It’s November 27th! And with that, once again, the blessings of the saints Barlaam & Josaphat are upon us! This is flat out my favorite of all Christian holidays. And I like to remind people of the details of this original Christian Buddhist mashup. So, please forgive the repetition parts of this small sharing. It’s just that its all so cool… In the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic church as well as for those of... Read more
“Ordinary people and saints living together. Dragons and snakes all mixed up.” Blue Cliff Record From one angle Zen did proceed from the brow of Zeus. Like Athena, a goddess of intelligence and wisdom. It is here. This is it. Fully present. It has always been. What you see is what you get. And it is ready to be engaged. From another angle Zen has a history. And a recent part of that history... Read more
Our American Thanksgiving has just passed. While it’s set for the third Thursday of November, I’ve noticed many people move the date around for their personal or family observances. I personally know some people who marked it out on Wednesday, and we here in Tujunga actually had our grand family gathering yesterday, Friday. I’m fascinated with Thanksgiving as a semi-secular semi-well-something else holiday. It combines a lot of things. I do like digging around for the... Read more
Keiji Nishitani died on this day, the 24th of November, in 1990. I noted this a few years ago. And thought it good to repeat. What follows is lightly edited from that earlier posting. If you’re unfamiliar with Professor Nishitani, and you are interested at all in Zen, I suggest you may want to learn more. He was one of the principal figures in the establishment of the Kyoto School, which the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,... Read more
An old friend just announced on his Facebook page the formation of the Soto Zen North America project. Now the posting on social media was quickly taken down. So, it might have been a bit premature. But the website remains. So… As it happens this past year following an extended period of discernment I resigned my membership in the Soto Zen Buddhist Association, which exists as an attempt to create an association for... Read more
In 1842 Margaret Fuller sent her mentor the Reverend William Ellery Channing a letter. It was “A Credo,” her attempt to formulate her faith. It was published posthumously together with other writings as Memoirs in 1852, by her friends and admirers Ralph Waldo Emerson, W. H. Channing, and J. F. Clark. Memoirs came out ten years after she composed her credo and two years after her tragic death along with... Read more
One who embarks on the path of awakening aspiring to master Wisdom is a Bodhisattva motivated by Great Compassion, taking the Great Vows to save all beings with the cultivation of Samadhi, and not seeking Liberation for one’s own sake alone. Zhanglu Zongze There are three critical meditation manuals within the Zen tradition. The first was composed sometime at the beginning of the twelfth century. The other two were composed in the first half of the thirteenth. We... Read more
Eight years ago, Jan & I retired from our respective positions, she as research librarian at the wondrous Perkins School for the Blind, and me as minister of the First Unitarian Church of Providence. We shrunk our worldly goods as best we could, sold our home, and moved back to our native California. Our intention was to be near Jan’s mom who lives in the once independent city and since 1932, a... Read more
Alfred Russel Wallace, died on this day, the 7th of November, in 1823. After Charles Darwin there are two figures I think are counted as critical to the development of modern evolutionary thought. Darwin resisted the public forum, disliked the rough and tumble of public disputation, and feared the challenge to his position in society publication could lead to. If it weren’t for the fact that Wallace had come up with pretty much the same... Read more
I first practiced Zen in the Soto style, with its emphasis on the deep discipline of Just sitting. Later I entered a Soto monastery where I encountered Japanese Zen’s monastic discipline of minute attention to the details of life. Later after I left the monastery and other spiritual disciplines I began a small sitting group on the Russian River in northern California. Among the snakes and dragons that wandered into my zendo was a former monk... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In