That Which Has a Beginning and Ending in Time is Not Real?
I did an event at a Finnish sauna last week. In Finland saunas aren’t just places weird health-nuts go and sweat by themselves. They are communal gathering spaces. People have parties in them, get spiritual in them, all kinds of stuff. I met one Finnish guy who was born in a sauna. This particular Zen […]
The Responsibilities of Being a Zen Student
A Zen teacher is someone who has done zazen for a long time and allows — tolerates may be a better word — others to join their practice. A few years ago I did a talk at a Zen center in New York City where several people seemed to be hostile to what I had […]
Greed for Good
In one of my dokusans at my recent retreat in Lammi, Finland a guy named Larri made an interesting observation. In a talk at the retreat I’d mentioned the formula used by Buddhists to talk about the three poisons. They are usually listed as “greed, hatred and delusion” or sometimes “greed, anger and delusion.” There are a few […]
Zen Economics
A couple days ago my friend Gesshin Greenwood forwarded this article from Tricycle Magazine to me. The following is my response to her. As you will note, I was unable to reread the Tricycle article before sending this reply. I have decided not to reread it before posting this on my blog, so there may […]
Enlightenment and Cat Poop
I’ve had a few male cats in my life. There was the late, lamented Shithead who would hump my foot every morning. There was Crum who lived with me in Akron and liked to bite my then-girlfriend’s toes in the morning when she slept over. There was Boy Kitty with whom I shared an apartment […]
