Basil, lilacs, and sun. Saturday morning I rose early, around 5am, to watch the sunrise from the sun porch at my new place. I’m not much of a morning person, typically, but on days like this I wish I were. Nonetheless I was grateful for the opportunity to pretend to be one, even if only for one day. The crispness and the quiet of the morning is something to be cherished. The calm of the world helps calm the mind... Read more

My friend Margaret recently wrote a lovely poem about enjoying an evening on her balcony on the Mediterranean island of Gozo, Malta. I was reminded both of a sort of stream-of-consciousness quasi-poem I wrote in March and of the richness borne of mindful watching and listening. And I lamented slightly, that this richness which grows deeper with practice has been somewhat missing in my life of late. So the most difficult thing is always to keep your beginner’s mind. There... Read more

I owe the first to Will Harryman of Integral Options Cafe. It is http://www.opensourcebuddhism.org/ – filled with great up to date and interdisciplinary (i.e. interesting) videos and papers examining Buddhism. The second I owe to my friend Matt, with whom I have been studying Pali and the Metta Sutta for the last 4 months or so. That one is http://www.ashokaedu.net/coursesM/18/mettasutta1.htm – an incredibly detailed and interactive study of the Metta Sutta. Brilliant. Simply brilliant. As Matt said to me when... Read more

Missing London. Next week there is a lecture on religion in the “Old Theatre,” of the “Old building,” at the London School of Economics. England is Old. There is a certain ineffable charm to that oldness. And then there is Montana. Old too, but in a different way. Geologically. One feels the age of the earth here far more than the age of civilization. The same sun sets and the same moon rises. Read more

Should I go? The program looks incredible: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/kant/ And featured will be at least one of my Kant heroes, Onora O’Neill. We’ll see. Perhaps by mid-June I’ll have a confidently large body of work and can come back to London for my M.Phil upgrade (which basically means presenting a completed chapter and further outlines to my two advisors in London). It’s a bit earlier than I had been shooting for, roughly September/October, but it’s in the ballpark. Plus it would... Read more

Israeli coffee, French bread, Italian oil, Montana’s big skies and chirping birds, me, checking flights for China. Quite an international morning. I think I’m gonna love the sun porch at my new place. Scratch that, I think I’m gonna love ALL of my new place.Now for some thesis work… Read more

Sometimes I don’t know how people with real jobs or those little things called children do it. I’m exhausted. And all I did today was really not all that much (though there is that voice in my head that reassures me, yes, you did a lot.). On what felt like my first day off in over a week, my biggest accomplishment today comes down to carpet space. That’s right, carpet space. This morning I had little to none, now I... Read more

I stumbled across the second video below tonight (thank you internets!) and thought it well worth sharing. Then, of course, I thought of the third one below (linked), and then the first. Typically I’m more linear than this, I swear. So, without further adieu, we head to Belgium:Next, to France (though it reminds me just as well of the London underground):And finally to England proper. In case you haven’t seen THIS (Susan Boyle on “Britain’s Got Talent”), it’s a bit... Read more

We had yet another glorious sunset over Missoula last night. Julie and I sat in meditation, each taking peeks out toward the brilliant yellow-purple-blue sky. By the time we made it to an area to photograph it, most of the brilliance had faded (a good lesson in not grasping or trying to capture every beautiful moment in photos). But as the light grew thinner we were treated to a rare (for Missoula) show of lightning on the horizon and an... Read more

Zazen on the Mountain The birds have vanished down the sky.Now the last cloud drains away.We sit together, the mountain and me,until only the mountain remains. – Li Po Read more