The issue in our household is finding recipes that work both for my spouse and I who like it hot with my mother in law who is pretty sure black pepper is the outer range of what humans can tolerate. As we live together we need to find dishes that are flavorful but have no significant bite. I compared a couple of recipes then added my own twist. This is really to capture a very positive experience for our own... Read more
King James (the sixth of Scotland and first of England) not long crowned, planned a conference he set for November, 1603. They were to discuss sundry matters involving the relatively new church of which he was now head. While the ball started rolling when Henry VIII wanted a divorce, it really only took its broad shape under his younger daughter’s reign. James’ elder cousin and predecessor. However, due to an outbreak of plague the Hampton Court Conference in fact met... Read more
I find myself thinking of Origen The German Lutheran church celebrates his life on the 27th of April. Sometimes called the greatest mind of early Christian antiquity, Origen lived between the late second and the middle of the third centuries of our common era. He lived principally in Alexandria. Ordained a priest, he was always a controversial figure. Some of his teachings were condemned even in his lifetime. Origen’s theological speculations were complex. The two I find interesting are his... Read more
“Thou art the unanswered question; Couldst see thy proper eye, Alway it asketh, asketh; And each answer is a lie. So take thy quest through nature, It through thousand natures ply; Ask on, thou clothed eternity; Time is the false reply.” – from “The Sphynx,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson It’s not been a full forty-eight hours ago I set up my Unanswered Question spiritual newsletter at Substack. It’s meant to be different than my blog, which is scattershot and filled... Read more
The 25th of April is celebrated as the feast of the Evangelist Mark, also called St Mark, and John Mark. He is the tradition founder of the see of Alexandria, one of the five central churches of the early Christian communion. Which, of course, makes me think of the Gospel of Mark. When Pier Paolo Pasolini made his 1964 masterwork, the Gospel According to Matthew, he chose that gospel as the basis because “John was too mystical, Mark too vulgar,... Read more
Ram Mohan Roy (also spelled Rammohan Roy) was born in Radhanagar, Bengal, on the 22nd of April, in 1772. A towering intellect, seeker of justice, and religious reformer, Roy deserves to be more widely known outside of India. He is generally credited as coining the term “Hinduism” as an overall term for the family of religions on the Indian subcontinent. Frankly for that alone… Roy has been called the Father of the Bengali Renaissance, an amazing cultural, religious, intellectual, and... Read more
The 21st of April is an interesting day in the Christian calendar. During the Reformation the small town of Pińczów in southern Poland was a hotbed of radical thought. Lots of Calvinsits. But also some rather more daring Christian thinkers as well. The good folk held some twenty-two synods there over the years. On the 21st of April in 1562, twenty-eight clergy including Stanisław Paklepka and Gregory Paul of Brzeziny and twelve laymen gathered in synod, voted to reject the... Read more
What follows is a Dharma talk delivered by Sensei Edward Sanshin Oberholtzer at the regular Saturday morning gathering of the Empty Moon Zen sangha on the 20th of April, 2024. I’m sure that one of those gateway drugs that nudged me in the direction of Zen practice was a PBS series of Japanese films, introduced by Edward O. Reischower, and broadcast in the mid 1970’s on the Boston station, WGBH. It featured films by Ozu and Ichikawa, including that Buddhist... Read more
Swami Vivekananda was a close disciple of the Nineteenth century Hindu saint Ramakrishna. He became one of the founders of the Ramakrishna Order, which today is represented in the West by the Vedanta Society. The swami is justly considered a major spiritual figure on the world stage at the turn of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries. What follows is a talk the swami gave at, I believe, Union Square Hall in San Francisco on the 18th of March, in 1900. This... Read more
Two things have been burrowing into my heart of late. The first happened with a manuscript I’ve written for an introduction to Zen scheduled to be published next year. A number of my early readers commented on the Christian references in it. One noted straight out that it was “Christian Zen.” The confusion for me was that I never saw it that way. I thought I was simply enriching a pretty straight forward Mahayana Buddhist pespective. And if there were... Read more
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