Us and Them
In light of recent events I started thinking about my own life in terms of being an immigrant. For 15 years of my life I was an immigrant and a racial minority; four years as a child in Kenya and eleven years as an adult in Japan. For the rest of my years I’ve lived […]
Big Bags of Stinking Skin
One of the times I visited Tassajara Zen Mountain Monastery in Northern California, I discovered, in their library, a little folder full of translations of articles written by Kodo Sawaki. There was no information about who translated the articles or where they came from. There was just a handwritten note that said the folder was […]
I Hate Myself
One of my relatives made the words “I hate myself” her Facebook status today. She’s 20. I totally get it. Probably the main reason I got into Zen was because I hated myself so much for plenty of good reasons. I thought maybe Zen would fix that. It didn’t. I still hate myself. What has […]
Should Plumbing Be Political?
Recently Lion’s Roar ran an article entitled Isn’t Buddhism Supposed to be Apolitical. It wasn’t really about whether Buddhism should or shouldn’t be political, but yet another justification for why Buddhism in America should embrace and espouse Left Wing politics, and specifically why Buddhist institutions should become part of the anti-Trump movement that’s currently all […]
Make America Zen Again!
I recently strongly disagreed with a priest at one of America’s biggest Zen centers who said, “Mr. Trump and his supporters are not manifesting an intention to be other than racist, ecocidal homophobes.” He said their Zen center should issue a statement saying the center, “unequivocally rejects the hateful worldview of President-Elect Donald Trump, and vows […]
