Category: religion
- That Little VoiceThoughts During a Pandemic I know by experience that sitting zazen enriches my life. I enjoy sitting with my brother-in-law at noon, as we get his day started, and I sometimes sit also in the late afternoon, after I’ve done yoga, but my favorite time to sit, a habit I’ve had for almost thirty years, is ...Read more
- The Hotel of LifeThoughts During a Pandemic I have two recurring dreams these days, or at least two sites for dreams. One is on a hilly street, maybe cobblestone, where there is an alley with various open-air bars. I tend to choose one of those bars in particular, though I’ve entered others. The other site is a huge luxury ...Read more
- Why Bodhidharma Faced the WallWhat if Turkey Sex Arises? I know it must seem strange to people that, when I meditate in my Asheville cabin, I look out the French doors at the back of my study. Soto Zen practitioners are supposed to stare at a wall. But in this smallish cabin (900 square feet), there isn’t any unoccupied wall ...Read more
- When Ritual Goes Too FarUnorthodox, a four-part series by Maria Schrader. With Shira Haas, Amit Rahav, Jeff Wilbusch. Netflix ***** Unorthodox is an absolutely brilliant piece of work, and I can’t recommend it too highly. Four episodes of roughly 50 minutes apiece, it shows a woman from an Orthodox community in Williamsburg Brooklyn fleeing her family and taking off for ...Read more
- Doing TimeNotes During a Pandemic Living in self-isolation, I’ve been thinking of the inmates I’ve known through the years, as part of our prison outreach at the Chapel Hill Zen Center. The first was at Pender Correctional in Burgaw; I became his pen pal and eventually visited from time to time. He told me at our first visit ...Read more
- Prophet Without HonorBack to the Basics When I was coming to our Asheville cabin to help look after my wife’s autistic brother, I faced a sudden decision: what spiritual books do I bring (and not too many). My car was already cluttered enough. I decided on the old stand-bys: Shunryu Suzuki, Dainin Katagiri, and Chogyam Trungpa (whom I ...Read more
- 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
- 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
- Embraced and Nurtured by this EarthSky Flowers on the Day Before: My Life Guided by Zen Buddhism by Kazumitsu Wako Kato. Self-published. 462 pp. $16.95. **** Kazumitsu Wako Kato preceded Shunryu Suzuki at Soki-ji Temple in San Francisco, and served as his assistant when Suzuki first arrived in 1959. For that reason alone this book will be of interest to Zen ...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
- What Makes a Religion?The Circle of the Way: A Concise History of Zen from the Buddha to the Modern World by Barbara O’Brien. Shambhala. 316 pp. $19.95. **** I’ve been asking myself what makes a religion ever since I read Karen Armstrong’s marvelous The Lost Art of Scripture. There, in that cataloging of the world’s vast scriptures, Christianity almost ...Read more
- Portrait of the Artist as a Young HasidMy Name Is Asher Lev a novel by Chaim Potok. Anchor Books. 369 pp. $15.95. **** When I was looking through Goodreads trying to decide if I wanted to read another Chaim Potok novel, I came across a reviewer who said—about this book, I believe—“Chaim Potok refuses to write a page turner.” I thought that an ...Read more
- Listening to the OtherThe Chosen a novel by Chaim Potok. Ballantine Books. 299 pp. $7.99. The Promise a novel by Chaim Potok. Anchor Books. 368 pp. $7.48. I sometimes think there is some kind of spirit around—because of these two books, let’s call it a dybbuk—who directs me to this or that book at the appropriate moment of my life. ...Read more
- What Scripture Is ForThe Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts by Karen Armstrong. Knopf. 605 pp. $35.00. ***** The Lost Art of Scripture is a colossal feat of scholarship; I can’t think of one I admire more. Karen Armstrong has studied scriptures from a wide variety of cultures, and summed up the basic messages from the scripture ...Read more
- Is Kensho Necessary?One Blade of Grass: Finding the Old Road of the Heart by Henry Shukman. Counterpoint. 339 pp. $16.95. **** Henry Shukman had an interesting life as a writer even before he began spiritual practice, but this memoir centers on his practice and wouldn’t exist without it. He is British and grew up in Oxford, the child ...Read more
- Repose and Bliss My AssSesshin Strikes Again “The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the Dharma gate of repose and bliss. . . . Traps and snares can never reach it.” Fukanzazengi , Eihei Dogen. I am often struck, let’s make that always struck, by the sick feeling of dread I have every year as our winter ...Read more
- Family ReunionThe Irishman a film by Martin Scorsese. With Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Anna Paquin, Ray Romano. ***** Toward the end of The Irishman, the former union boss and mobster Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro) is looking through some photos in a nursing home while a nurse takes his blood pressure. He asks her if she knows ...Read more
- Master and DiscipleThe Gift of Rain a novel by Tan Twan Eng. Weinstein Books. 432 pp. $16.99. **** The Gift of Rain is one of the most affecting novels I’ve read in years; toward the end I was both riveted to and deeply disturbed by what I was reading, so that I could hardly sleep. This is Tan ...Read more
- She’s Trapped But Her Voice Is FreeMilkman a novel by Anna Burns. Graywolf Press. 348 pp. $16.00 ****1/2 Milkman is simultaneously one of the most terrifying and hilarious novels in recent memory. It’s terrifying because it portrays a society where the two sides are locked in such mortal combat that people have become dreadfully paranoid; to express a shred of compassion for ...Read more
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Unfinished LivesAmerican OriginalLosing ItKeep an Eye on IgorAnd Is He Pissed
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (121)American literature (215)art (113)Buddhism (169)Christianity (125)creative process (246)death and dying (139)meditation (123)movies (160)music (36)race (105)religion (187)sex (170)spirituality (170)the art of narrative (252)Uncategorized (19)world literature (23)