William Laud was born on this day, the 7th of October, in 1573. He was born into a family of clothiers, attended local schools, and then studied at St John’s College, in Oxford. He took his BA in 1594, his MA in 1598, and his doctorate in 1608. He was ordained deacon in January and priest on the 5th of Apirl, in 1601. In 1611 Laud was elected president of St John’s college. His ecclesiastical career proceeded apace, he was... Read more
Today, the 4th of October, is celebrated as the feast of St Francis throughout the Western Christian churches. Many years ago I ran across a book describing a visit to Japan sometime before the second world war. I don’t recall a lot about it. Except, that is, for one thing. Which I’ve never forgotten. The writer described encountering a small Buddhist society whose members were following an adaptation of the rule of St Francis. I’ve... Read more
On Wednesday morning, the 27th of September, Jan drove me to the Burbank airport where I flew north to San Jose, changed planes, then continued on to Portland. There I was picked up by my friend, colleague in UU world, and in the Zen universe my senior student and an apprentice teacher, Janine Larsen. We paused for lunch in Portland, and then she took me the sixty seven or... Read more
Annie Wood was born on this day, the 1st of October, in 1847. Under another name she would eventually gain fame as a journalist, and later a theosophist as well as a tireless worker for social justice, including working for Irish self-rule, and eventually a leader in the early Indian struggle for home rule. At 20 she married an Anglican priest, Frank Besant. And it is under that name, Annie... Read more
Jalaladin Muhammad Balkhi, the wondrous Jalaladin Rumi was born on this day, the 30th of September, in 1207. I write about him every once in a while. Here, for instance, I devoted a whole dharma talk to him. In 2007 he got a lot of press as “America’s most beloved poet.” And you know, he probably still is. Rumi was a Muslim theologian, sometimes these days people slide over this fact while celebrating that other... Read more
Satya Narayana Goenka died on this day, the 29th of September, 2013, at his Mumabi home. He was survived by his wife Elaichi Devi Goenka, six sons, and a generation of Vipassana meditation practitioners. It is probably not possible to overstate his importance at the foundation of the modern insight meditation movement. He trained more than 1300 “assistant teachers,” who conduct retreats led by, at least as counted at Wikipedia, by 120,000 people a... Read more
Jan and I were at a gigantic annual booksale in Santa Barbara. We go there every year. This time was difficult as we are in the midst of dramatically shrinking our personal library. But. Well. There we were. I was halfheartedly poking through the books when I saw the title Christ the Eternal Tao. I poked through it. The author is Hieromonk Damascene, a priest in the Serbian Orthodox Church, and a disciple of and biographer of the... Read more
(A sermon by James Ishmael Ford, delivered at the Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena, on the 24th of September, 2023) *** One day while walking quietly together, out of the silence the Buddha’s attendant Ananda declared, “Teacher, to have companions and comrades on the great way is so amazing! I have come to realize that friendship is fully half of an authentic spiritual life. They proceeded along quietly for a while more, before out... Read more
I saw a huge form, rounded and shadowy, and shaped like an egg… Its outer layer consisted of an atmosphere of bright fire with a kind of dark membrane beneath it… From the outer atmosphere of fire, a wind blew storms. And from the dark membrane beneath, another membrane raged with further storms which moved out in all directions of the globe. Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, Book One, Vision Three It’s been such an... Read more
The other day I came across a wonderful little essay “The Minimum Working Hypothesis,” It was Aldous Huxley’s attempt at providing a core to his belief in a perennial wisdom. It triggered a wave of thoughts for me. And in particular how much I owe to him and two of his colleagues Gerald Heard and Christopher Isherwood. One more distantly, but two inescapably. It inspired me to pause and gather a few thoughts about these three... Read more
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