Guided Meditation and Crooked Cucumbers
When people request me to “lead meditation” what they often mean is that they want me to do a guided mediation. Guided meditation is all the rage these days. So much so that I often encounter people who have no idea that there is any other way to meditate. They are shocked when they come to […]
Noah Levine Vs. Jack Kornfield
On February 22, 2019, two days ago as I write this, Jack Kornfield and the Spirit Rock organization announced that, “(Noah) Levine is no longer part of the Spirit Rock teaching lineage, no longer enjoys the support of its teachers, and may no longer claim any association or connection with Spirit Rock or Dr. Kornfield. […]
Abortion and Buddhism Part 2
I wanted to re-visit the issue of abortion and Buddhism, which I wrote about a couple weeks ago. People often ask me for the Buddhist view on some subject. It’s always difficult to answer this because Buddhism is not like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, in that there is no book that is universally accepted by […]
Is Consciousness Primary?
Last weekend I put up a video on my YouTube channel about a TED Talk by a guy named Donald Hoffman. Hoffman is a professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California at Irvine. The TED Talk he gave was called “Do We See Reality As It Is?” In the talk Prof. Hoffman gets […]
If Zazen is Good for Nothing, Why Do It?
Someone asked me recently, if zazen is good for nothing, why do it? Kodo Sawaki, my ordaining teacher’s first teacher, said, “Zazen is good for nothing.” But Sawaki was a student of the teachings of Dogen Zenji. And Dogen said, “When even for a moment you express the Buddha’s seal by sitting upright in Samadhi […]
