Sir Patrick Stewart was born on this day in 1940, in Yorkshire, England. Read more

(Some of what follows has appeared in somewhat different form elsewhere before, including in my most recent book If You’re Lucky, Your Heart Will Break. But, it felt appropriate, considering the day….) Henry David Thoreau was born on this day in 1817. I was maybe fifteen, possibly sixteen when I first read Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience. I thrilled at the opening paragraph with its pure disdain for external authorities of any sort. In retrospect I realize this is the... Read more

An interesting clip from Business Insider, produced by Alex Kuzoian. The price of viewing is an advertisement. They seem to like to do things like this. Of course it is only the big five. I personally would enjoy a somewhat more nuanced picture, ideally, including the rise and spread of secularism. Still, as I said, interesting… Read more

just ’cause… Read more

I am sufficiently out of it that I was unaware there are contending Beatle’s Days out there. One is today, the 10th of July, marking their return to Liverpool following their wildly successful first tour of the United States. It is observed in, of course, Liverpool, but also in Hamburg, their other “home” city. However for reasons I don’t quite follow, the Wikipedia article on this important holiday say mostly Americans prefer to observe the 27th of February as Beatles... Read more

WHO IS THAT OTHER? A Zen Reflection That Starts With a Christian Text James Ishmael Ford The Case Wuzu said, “Shakyamuni and Maitreya are servants of another. So, tell me, who is that other?” Wumenguan, Case 45 The good old King James Version of the Bible has Paul’s first letter to Timothy assert, “For the love of money is the root of all evil…” I recall it being thundered from the pulpits of my childhood. Ours was a poor people’s... Read more

Peter Anton Orlovsky was born on this day in 1933. In 1954 he was working as an artist’s model when he met Allen Ginsberg. They began a life long relationship, which only ended with Ginsberg’s death in 1997. While they were living in Paris Ginsberg encourage Orlovsky to begin to work seriously on his poetry, which until then he simply dabbled with. As the New York Times obit says, his work was “emotionally naked, loopy and occasionally luminescent.” Overshadowed during... Read more

This is quite the day. Among many other things it is World (or, International) Chocolate Day, as well as, as pretty much any flying saucer enthusiast can tell you the day in 1947 when when a flying saucer crashed near Roswell, New Mexico. ‘Tis also in 1954 the day Elvis Presley was first heard on radio, when his freshly minted “That’s All Right” debuted on WHBQ in Memphis. Some ugly things happened on this day, as well. But, I have... Read more

A BUDDHIST WEDDING Celebrated Within the Western Tradition A Service Compiled and Edited from diverse sources by James Ishmael Ford With the assistance of Tetsugan Zummach & Dosho Port (Some years ago I composed a Wedding Service for Buddhists in the West. The following service includes a number of corrections and expansions from that earlier document suggested by the Zen priests Tetsugan Zummach & Dosho Port, and used in their 2015 wedding. While “bride” and “groom” are used in the... Read more

Inayat Khan Rehmat Khan Pathan was born in Vadodara Gujarat on this day in 1882. He is more commonly known as Hazrat Inayat Khan, Hazrat being an honorific, and sometimes by the title Pir-O-Murshid, which could be understood as senior teacher and head of a Sufi order. Inayat Khan came from a family of poets and musicians, and was himself also an initiate within three Sufi orders, although principally the Nizamiyya sub-branch of the Chisthi Order. In 1910 he came... Read more