The Poison Arrow Parable Revised
There’s an old Buddhist story called the Poison Arrow Parable. It goes like this: “Suppose a man is wounded by a poisoned arrow, and his friends bring him to a surgeon. Suppose the man should say, ‘I will not let this arrow be taken out until I know who shot me; which caste he is […]
No Rank and No Identity
A long time ago, Zen Master Rinzai said, “There is a true person of no rank who is constantly coming and going from the portals of your face. Who is that true person of no rank?” A few centuries later we get the story of Yu the Doughnut Maker (aka Yu Daopo). It can be […]
Comparative Suffering
Yesterday I put up a video in which I tried to quote Zen teacher and author Charlotte Joko Beck. The way I remember the quote is, “We all have just enough suffering.” I don’t know if Joko Beck ever actually said that. I’ve Googled everything I can think of to try to find that quotation […]
Reflections on Mother’s Day
Mother’s Day has been a tough holiday for me for a long time. My mother died in January of 2007. But she had been dying for nearly twenty years by that point. Her death was at least a relief from the suffering she’d been through for many years. Yesterday was a particularly difficult Mother’s Day […]
Love and Gravity
A few weeks ago, Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, author, science communicator, and director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City tweeted, “The Universe is blind to our sorrows and indifferent to our pains. Have a nice day!” Comedian and Canadian Norm Macdonald replied, “Neil, there is a flaw in your little aphorism that seems […]
