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January 2017

January 18, 2017

Random Wednesday: Leave The Lights On, Hating Yourself, and Cops For Criminal Justice Reform

Today I made the random decision to leave my holiday lights on until Imbolc. (It's...

January 12, 2017

Random Wednesday: The Woman in the Moon, The Awfulness of Jeff Sessions, and Mystic Plumbers

Rather than allowing some to only contemplate the infinite and others to only fix drains,...

January 08, 2017

Right Recollection: Beyond Mindfulness in the New Year

Mindfulness is big these days. While that's not awful -- maybe a focused corporate raider...

December 2016

December 21, 2016

Falling Down, Getting Up

Whether we've failed once or seven times or a thousand, the thing we need to...

October 2016

October 25, 2016

Samhain in the Hospital: My Mother Is Not Dead

And it's occurred to me that the hospital is a liminal space: between life and...

October 17, 2016

One Cup of Coffee

But now I could lose it right here in the cafeteria over this empty coffeepot....

September 2016

September 08, 2016

What Do You Mean, “Zen”? (or, Dharma Burger Toilets)

The term is often misused in amusing or bemusing ways in marketing in the West,...

August 2016

August 13, 2016

Paradoxes in the Path

So there are some logical reasons why you might get contradictory instructions. But there are...

July 2016

July 06, 2016

Attachment and Razors

So this razor has been up against my face (and occasionally other body parts) for...

June 2016

June 20, 2016

Ryōkan’s Moon

"I'm sorry that you've come all this way to see me, and I have nothing...

April 2016

April 09, 2016

What Is A Black Belt? Initiation in the Martial Arts

Those who don't train or are new to the martial arts often think of a...

March 2016

March 08, 2016

Distracting Thoughts In Meditation

It's a funny thing about those inner voices. Many voices together make an incomprehensible noise....

January 2016

January 18, 2016

One Thousand Punches, One Hell of a Bird

Over the past few years my sensei has instituted a tradition of starting our kagami...

January 13, 2016

David Bowie: One Wave Sets Thousands In Motion

I never knew David Bowie, was not even a devoted fan, and didn't really have...

January 10, 2016

Defending the Non-Self

So which self are you going to defend? This is our koan as martial artists,...

December 2015

December 17, 2015

The Gifts in Hotei’s Bag — And In Yours

We forget that the things we do are special, because they are ordinary to us.

November 2015

November 04, 2015

Ten Years Ago Today I Decided To Write A Book

That moment was in November 2005, over a few days during my second trip to...

October 2015

October 01, 2015

Umpqua: Stopping the Spear

On the first Thursday of the month, I usually do a meditation session with my...

August 2015

August 11, 2015

Why I Am Still a Zen Pagan Taoist Atheist Discordian

I look back at this after fifteen years, and it’s not terrible. I’ve come to...

July 2015

July 31, 2015

Psychedelics Aren’t Zen — But That Doesn’t Mean They’re Bad

If this sort of experience is the goal of Zen practice, and if the psychedelic...

July 18, 2015

You Don’t Make the Grass Grow By Pulling On It

Zen teacher and punk rocker Brad Warner recently posted a piece titled "Don't Try to...