Category: death-and-dying
- The Process of GrowthNotes During a Pandemic Years ago, from my college days until way into my thirties, I was obsessed with a writer named Paul Goodman. He had been a panelist at a symposium when I was a freshman and I found his presence electrifying. All through the sixties he was a famous and extremely successful author, primarily ...Read more
- In RecoveryThe Largesse of the Sea Maiden stories by Denis Johnson. Random House. 207 pp. $17.00. ***1/2 One thing I wonder about people in recovery—especially writers in recovery—is why they have an endless fascination with their period of addiction. It’s the same way people at AA get together and tell stories of their worst fuck-ups. “You think ...Read more
- Deluded FoolZazen and Prayer Some years ago my wife and I were renting an apartment in Chapel Hill while our Durham residence underwent an extensive renovation. There were various problems with the apartment—it was small, and had a real problem with moisture in the air, so we had to run de-humidifiers all the time—and we were extremely ...Read more
- Coming Together by Being ApartIn Retreat and On Retreat My Zen teacher Josho Pat Phelan has sat with the group every weekday for years. In fact, though she does many other things—administrate the whole group, and give talks, and lead sesshins, and do dokusan—I’ve always thought of her her primary job as waking up every morning before the crack of ...Read more
- Everything MattersThe Buddha Said Do Nothing? Where Was That? The most recent New Yorker includes the Ian Parker profile of Yuval Harari, author of such bestsellers as Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, all of which take an immensely broad look at history. I haven’t read the books, but my impression is that ...Read more
- Who’s the Killer Now?Clemency a film by Chinonye Chukwu. With Alfre Woodard, Aldis Hodge, Wendell Pierce, Richard Schiff. ***** Clemency is a movie about the brutality of the death penalty. Reviewers have seen it as a character study of the female warden (Alfre Woodard) who carries the penalty out, but it’s much more than that; it takes in the ...Read more
- Words For What Is Beyond WordsSecret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions by Jeffrey J. Kripal. University of Chicago Press. 478 pp. Jeffrey J. Kripal is a religious writer like no other I’ve ever read. He grew up as a Catholic in Nebraska, for instance (there are Catholics in Nebraska?) He was devout, actually entered a seminary ...Read more
- Old Lady KoansThe Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women. Edited by Florence Caplow and Susan Moon. Wisdom Publications. 455 pp. $18.95 Among my favorite Zen teachings are the Old Lady stories, where some pompous Zen master thinks a great deal of himself and has his bubble burst by a woman who has no apparent status ...Read more
- Too Close to HomeEmily, Alone a novel by Stewart O’Nan. Penguin Books. 255 pp. $17.00 I picked up this book because a friend of my brother told him it was set in “our Pittsburgh.” I couldn’t believe the extent to which that is true. The aging widow Emily Maxwell does not live quite in my neighborhood, but close enough, ...Read more
- Sweet SorrowThe Farewell a film by Lulu Wang. With Awkwafina, Shuzshen Zhao, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin. **** I somehow got the feeling from this movie’s trailer—which I’ve seen a number of times—that it was a cute little comedy about pulling the wool over an old lady’s eyes about her cancer diagnosis, just so she wouldn’t be discouraged. ...Read more
- If We Just Knew What Mind IsHow to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan. Penguin Press. 465 pp. How’s that for a sub-title? Why didn’t he just add, the Universe? Except that in some ways that does describe what Michael Pollan’s book is about. It’s also about the ...Read more
- Too Much ThinkingCall It Grace: Finding Meaning in a Fractured World by Serene Jones. Viking. 310 pp. ***1/2 Four Men Shaking: Searching for Sanity with Samuel Beckett, Norman Mailer, and My Perfect Zen Teacher by Lawrence Shainberg. Shambhala. 134 pp. $16.95. ****1/2 “To stop your mind does not mean to stop the activities of mind. It means your mind ...Read more
- And Actually IsThe World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path by Norman Fisher. Shambhala. 207 pp. $17.95. ****1/2 It’s an odd title for a book on Buddhism, which is supposed to devote itself to the world as it is. When Fischer lectured on the book at the Chapel Hill Zen Center, someone asked him about that, ...Read more
- Twelve Years Away, ActuallySomewhere Toward the End a memoir by Diana Athill. Norton. 182 pp. $13.95 The good news about Somewhere Towards the End is that, at the age of 89, Diana Athill still had all her marbles and wrote as well as ever, perhaps better. Her prose seemed to gain in confidence through the years. The bad news ...Read more
- Shit Happens, Thank GodThe Biggest Little Farm a film by John Chester. With Molly Chester, Matthew Pilachowski. ****1/2 My wife and I had a million questions when we walked out of The Biggest Little Farm, the charming and rather amazing documentary that we almost didn’t notice, then went to at the last minute. Where, first of all, did John ...Read more
- Relaxing the Frontal LobeThe Light That Shines Through Infinity: Zen and the Energy of Life by Dainin Katagiri. Shambhala. 229 pp. $16.95. I’ve always thought of Dainin Katagiri as a difficult Zen teacher, partly because I read Returning to Silence when I was new to Zen and found it confounding. He was a rough contemporary of Shunryu Suzuki, and ...Read more
- The Tragic Hero of Our Time Is a Wizened Old Man (Played by a Woman)King Lear by William Shakespeare. Directed by Sam Gold. With Glenda Jackson, Jayne Houdyshell, Elizabeth Marvel, Ruth Wilson It’s fascinating the way works of art change through the course of one’s life. When I first read Don Quixote—as a junior in college—it seemed a comic work about a befuddled old man who had fallen in love ...Read more
- Everyday SaintDiane a film by Kent Jones. With Mary Kay Place, Jake Lacy, Estelle Parsons, Andrea Martin **** I’ve seen gritty working class movies before, but never seen a scene quite like one in Diane, where family members and friends are gathered around a small greasy table in a tiny kitchen, and people are drinking soda or ...Read more
- Gateway to EternityOkumura Zen In the first week of this month we hosted Shohaku Okumura for a Genzo-e sesshin, a special retreat where there are two ninety-minute lectures per day, in a classroom setting, and we spend the rest of the time in zazen, except for our hour-long work period. Okumura Roshi lectured this time on Menju, the ...Read more
- Don’t Fight the WaterZazen in the Spirit of Shinjin The Spring 2019 issue of Tricycle includes a marvelous teaching by Kenneth Tanaka entitled “The Seven Phases of a Drowning Sailor.” Apparently the story itself exists in Shin Buddhism, but Tanaka divided it up into seven parts to indicate stages of realization. He had in mind the Ten Oxherding pictures ...Read more
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You Need to be WritingThe Other SideThe River is Freedom, the Raft ParadiseThe Nothing of GodWe Are Stardust We Are Golden
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (114)American literature (197)art (109)Buddhism (163)Christianity (119)creative process (232)death and dying (128)meditation (118)movies (152)music (36)race (95)religion (180)sex (157)spirituality (167)the art of narrative (238)Uncategorized (19)world literature (23)