Category: spirituality
- Living DeliberatelyHenry David Thoreau: A Life by Laura Dassow Walls. University of Chicago Press. 615 pp. $35.00. This is one of the best biographies I’ve ever read. Right at the moment I can’t think of a better one. And it comes at an ideal moment for me. The official occasion is the bicentennial of Thoreau’s birth, in 1817. ...Read more
- Only God Is GoodA Buddhist Reads the Bible (And Can’t Stop Thinking About It) Ever since I read the story in the Gospel of Mark about the man that Jesus loved—the wealthy man who asked Jesus how to inherit eternal life—I have puzzled over Jesus’ statement, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” ...Read more
- Serve Lots of WineBeatriz at Dinner a film by Miguel Arteta. With Salma Hayak, John Lithgow, Connie Britton, Chloe Sevigny. ***1/2 “Why have an ending that negates everything that happened in the whole movie?” my wife said to me as we left Beatriz at Dinner? I’d been troubled by the ending, though I wouldn’t have put so strongly. She ...Read more
- The Wonder of WomenWonder Woman a film by Patty Jenkins. With Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Robin Wright ***1/2 Arrival a film by Denis Villeneuve. With Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker ***** A Quiet Passion a film by Terence Davies. With Cynthia Nixon, Jennifer Ehle, Duncan Duff *** I’m as happy as everyone else that we finally have a movie about ...Read more
- The Dharma of F.M. AlexanderThe Alexander Technique: A Skill for Life by Pedro de Alcantara. The Crowood Press. 128 pp. I have never thought of the teachings of Buddhism and Taoism as the esoteric observations of a few ancient teachers. I think of them as the truth about life. The first canto of the Tao Te Ching, for instance, comes ...Read more
- What’sYour Name, a film by Makato Shinkai, based on his novel. With Ryunosuke Kamiki, Mone Kamishiraishi, Ryo Narita. I’ve been reading Kobun Chino’s commentary on the Song of Awakening, and the day before I saw this film read the following passage: “When the body of all the buddhas penetrates my nature there is interpenetration and fusion. My nature ...Read more
- The Paradox of DesireThe 10,000 pages of the Pali Canon (Most of which I haven’t read) I have spoken before of an Amazon reviewer that I stumbled across some years ago, a woman named Laurie from New Zealand who writes wonderfully informed and opinionated reviews. Most of them are favorable, but occasionally she gets puckish, especially with contemporary spiritual ...Read more
- Absolute Belief in ZazenEmbracing Mind: The Zen Talks of Kobun Chino Otogawa. Edited by Judy Cosgrove and Shinbo Joseph Hall. Jikoji Zen Center. Kobun Chino Otogawa came to the United States for the first time to train the novice monks at the Tassajara Mountain Monastery, which had just been founded. After a couple of years he returned to Japan ...Read more
- It Sure Ain’t a ScienceThe Art of Loving by Erich Fromm. Harper Perennial Modern Classics. 123 pp. $14.99. It’s hard for me to imagine having the nerve, at the age of 56, to publish a book entitled The Art of Loving. This from a man who grew up with a mother who adored her only child to the point of ...Read more
- How Long, Baby How Long, Has That Evenin’ Train Been Gone?The Grass Flute Zen Master: Sodo Yokoyama by Arthur Braverman. Counterpoint. 148 pp. $16.95. How much time should we give to spiritual practice? It’s a question I often ask myself. Twenty minutes twice a day, as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi suggested? A forty minute sitting, ten minutes of walking, and a thirty minute sitting, as we do ...Read more
- This Movie Is About You (Put Away Your Phone)Paterson A film by Jim Jarmusch. With Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani, Barry Shabaka Henley, Nellie. Every now and then people call something a Zen movie, and the candidate this year is Paterson, a film whose script Jim Jarmusch apparently wrote twenty years ago and in which almost nothing happens. A man (Adam Driver) awakens every morning ...Read more
- Doing Nothing for No Good ReasonDogen Zen. Translations by Shohaku Okamura. Kyoto Soto Zen Center. 1988. $198 pp. Hara: The Vital Center of Man by Karlfried Graf Durckheim. Inner Traditions. 202 pp. $14.95. I have been known to complain—mostly to myself—that many of the works of a man I consider one of the great religious minds of the twentieth century have not ...Read more
- Dat Fig Tree Had It Comin’A Buddhist Reads the Bible: Gospel of Mark from the New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. (This is my eighth and final piece on the Gospel of Mark; the other pieces are here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) There are any number of things toward the end of the Gospel that I don’t understand, ...Read more
- What Does It Mean to Love God? Jesus and the Bean CountersA Buddhist Reads the Bible: Gospel of Mark from the New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. (This is my seventh piece on the Gospel of Mark; the other pieces are here, here, here, here, here, and here. I’ll blunder along at my snail like pace until I finish.) The pace of the Gospel of Mark has ...Read more
- And Get Knocked Down the StairsEat Sleep Sit: My Year at Japan’s Most Rigorous Zen Temple by Kaoru Nonomura. Kodansha. 328 pp. $16.95. “He’s making the fallacious distinction between the ends and the means.” That sentence was uttered at a Friends Meeting that I attended some fifty years ago, by the man I considered the leading authority in that meeting on Quakerism. ...Read more
- Difficult TeachingsA Buddhist Reads the Bible: Gospel of Mark from the New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. (This is my sixth piece on the Gospel of Mark; the other pieces are here, here, here, here, and here. I’ll blunder along at my snail like pace until I finish.) The Gospel continues with what is for me a ...Read more
- Having Faith Is Not KnowingA Buddhist Reads the Bible: Gospel of Mark from the New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. (This is my fifth piece on the Gospel of Mark; the other pieces are here and here and here and here. I’ll blunder along at my snail like pace until I finish.) My impression of the early part of Mark ...Read more
- God Is in the BodyThe Awakening Body: Somatic Meditation for Discovering Our Deepest Life by Reginald Ray. Shambhala. 176 pp. $16.95 Touching Enlightenment: Finding Realization in the Body by Reginald Ray. Sounds True. 416 pp. $19.95 Ever since I began meditating, I’ve found it natural to focus on the body. When my first teacher Larry Rosenberg gave his initial instructions, he ...Read more
- There Is EnoughA Buddhist Reads the Bible: Gospel of Mark from the New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. (This is my fourth piece on the Gospel of Mark; the other pieces are here and here and here. I’ll blunder along at my snail like pace until I finish.) There is still, as the Gospel enters Chapter 6, a ...Read more
- Nothing is HiddenA Buddhist Reads the Bible: Gospel of Mark from the New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. (This is my third piece on the Gospel of Mark; the other pieces are here and here. I’ll blunder along at my snail like pace until I finish.) One reason that the Gospel of Mark seems an authentic historical document ...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)