You Are a Caramel Crunch Donut You’re a complex creature, and you’re guilty of complicating things for fun. You’ve been known to sit around pondering the meaning of life… Or at times, pondering the meaning of your doughnut. To frost or not to frost? To fill or not to fill? These are your eternal questions. What Donut Are You? Thank you Hafidah! Read more

I have as those who follow this blog know after much coming and going thrown my lot in with Barack Obama. And no regrets. I think he’s going to become the next president of the United States. And, I can’t wait… That said, I for one, continue to feel quite positively about Hillary Clinton. (And wish she would become vice-president…) First, a quote (thank you Wild Hunt) from Starhawk, advising Senator Clinton on how she should approach the campaign. Great... Read more

The term Universalism is most commonly reserved for those Christians who hold that in the end all souls will be saved. It is also one of the two currents of that stream of Western liberal religion that became the Unitarian Universalist Association. Within Unitarian Universalism there has been a dynamic engagement with what it means to be a spiritual or religious person. Following this path the institution that is Unitarian Universalism moved in the past century from being a liberal... Read more

Danny Fisher posted the following at his blog. I couldn’t rewrite it better. So, here it is… Yesterday, Amnesty International put out an urgent action appeal regarding U Gambira, the 27-year-old Buddhist monk who led last year’s monastic uprising in Myanmar as head of the All-Burma Monks Alliance (A.B.M.A.). Amnesty considers U Gambira and two other protest leaders (including his brother) to be prisoners of conscience in danger of (further) torture and ill-treatment and even death. Buddhist monk U Gambira... Read more

Sarah Fuller Flower Adams was born on this day in 1805 in England. Originally an actress, famous for her portrayal of Lady Macbeth. A life-long Unitarian she devoted the balance of her life to civil and religious liberty and was responsible for the establishment of various Sunday schools and benevolent societies. A prolific poet she is best known, perhaps, as the author of the hymn Nearer My God to Thee, which is loosely based on parts of the 28th chapter... Read more

There are of course any number of explorations as to what it means to take the Bodhisattva vow, such as our little gift from the Beastie Boys. It is the vow of Great Way Buddhism to forgo final enlightenment until all achieve that bliss together. In Zen this is considered an inside joke, as it is the Zen view we are already all awakened. So what to worry about, how can we act in any other way? Of course as... Read more

While looking at other sites nominated for Blogisattva awards I found Michael’s One Foot In Front of The Other. He died on the fifteenth of January having just taken the Buddhist precepts. His last contribution was this poem Fatigue. I wish I’d found him earlier… Looking in my bathroom mirrorI see the steady progress of deathas he moves like an eclipseacross my face My skin grows more tautmy beard is shot through with graymy eyes are increasingly bloodshotI can’t recognize... Read more

If you’re interested in Buddhist blogging, a very good way to get a sense of the field is through the Blogisattva awards nominees. And I have to add, I’m deeply honored to have been nominated in several categories… Read more

Yesterday the following appeared in my email box. Sent to me by a good friend, that old Dharmabum, Uncle Weasel. He claims he saw it written on a wall in some out of the way coffee shop… So now, because of things you have heard that resonate with some bone deep in your spirit, you have become curious. You want to know how to do what is called Zen. You are already holding what you are looking for. It is... Read more

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