By some forms of reckoning it was on this day, the 28th of September in the year 551 before our common era, that the sage Kǒng Fūzǐ, “Master Kǒng,” or commonly 孔子; Kǒngzǐ, or to most of us, Confucius was born. I am not regular in noting this day as it rolls around, but I think it important, and I try to do so. Each time I do I add a little information in the noticing. It’s... Read more

        “Never did I hear such language from a human being. Without one moment’s intermission, she would talk from an hour to an hour and a half, holding her audience spellbound.” A reporter’s description cited in Christianity Today Aimee Semple McPherson died on this day, the 27th of September, in 1944. The cause of death was a heart attack triggered by what is generally believed to have been an accidental overdose of sleeping pills. Her funeral was... Read more

        The Lord is good to me And so I thank the Lord For giving me the things I need The sun and rain and the apple seed Yes, He’s been good to me. John Chapman was born on this day, the 26th of September, 1774. Several different dates are given for his death. I’m going with the 18th of March, 1845. In between those events he became Johnny Appleseed. He was a couple of things in... Read more

    Tonight, the 25th of September, 2022, starts Rosh Hashanah this evening with sunset. Celebrations and observances will continue on for ten days, culminating in Yom Kippur. In the Jewish calendar these are High Holy Days, the “Days of Awe.” This Rosh Hashanah is a New Year and marks the year 5783 in the Jewish calendar… Now is the time for turning. The leaves are beginning to turn from green to red and orange. The birds are beginning to... Read more

      Selected from MOSTLY SITTING HAIKU from a Chapbook published in 1978 By Allen Ginsberg I stumbled upon these on the interwebs. Should the copyright holders object, they will be removed, promptly. But I hope they won’t. I find them delightful, expressions from the poet Allen Ginsburg’s meditation experiences, mostly under the tutelage of the now controversial Tibetan meditation teacher Chögyam Trungpa. Anyone who has sat a silent meditation retreat in the Buddhist tradition will feel some resonances.... Read more

It is said that it was on this day, the 23rd of September in 1215 that the Emperor Shizu of Yuan, the founding emperor of China’s Yuan dynasty was born. We know him best as Kublai Khan. In 1816 the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge published “an opium-induced, orientalizing fantasia of the unconscious…” The only connections between Kublai Khan and Kubla Khan are the tendrils of dreams. But, then, that might in fact encompass worlds… In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A... Read more

        Eihei Dogen died on this day, the 22nd of September, 1253, in Kyoto. He was fifty-three. And. Oh, my. What he accomplished in those fifty-three years… In his magisterial study, Dogen’s Manuals of Zen Meditation, Carl Bielefeldt begins by telling us “The Zen school is the Meditation school, and the character of Zen can be traced in the tradition of its meditation teaching.” As most people interested in the matter know, the word Zen is the... Read more

    My father James William Ford was born in New Jersey today, the 21st of September, in 1919. I don’t know all that much about his life before he married my mother. Some years ago my spouse Jan and I took genetic tests as Christmas presents for each other. One of the interesting things about how mine turned out is that I couldn’t find any other Fords. I briefly thought maybe James wasn’t my biological father. But the sad... Read more

      I find myself recalling the American Zen Master Kyogen Carlson, who died eight years ago, yesterday. Kyogen was one of the senior Zen teachers in North America, respected and loved across the continent. He was also my friend. My history of Zen in the West, Zen Master Who? contains the bare outline of his life. “Gary Alan Carlson was born in Los Angeles on October 8, 1948. His parents met in the Yukon during military service. His... Read more

        In some ways this blog is where I process my inner life… A lot of the content of this processing turns on expressing the depths of my gratitude for the Zen way while at the same time seeking to clarify precisely what it is within Zen that has been so transformative for me. Endless bows of gratitude, and with that endless work unfolding… Another part of it has been occupied with my lifetime of processing my... Read more