Yesterday afternoon I returned from a two-night “retreat” with Unitarian Universalist clergy down on Cape Cod. My use of scare quotes around the word retreat is simply because as a Zen person there’s a bit of a cognitive dissonance between my usual experience of retreat and what happens in any retreat outside my Zen context. Setting the Zen aside, it was a retreat, a withdrawal from the regular. It featured a series of presentations and breakouts by a very accomplished... Read more

DANCING IN THE KALI YUGA A Story of My Life Up Until Now James Ishmael Ford 12 May 2015 Presented as a Personal Odyssey at the Annual Spring Retreat of the Ballou Channing District Gathering of the Unitarian Universalist Minister’s Association PREAMBLE Somewhere in my adolescence I prayed a prayer. I told God that if he or she or it would just reveal himself or herself or itself, in that moment the divine could kill me. I thought it a... Read more

According to the date on the title page, an edition of the Diamond Sutra, one of the central texts of the Prajnaparamita Cycle of Mahayana Buddhism, was published on this day in 868. Making it the oldest known printed book. The book was discovered as part of the treasure trove of documents found in the Mogao caves at at Dunhuang, China by Aurel Stein in the early part of the twentieth century. Important throughout Mahayana Buddhism, this is a central... Read more

Doug Phillips has been a student of the way for many, many years. Originally an Episcopal priest and these days a practicing psychologist, he has studied the Dharma with Maurine Stuart, George Bowman, and Vimala Thakar. He received authorization as an Insight meditation teacher from Larry Rosenberg, and not long ago I gave him Dharma transmission in the Zen tradition. Doug is the principal teacher of the Empty Sky Sangha in West Cornwall, CT. And now I’m happy to announce,... Read more

John Brown, American terrorist, American hero, was born on this day in 1800. “John Brown was John the Baptist for the Christ we are to see” sang those who saw his Quixotic raid on Harper’s Ferry as the beginning of the end for slavery. And how that holds some terrible truth, a challenge to all of us who wish for a better way. I think of those who say without the Civil War slavery would have ended on its own... Read more

Pulitzer Prize winning poet, social and particularly environmental activist, and general all around Zen person, Gary Snyder was born on this day in 1930. The “poet laureate of deep ecology” is eighty-five. May he celebrate many more birthdays among us… Here Gary reflects on Jack Kerouac and a bit on the novel Dharma Bums, which as nearly everyone knows features Gary under the name Japhy Rider. And, then reading his own poem Riprap. Read more

It was on this day in 1940 that John Steinbeck was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath. This was one of the most important books I read in my adolescence, and continues to haunt me. The vidio below is of a sermon in which I spell out a bit of the why of that haunting… Read more

Willie Howard Mays, Jr, was born on this day in 1931. Arguably the best all around baseball player in history, it feels right to notice his birthday. Read more

I do love Cinco de Mayo. What a lot of folk may not know is how it is a quintessential American holiday. And by American I don’t mean that broader use standing for all of us who occupy the two continents bearing that name, I mean United Statesian. Yes, it is observed in parts of Mexico, but like with St Patrick’s Day it is more our holiday, observed by immigrants who have become American, a nostalgic nod to the motherland.... Read more

Deleted from something else I’m writing, but thanks to having a blog, it doesn’t go onto the cutting room floor. Whether it should or not, of course, is an entirely different question… My personal motto is “I’m more rational than you.” Not always true, but it annoys enough of my friends when I say it, that I like to repeat it from time to time. Now, my little assertion is grounded in some assumptions I’ve found helpful in my life,... Read more