Category Archives: Uncategorized

This time of year is like a portal. From the frenzied energy of summer, where plants and animals play out their life cycles of output, to summer vacations and tending gardens…to the transition to falling leaves, darkening mornings nudging the wearing of warm socks and layers…to the slow, yet deliberate move into dormancy. To quietingContinue reading “It’s time to close our eyes and listen to mother grief.”

Within the vast mystery of Mind there exists a propensity to seek personalized understanding. This is often done by codification, compartmentalization, identification and reductive intellectual processes of thinking and experience, that fit most comfortably with our idea of Self, and the world, as such. Each individual personality has a propensity to engage with belief systemsContinue reading “The Magic of Mind”

“The deity Light of Beautiful Flower Garlands found the door of liberation of pure light illumining the bodies of all sentient beings and causing them to produce oceans of joy and faith.”  – Avatamsaka Sutra BOUNDLESS LOVE What is the desire creating my emergence……..The infinite full-of-emptiness womb…..nurturing without judgment…..All the possibilities…..And even more possibilities…..For theContinue reading “LOVE AND GENEROSITY”

One of the earliest meditations I learned was written by Thich Nhat Hahn. My dear friend Dave Ernster, a potter in New Hampshire, turned me on to it. I enjoy this very much. The meditation is simple, it goes like this: Breathing in, I see myself as a mountain. Breathing out, I feel solid. Mountain/SolidContinue reading “Benefactions of Practice”

One of the aspects of Zen that attracts me is that it does not require a disposition to believe too readily in something. It’s quite the opposite, in fact. There is no requirement to believe in a God or deity that needs to be supplicated or worshiped, no dogma that needs to be adhered toContinue reading “Your Own Mind”

Enso tile, ceramic, 2023, David Ernster “All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible. The One Mind alone is the Buddha, and there is no distinction between the Buddha and sentient beings, but that sentient beingsContinue reading “Nothing To Learn”

Cable Beach, Rye, NH Author and friend Matthew Cheney recently introduced me to one of my new favorite songs; “Change” by Big Thief. It talks about the dichotomies of desire we face, about the ceaseless movement of time and our choices. “Change like the wind, like water, like skin… Would you live forever and neverContinue reading “The All Pervasive Constant”

“Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakens.” ~CG Jung C.G. Jung the father of (modern) dreamwork, categorized individual psychic propensities of one’s experience of the world into four primary functions: Feeling, Intuition, Thinking and Sensate. The rational functions being thinking and feeling and the non-rational functions being intuition and sensate (one who perceives through theContinue reading “The Dharma Gate of Genuine Practice”

“The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the Dharma Gate of repose and bliss, the practice-realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the manifestation of ultimate reality. Traps and snares can never reach it. Once its heart is grasped, you are like the dragon when he gains the water, likeContinue reading “Practice-Realization”

“…you call it rain, but the human name doesn’t mean shit to a tree.” -Jefferson Airplane, Eskimo Blue Day Walking up the canyon today on the La Luz trail I was thinking about how a hike, bike ride, kayak trip, can create an alternate chemistry in my mind. The experience of nature is transformative. (“NatureContinue reading “Confirmation”