Lessons On My 70th Birthday
Today is my birthday. I turn 70. I’ve learned a few things so far that might be helpful to others. For the past few years,...
Fishing Before You Know How To Fish
Through the pines and the one maple I hear her. I shouldn’t have gone fishing if I didn’t know how to fish. I...
The Opponent Relationship Is Not A Contest
What is combat, after all, but an intense relationship? Your opponent attempts to block and counter every strike you throw as well as...
Faith Is Different Than Beliefs
Where there is faith, there are fewer beliefs. We use beliefs to shore up opinions, rather than a relationship with the cosmos. Faith is...
Three States Of Water
Imagine that you’ve never been to Earth. You visit first in winter, where someone introduces you to water. From a glass, they pour...
Error Of Perception
Q: Are names and forms real? Ramana Maharshi: You won’t find them separate from [reality]. When you try to get at name...
Garden Teaches Us To Travel
If indifference to nature leads to the machine, the indifference of nature leads to the garden. All culture has the form of gardening:...
Sweeping My Heart
For me, a dark-skinned person of African descent, cleaning the temple as Zen practice felt inappropriate and uncomfortable when I was at...
The Self Is Not A Thing, But A Process
The body and the mind are constantly changing. Nothing in us is ever really the same from one moment to the next. Yet the self represents...
Pay Attention To A Sense Of Space
Whenever there is any grasping or aversion towards something, indeed whenever any hindrances are present, the mind is, to some degree or...
Turning Survival Inside Out
You know how people will lament when they say, “Time to get back to reality,” or “…yeah, but that’s not...
Three Levels Of Happiness
The Buddha talked about three different levels of happiness. The first is happiness that can come from pleasant sense experiences:...