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“The most solid comfort is the thought that the business of one’s life is to help in some small way to reduce the sum of…degradation and misery on the face of this beautiful earth.” — Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) The business of one’s life is a very

My teacher, Shohaku Okumura, was supporting his zazen and translation work with traditional Buddhist begging practice (takuhatsu) on the streets of Osaka when a boy, about 10 years old, came up to him as he stood in his robes, holding out his bowl, and said, “You want money, don’t

Toilet, Point Reyes I’ve been practicing zen for two decades now, and in honor of this anniversary, I wanted to write about how I got started. I used to do black-and-white photography and built a darkroom in my house. A photographer friend came over sometimes to use the darkroom,

“During our dependent and vulnerable childhoods we develop the psychological, behavioral, and emotional composite that we later mistake for ourselves.” — Dr. Gabor Mate   In zen, one’s “true self” is often explained as “no self,” or a self so interconnected with and interdependent on everything else in the universe that

Dome of Glass, Tacoma   “What’s the most liberating thought you’ve ever had?” This question was passed along by Rob Brezsny, author of the most liberating words I’ve ever read: You do not have to think thoughts that make you sad and tormented. You do not have to

“[Pauline] Oliveros’s compositions…can’t be disrupted. If anything, they are enriched by interference. I listen to them in an illusion of an apartment…within vomiting distance of six late-night bars. I’m not comfortable drowning out noise with louder noise; it makes me feel claustrophobic. A far better

William Kentridge, drawing for The Magic Flute. A bird in the hand, tamed, and the birdcatcher feels he’s succeeded. But who’s caught whom?   Akiba Roshi said the other day that everything happens within the body of buddha, which is the world. I understood him to mean not only

Buddhist priest’s robe from Edo period   ‘A messy, practical, beautiful type of perfection can be realized through a patient, faithful, dogged accumulation of the imperfect.’ — Rob Brezsny   A hand-sewn okesa, or Buddha’s robe, is a fine example of ‘a patient, faithful, dogged accumulation of the imperfect.’ I was

In view of our recent election, I wanted to re-post this excerpt from a talk I gave on September 11, 2011.   I was born in New York City. My brother is a police officer there. Ten years ago today, he was heading home after working the night shift when he