All summer I made friends With the creatures nearby – They flowed through the fields And under the tent walls, Or padded through the door, Grinning through their many teeth, Looking for seeds, Suet, sugar; muttering and humming, Opening the breadbox, happiest when There was milk and music. But once In the night I heard a sound Outside the door, the canvas Bulged slightly – something Was pressing inward at eye level. I watched, trembling, sure I had... Read more

    It’s November 27th! And with that, once again, the blessings of the saints Barlaam & Josaphat are upon us! This is flat out my favorite of all Christian holidays. And I like to remind people of the details of this original Christian Buddhist mashup. So, please forgive the repetition parts of this small sharing. I do add bits pretty much every time I note this festival of the heart. In the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic church as... Read more

      In preparation for Thanksgiving, along with getting ready for the family gathering, where my spouse Jan & I are the cooks (we appear to be the only people in the family who aspire to taking care of the vegans and the folk who need blood at every meal), I reviewed some of my meditations about this complicated holiday over the years. I saw a small anecdote that I recorded a couple of years ago, and it caught... Read more

        Keiji Nishitani died on this day, the 24th of November, in 1990. If you’re unfamiliar with him, and you are interested in Zen, I suggest you may want to learn more. He was one of the principal figures in the establishment of the Kyoto School, which the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, tells us was “a group of 20th century Japanese thinkers who developed original philosophies by creatively drawing on the intellectual and spiritual traditions of East... Read more

        Fifty-eight years ago today, on the 22nd of November, 1963, in Dallas, the president of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated. It was a lifetime ago. Actually two lifetimes. The parents of adults today were not yet born. Fifty-eight years is a long time. It made me wonder and I googled to see if there was anything on the actual number of people who have a first hand memory of the event. As it... Read more

        GIVING THANKS A Meditation for an Antifa Sunday James Ishmael Ford First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles 21 November 2021   I began an earlier draft for today’s message with a litany listing the many wrongs with this world on display just this past week. It began with Kyle Rittenhouse and ran for about three hundred words. There was a second draft with an even longer list. It’s easy to compile these things pretty much any... Read more

      Leo Tolstoy died on this day, the 20th of November, in 1910. He is one of those complicated figures, difficult, and yet shining with might be called the harsh light of the divine.  In his Confession and Other Religious Writings, he offers something I’ve found an absolute delight. It’s sort of a mashup of Christian and Buddhist wisdom. At least as I read it… “There is an old Eastern fable about a traveler who is taken unawares... Read more

        In the Record of Zhaozhou there’s a lovely conversation. Once when still studying with his master Zhaozhou asked Nanquan, “Mind is not Buddha; knowing is not the way. Is this correct or not? Naquan replied, “It is not correct.” Zhaozhou continued, “Then what is my error? I’m desperate to understand.” Nanquan replied, “Mind is not Buddha; knowing is not the way.” A classic Zen response. And it easy is to see it as one more opaque... Read more

      An old friend asked why I consider the Four Bodhsattva Vows so important, and why I feel it a good thing to recite them daily. To me the four vows are important because they remind me that the intimate way involves all of us. I love the inside joke that we cannot actually achieve liberation without everyone coming along, and at the same time that victory was won before the creation of the stars and planets. For... Read more