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Finland! Again! and Idolatry

Finland! Again! and Idolatry

I arrived in Helsinki at about Noon on Monday. This is my fourth trip to Finland. I seem to have a following here. The very first foreign translation of my first book Hardcore Zen was into Finnish. That was astonishing because up till then all I knew about Finland was what I learned in a song […]

Secular Meditation?

Sometimes on this blog I write things very quickly without going over them with the kind of rigor I would when preparing something for a book or a magazine article. This is one of those times. It’s something I want to get off my chest right away without fussing over it too much and thus […]

The Right Way to Meditate

My friend Matt in Manchester sent me the following email: I am reading Sam Harris’s new book ‘Waking Up‘ and in the chapter entitled Meditation (page 138) he talks about the practice of Dzogchen in relation to Zen practice he says ‘Dzogchen is not vague or paradoxical.It is not like Zen,wherein a person can spend […]

Buddha Didn't Have This to Meditate About

Buddha Didn’t Have This to Meditate About

First of all I want to thank Colin. I don’t really know Colin. I don’t even know his last name. But Colin, whoever you are, you made it possible for me to meet one of my long-time idols. On Saturday night I was at the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival at the Bell House in Brooklyn […]

Interview With a Buddhist Nun

I met Gesshin (月心) Greenwood at Tassajara Zen monastery this Summer. She is an American-born Buddhist nun who currently lives in Kyoto, Japan. She trained in two very intense training monasteries in Japan and knows first hand what it’s like to do that sort of rigorous practice. Her current teacher is Shundo Aoyama, the author […]