PBL: Peoples’ Math and Not-Knowing Math
Yesterday, I had my first meeting with colleagues preparing for the new school year. I am still happily entrenched in the pace of the summer (the only tolerable...
Tag: zen
the practice of suchness
Reflections after a silent retreat
I returned from my zendo’s ten-day silent retreat just yesterday, called a “sesshin” (which means “gathering the mind”). This is not my first time on sesshin, b...
More like you than you
I’ve often felt an affinity for the marginalized. It comes from an early place in my life of feeling marginalized myself — powerless or less important or unable...
I know they say this tent is waterproof but I’ve pitched it at sea.
On the meaning of the teaching of Origen of Alexandria, from his Of Tents and Wells. And so, contemplating in the Spirit these progressions, he calls them the “...
Why leave the palace?
As the story goes, Shakyamuni Buddha was a prince in northern India. Before his birth, it was prophesied that he was destined to become one of two things: a gre...
On the “broad and generous spirit…”
In my last post, I ended with Darlene Cohen on the benefits of facing our pain, rather than distracting from it or trying to push it away: …you begin to feel ge...
On entering the pain
This year I am participating in a yearlong workshop at the Village Zendo called The Path of Awakening, focusing on Zen responses to the Others we create accordi...
On obedience, attention, and freedom
It’s snowing, a lot, everywhere, so this morning I was reading Meister Eckhart, the thirteenth-century German mystic (obviously). In the first installment of hi...
Applying the compassionate infrastructure (New Year’s reboot)
And we’re back. When I first started this blog in September I had pretty grand designs for what and how I was going to write here. Looking back, I think more of...
On Columbus and a New World
So I woke up thinking about the New World, because it’s Columbus Day. The big irony is that his New World was nothing new, that he didn’t discover anything beca...