So, once again, my old friend Jim Austin was in town. He co-led a workshop at the Cumberland Zen Center on Saturday, stayed on to give a talk at the Brown Medical School on Monday, and today I picked him up at the school’s inn to have lunch together and then to drive him to the airport. As it was early and the airport is only half an hour away, we decided to throw out fates to the winds, drive... Read more

A good Zen teacher speaking about that which he knows… Read more

Today is the birthday of the French mystic and scholar Rene Guenon. He was a leading part of a school of thought, Perennialism, or the Traditionalist School, that while not well known outside the realm of religious studies has had considerable impact on contemporary religious thinking. This school produced some prodigious thinkers, ranging from Frithjof Schoun to Ananda Coomaraswamy to Titus Burkhardt, to Seyyed Hossein Nasir to Huston Smith. The Wikipedia article attempts to summarize Perennialism as defined by Guenon.... Read more

If you are interested in koan introspection practice, the Western master John Tarrant is doing some very intriguing things these days. A master of the Harada-Yasutani reform of Hakuin’s koan curriculum, arguably the most subtle and creative of koan teachers in the West, author of Bring Me the Rhinoceros, and my principle teacher, John has of late been playing with public koan work. I don’t see it as a substitute for the traditional forms, nor do I think he does,... Read more

A rare find with some actual inside Zen humor, and at no extra charge a little real Zen here and there. I enjoyed it, particularly the comparison between Zen and TM (registered trademark), and especially their tip of the hat to the wondrous Leonard Cohen… (Now, a serious warning to readers of this blog who know it is generally G rated: lots and lots of smutty language in this video. Doesn’t appear to have been made for people over thirty…) Read more

Neil Young Thanks for the music! Read more

I posted a longer version of this once before. Sadly that one has been taken down, probably kept too much of the show for legal purposes… Episode ten of season one, is, to my mind, one of the finest shows of a truly great series. It just seems right to post it again, if this shorter version, today while many thoughts go to conflicts past and present and what happens to the veterans. This one is for you, Dad… Read more

I just sent the following letter to the editor to the Providence Journal. If you live in the state, I hope you will consider similar notes to various venues… I was profoundly saddened to learn of Governor Carcieri’s veto of H 5294, which would have allowed domestic partners to claim the bodies of their loved ones. The bill was the legislature’s response to the Kafkaesque nightmare Mark Goldberg endured trying to claim the body of his partner of seventeen years.... Read more

On this day in 1793, the revolutionary French Convention proclaimed the investiture of a goddess of reason. Her image was installed on the high altar of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Certainly an interesting eruption of rational religion in the midst of the revolution. Short lived, the atheistic cult of the goddess was suppressed by order of Robespierre who wanted a cult of the supreme being instead… Sadly, what could have been a very interesting experiment in rational... Read more

On this day in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell… A glorious day. No doubt. Full stop. And then we go on… And, sadly, I fear the wrong lessons have been held up. Rather than a celebration of human nobility, of our amazing possibilities, a narrow view of what we should be about crows its victory. In modern times it appears two extreme philosophies have pitted themselves against each other. The one based in fear and the other in greed. The... Read more