Some years ago there was a NY Times Magazine article, “Enlightenment Therapy.” It created a bit of a stir in my circles. I wrote about it at the time, and as the subject of enlightenment or awakening in Zen has popped up in my circles recently, I thought I’d revisit what I wrote about it at the time, very slightly tweaked. The article was pretty interesting, you might want to read it. The author Chip Brown seems to have had... Read more

MARK TWAIN’S ENLIGHTENMENT EXPERIENCE A Meditation on Spirituality After Religions James Ishmael Ford 28 February 2016 Pacific Unitarian Church Rancho Palos Verdes, California I love Mark Twain. I just love Mark Twain. In fact Jan and I have made Mark Twain pilgrimages twice in our lives. The first time was a tad more than twenty years ago when we lived in Wisconsin, and I served a suburban Milwaukee congregation. During the summer hiatus in our regular services, we took US... Read more

George Herbert was an Anglican priest who spent much of his brief life serving as a parish priest, died at the age of thirty-nine on this day in 1633. He was also a poet, possibly the greatest of the crowd called Metaphysical. The Wikipedia article about Herbert tells us “Charles Cotton described him as a ‘soul composed of harmonies’. Some of Herbert’s poems have endured as popular hymns, including ‘King of Glory, King of Peace’ (Praise): ‘Let All the World... Read more

Theodore Sturgeon was a terribly important figure in my youth. His science fiction was a ubiquitous part of my reading. But, I also think his highly critical approach to everything seeped into my pores. He is more famous for “Sturgeon’s Law,” that “Ninety percent of [science fiction] is crud, but then, ninety percent of everything is crud.” Which is good. But, as the Wikipedia article on him says, his personal credo was “Ask the next question.” “He represented this credo... Read more

John Harvey Kellogg was born on this day in 1852. Dr Kellogg was in the holistic camp of his day advocating a mix of remedies for that which ills. Some of it still makes sense. Most of it does not. However, he did introduce cornflakes to the world. Read more

It was on this day in 1870 that the Reverend Hiram Rhodes Revels, after a lengthy and ugly debate was sworn in as the first African American to serve in the United States senate. In these years before the great switch, where Republicans abandoned the principals of Abraham Lincoln to become the party of Southern Reaction, and the Democrats took up the place of progressivism, that vote followed a familiar if sad pattern. Racist rhetoric fouled the hall. Against it... Read more

George Harrison would have been seventy-three today. Read more

A Report on Lay Dharma Transmission in North American Soto Zen 18 September 2006 Prepared by James Myoun Ford, chair Taitaku Pat Phelan Elihu Genmyo Smith (While written in 2006, this study has not had wide distribution. As I feel it is an important reflection on an interesting and compelling aspect of the development of Western Zen, I’m re-publishing it here…) Rosai Takashima Roshi gave Dharma transmission to Shinkaku Hunt in May, 1953, in Hawai’i. Ernest Shinkaku Hunt appears to... Read more

As it happens the good folk at Wikipedia tell us that today is Terminalia, the feast of Terminus the god of boundaries. Apparently his image is simply a post or a stone stuck in the ground, marking out, of course, boundaries. On the way of spirit we are invited to see how we are both absolutely unique, never to be repeated, and common as dirt, our selves woven out of each other and the world in a way past intimacy.... Read more

To quote from myself, because, well, because I can, in my history of Zen Buddhism come west, “Zen Master Who?” I describe the first of the several times I met Alan Watts. It was sometime, I believe, in 1969. “I was on the guest staff of the Zen monastery in Oakland led by Roshi Jiyu Kennett. I was enormously excited to actually meet this famous man, the great interpreter of the Zen way. Wearing my very best robes, I waited... Read more