Your Homegrown Smile

is delicious. It’sbright and round like cherrytomatoes pulledfrom a soil bed.Gripped by twohands, with white chalklined canals running across thepalms, the flowering green, sea monstershaped stems sproutaround fingernails, andhair on the wrists ofa sunburned forearm. When I think about yoursmile, I think about home.The rain on my family farm,all season long it rains.I think about the dirt fromthe ruby-like […]

Two Monks Arguing About Movement

It’s not the leaves that move. Nor is it the Banyan tree. The mind moves both of them,as if they were constructed of thoughts from the river’s basement,Rising from the cracks,where my grandfather usedto lay his line, like the idea of wind and Banyan trees- not unlike the ideaof crawfish and trout, everything struckwith the face of awe, a holy agreement.that we can all be residents of a sunlit world.

Parnashavari: Goddess of Natural Healing

Parnashavari. From quora.com ཨོཾ་པི་ཤ་ཙི་པརྞ་ཤ་ཝ་རི་སརྦ་ཛྭ་ར་པྲ་ཤཱ་མ་ན་ཡེ་སྭཱ་ཧཱ། OM PISHATSI PARNA SHAVARI SARVA ZVARA PRASHA MANI SVAHA Parnashavari (Tib. Loma Gyonma) is a healing goddess who removes contagious and epidemic diseases. Her name means “dressed in leaves” and she embodies our connection with nature and natural methods of healing. She is an example of an Indian folk deity absorbed […]

Where Deer Sleep

My three-year-old sonasked me where deer sleep.So I took him there. Steppinginto a space that is not meantfor fathers and sons, we founda ritual that has nothing to dowith us. An original grace. A serenitythat evokes the burden of redemption.That place where deer sleep, under aplumbeous sky, the pods of grass benttoward the center of […]

While Passing By a Church Near My Home

I think about how the hive mindknows how to act in one direction,with one will and one purpose.Chanting with all those lungs,a thin transparent tissue of light rays through the diaphragm, Just as Ayutthaya tests it with dreams, those unconscious proofs of heaven framed insidethe aperture only. Your saint, the one who youfollow with a deep personal love, like […]

Master Huijing’s Short Dharma Teachings about Taking Refuge in Amitabha

Amitabha Buddha’s light is infinite and boundless, illuminating all of the worlds in the boundless and endless universe. In terms of space, he can deliver sentient beings in any place. Amitabha Buddha is omnipresent, pervading in all Dharma realms throughout endless empty space. The vastness of Amitabha Buddha has no limit. There is no space […]

Kumarajiva Project: A 60-year Tibetan-Chinese Translation Initiative from Khyentse Foundation

Statue of Kumarajiva outside the Kizil Caves. From China Discovery There are two “buzzwords” in the Buddhist world today. One is obviously mindfulness and has dominated contemporary discourse for decades. The other is translation, and despite being overshadowed by mindfulness to some extent actually remains one of the most important activities of the global Buddhist […]

America

is a vast desolate plantation withan eerie wind tone signaling deep space.It’s an ocean of forbidden red wine reaching for throats once transformed into statues smearedin albatross shit. The kind you step into when wandering the dusty sidewalks of Atlantic City smokingyour last pack of Newports.Petrified shit clinging to the skin like an Amarillo clings to its […]