What is in question apart from me tonight? Not a thing: Emptiness is what is not. If I am not, then I, too, am not in question. All that is is in question. When I question I: the nature of I is revealed. And to the question that cannot be answered, I reply, "Tu es [...]
I would like nothing better than to sit and read and write all this day, the first of summer, the year's longest, full with sweet charms of light and softness deep into the night. But such is the inexorable course of day and night that I have other callings. Things to tend await my attention. [...]
Happy Bloomsday! Celebrate Leopold Bloom's marvelous day in the life, Dublin, June 16, 1904! Drink a pint! Take a walk! Eat a kidney! Serve breakfast in bed! Step out along the strand! Dream! Sing! Love! Live! Say yes! Re-joyce! Read Ulysses!
Everything moves. This instant, without limit, is already gone. Bataille writes, "...l'énoncé se ruine à mesure qu'on l'énonce; même préciptée dans la possibilité du mouvement, ma pensée écrite ne peut l'épuiser puisque, écrite, elle a l'immobilité de la pierre.'' (...a statement is undone by its expression; even hurled into the possibility of movement, my written [...]
Thursday, June 12 20h-22h30 199 bis, rue Saint-Martin 75003 Paris A rare opportunity: Genpo Merzel Roshi, one of the leading masters of Western Zen today, will for the first time present his Big Mind, Big Heart practice in Paris on June 12. Genpo Roshi is the teacher of Catherine Genno Pagès Roshi, who is my [...]
Wind on my cheek, lightly, connects me with all it touches. The thought of who, what and where escapes me, a falling star: I can never fathom it in numbers and names. But in the blue evening, pink flowers burst behind the fading altar. In the hurried clamor of trucks collecting trash, I hear my [...]
I am where the rise and fall cease to meet where simply morning is spring Mexican orange tree blossom all told and telling of nothing no who in the thicket sunpocked to hear.
It's late afternoon by the time I get to my cushion at the window. At first I sit and look. I notice light rain on the brick path, the spiked holly leaves, puddles on the roof. Before I know it, the project has caught me: I am occupied by preoccupation. I am in the snares [...]