In the Japanese calendar April 8th is hanamatsuri, the flower festival honoring the birth of Gautama Siddhartha. The Buddha’s birthday is celebrated at other times in other Buddhist countries. But it seems worth a brief pause here to take a breath and to recall one world teacher who called us to attention to what is and to live a middle way. Would that we all followed those precepts… Read more

Many years ago when I was working in a bookstore in San Diego, I stumbled upon a late nineteenth century reprint of a pamphlet titled “Unitarian Christianity.” It is also sometimes called the “Baltimore sermon,” as it was preached at the ordination of Jared Sparks as minister of the congregational church in Baltimore in 1819. I was absolutely blown away by the document, and it directly led me to begin attending Unitarian Universalist services. The sermon was delivered by William... Read more

you believe your eyes, don’t you? well, that terry jones is along for the ride might give one pause… Read more

“Religions are united not by belief in God but by belief in life after death.” Stephen Batchelor One of Gautama Siddhartha’s great contributions to the spiritual quest is how he challenged the idea of some part to a person that continues past that person’s death. He denied there was some essence, a “soul” occupying our bodies like a passenger on a bus eventually departing for a new ride. At the same time, as Stephen Batchelor points out, Gautama Siddhartha wasn’t... Read more

I’ve been exchanging a few notes about our upcoming pulpit changes with my old and dear friend Gail Geisenhainer. Those who follow this blog know I’m the candidate at the First Unitarian Church of Providence. Gail is candidate at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Ann Arbor. I consider Gail one of the wise ones. And she demonstrated it once again when she mentioned in passing how one simple text was her “partner in ministry.” I suggest it’s the only leadership... Read more

Turns out today is the anniversary of when H. L. Mencken got himself arrested in Boston for selling a magazine that had been “banned in Boston.” Try as I might, my writings don’t even get a stir of annoyance from the local powers that be. I would like to think it’s because they read less than they used to… Sigh… Read more

Compassion is the very heart and soul of awakening. While meditation and reflection can make us more receptive to it, it cannot be contrived or manufactured. When it erupts within us, it feels as though we have stumbled across it by chance. And it can vanish just as suddenly as it appeared. It is glimpsed in those moments when the barrier of self is lifted and indivdual existence is surrendered to the well-being of existence as a whole. it becomes... Read more

It’s hard for me to believe it has been forty years since Martin Luther King was assassinated. I was living in Berkeley, a beginning Zen student, working in a bookstore and taking a class or two at Oakland’s Laney College in the evening. Laney had a largely black student body, in fact several of the founders of the Black Panther Party had attended there. As it turned out that wasn’t a good night to go to that particular school, at... Read more

translated by Amaravati Sangha Read more

Theodore Parker was a Unitarian minister and leader in the rising Transcendentalist movement, serving the 28th Congregational Society of Boston. He was also a vocal opponent of slavery. The Compromise of 1850 and particularly the Fugitive Slave Act put Ellen and William Craft, two of his parishioners in danger of being captured and returned to the south. He rallied support for them while at the same time in many different venues voiced his opposition to all such compromises with slavery... Read more