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Being a Famous Zen Master

Being a Famous Zen Master

Recently, I’ve been sharing chapters I wrote for a proposed “Zen self help book” that I never finished. At the time I uploaded the previous installment of this blog, I thought I’d already found all of the chapters of my attempted “self help book,” but I was wrong! I found this in another file folder […]

How Not to Waste Time

How Not to Waste Time

Here is the last bit of my attempted “self-help” book that I found when I went looking for it a few months ago. This piece appeared in Tricycle magazine in 2012, so you may have seen it before there. Looking over these chapters again, I think maybe I should try to finish this book someday. […]

Five Sure Fire Tips to Get on the Cushion Every Day

Five Sure Fire Tips to Get on the Cushion Every Day

Here’s another section of the self-help book I tried to write, but never finished. This piece was published somewhere, but I can’t remember where. I think they might have retitled it “A Minty Fresh Mind.” Maybe it was Tricycle’s website? I can’t remember. But here it is again! So now you’re convinced. You’ve read the […]

Success is Not Success

Success is Not Success

In keeping with my theme of presenting chapters I’ve written from books I never finished, here’s another chapter from the self-help book I tried to write but never finished. Maybe I should finish this book one of these days… If you want to write a popular self help book you need to appear to be […]

Goals Just Get in the Way

Goals Just Get in the Way

Here is another piece from my file of unused writing. I was looking at some self-help books one day at a bookstore and noticing that most of them seemed to me to be full of really bad advice. I thought maybe I could write a better kind of self-help book. I didn’t get very far […]