Shaped by a Silky Attention
A request for concentration isn't always answered, but people engaged in many disciplines have found ways to invite it in. Violinists...
Medicine for the Earth
In all spiritual traditions it is taught that everything that manifests in the physical world starts in the invisible realms of spirit....
Five Prayers
In gratitude, I bow to all generations of ancestors in my blood family. I see my mother and father, whose blood, flesh, and vitality are...
Inner World of Moods
“Give me a place to stand on," said the Greek mathematician Archimedes, “and I can move the world.” He was...
How to Live If You're Going to Die
I got a call that a dear friend of mine, who received precepts from me years ago when I lived at Green Gulch, was dying. I arranged with...
For the Traveler
Every time you leave home, Another road takes you Into a world you were never in. New strangers on other paths await. New...
Every Piece is Meant For You
Ever since I was young I enjoyed solving puzzles and having the pleasure to see the bigger picture afterwards. But even after all that, I...
Love Needs to be Constantly Cleansed
In the stories that I cherished in my youth, happy endings almost always involved some kind of love, and I began to observe that in...
Restoring Balance and Meaning in Ourselves
During a time of great drought, a Taoist master was asked by members of a village if he could help bring rain to their dry fields. They...
Why I Make Movies
All movies are an illusion. We think we are seeing motion but in fact we are seeing twenty-four still pictures every second. Half the...
The Glass is Already Broken
Once someone asked a well-known Thai meditation master, "In this world where everything changes, where nothing remains the same,...
Three Millimeters of the Universe
Dear Sam, One night in the hospital, a friend came to visit me. I told her I didn't think I could go on anymore. What I was...