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YOUTUBE CHANNEL

One of my friends in German mentioned that he did not know I had a YouTube channel. He’s a regular reader of this blog but he had no idea. I HAVE A YOUTUBE CHANNEL!!!!! Here’s the latest video. Weirdos & Traveling in Europe https://youtu.be/yz9Y5p0EVvE   Gotta Go!   EUROPEAN (Jijuyu Zanmai) TOUR 2018 June 17, 2018 […]

Anthony Bourdain and Suicide

I’ve written about suicide a number of times on this blog. But now it’s trending thanks to the suicides of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade. I had never heard of Kate Spade until people started talking about her suicide on social media. I had heard of Anthony Bourdain. But until he died, all I could […]

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

My father was born on June 5, 1941. I’m at Benediktushof, a meditation retreat center near Würzburg, Germany right now. I can’t call him to wish him a happy birthday because it’s too hard to get a decent phone signal out here. Besides, this is supposed to be a place of silence. So this blog […]

The Way of Receiving and Using the Self (aka Jijuyo Zanmai or Jijuyu Zanmai)

The Way of Receiving and Using the Self (Jijuyo Zanmai or Jijuyu Zanmai) is one of Dogen’s most important works. It’s the second section of an essay called Bendowa, which means something like A Talk About Practicing the Way (of Zazen). On my current tour of Europe, I have decided that every talk I do […]

The Ego Tunnel

The Ego Tunnel

I’ve been reading a book called The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger. I heard about this book when I randomly looked for podcasts about science and philosophy to accompany a session on the elliptical machines at my local 24 Hour Fitness center. The podcast I chose featured Mr. Metzinger talking about his book. He said […]