Dizang asked Fayan, “Where are you going?” Fayan answered, “Around on pilgrimage.” Dizang then asked, “What is the purpose of pilgrimage?” Fayan replied, “I don’t know.” Dizang said, “Not knowing is most intimate.” Book of Serenity, Case 20 (What follows is a passage from Henry David Thoreau’s lecture, Walking. He drew partially from his journals and in total seemed to have worked on it for several years. The complete essay ws first delivered as a talk at the Concord Lyceum... Read more
Harriet Martineau, British novelist, lecturer, abolitionist and theological thinker was born on the 12th of June, in 1802. She was also a Unitarian, a naturalist, and, eventually an atheist. Her influences within the Unitarian world would be immeasurable. She’s always been a favorite of mine. And I try to notice when this day rolls around… The family were active English Unitarians of Huguenot descent, her father a deacon at the famed Octagon Chapel in Norwich. The family was comfortably middle... Read more
I’m deeply interested in religious syncretisms. Possibly my favorite is the Luminous Religion, a Nestorian mission to China which flourished between the seventh and tenth centuries. Next to nothing was known about this mission beyond the so-called Nestorian Stele, which spoke of a missionary bishop named Aluoben and his mission’s welcome. That is until the Taoist monk Wang Yuanlu’s famous discovery of the cave library at Dunhuang in 1900. Among the astonishing cache were a handful of texts. What they... Read more
Kitaro Nishida died on the 7th of June 1945. He brought a deep commitment to Zen Buddhism and western philosophical disciplines together. The founder of what has come to be called the Kyoto School, Nishida has been described as the most influential Japanese philosopher of the twentieth century. His ashes were divided into three parts. The first interred at the family plot. The second at the Rinzai monastery Myoshinji. And the third at Tokeiji temple, where the funeral was performed.... Read more
Allen Ginsberg was born on the 3rd of June, in 1926, in Newark, New Jersey. His father was a poet and school teacher, while his mother was an activist and Marxist. He had a brother Eugene. His mother’s schizophrenia was a constant issue within the family. Her illness would be a recurrent theme in his writing. As a teen Ginsberg began publishing poems in the local newspaper, the Paterson Morning Call. He attended Columbia University, graduating in 1948. While at... Read more
I’ve been thinking about foolish wisdom. While this is another season, it made me recall April 1st. That day marked out as many things. For one it’s the Assyrian New Year. For another it’s the feast for Mary of Egypt, a rather interesting desert mother. I also like to note it’s Edible Book day. And, of course, it’s April Fool’s Day. The only day in the year most everyone fact checks. (And, yes. I got confused with what first day of... Read more
The novelist Lidia Yuknavitch tells how once in her youth, “Joan of Arc visited me in a dream—in the dream, I was standing in our front yard and our house was on fire. She stepped out of the burning house and said ‘No one is coming to save you.’” Joan comes to us in dreams. She can do that. And those words. Well, if anyone knows those words, it would be Joan. The 30th of May is observed as a... Read more
As I sense the falling sands in my hourglass slipping away, over the past couple of years my focus on politics has begun to wane in favor of the burning questions of life and death itself. These questions and our social lives, our political lives are, of course, not unrelated. But for me my heart is more and more focused on what are perhaps best called spiritual concerns. I am drawn ever more to the intimate path, to contemplation and... Read more
Trinity Sunday. The old joke has it that on Trinity Sunday the congregations in the vast majority of Christian churches around the globe will be hearing some heresy or another. The Trinity is a passing strange thing. A wonderful attempt at at least approaching the mystery. And, so, perhaps its not a bad thing for a Unitarian minister and Zen teacher to offer a reflection. One more attempt… God. A word that calls forth pain and joy. Hope and fear. And... Read more
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on the 25th of May, in 1803. I try to note it every year as it arrives. Emerson was a central founder of Unitarian Transcendentalism. For most of America, Transcendentalism was a literary movement. However, in fact it was a theological and spiritual revolution within American Unitarianism and only incidentally a literary phenomenon. I often think of how Zen’s rise touched art and literature in China, Japan, and Korea while actually being about something else.... Read more
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