Welcome to our series of conversations with participating speakers at this year’s Tung Lin Kok Yuen International Conference – Buddhist Canons: In Search of a Theoretical Foundation for a Wisdom-oriented Education (27–28 November 2021). In each blog post, I speak with keynote speakers and paper presenters about their subject at this conference. Register for this […]
America
Book Review: “Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out”
Feature image art from: https://www.taracousineau.com Ruth King teaches mindfulness meditation at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and at the Insight Meditation Society. She is also the founder of Mindful Race Institute, LLC, and a celebrated author. Although I have never met her, to me King is one of those Dharma teachers who seems to truly embody the […]
Harvest Moon
laced with the benign clarity ofliquefying Moonlightmy Cherokee mother hung rattlesnake skins the same wayher grandmother leanedBull Nose peppers on long fat cedar beams letting go of the softflow of cares and allthat belongs to theCreator
Heart Mountain in Wyoming
is confronted by their unfamiliarfaces, mangledlaid bare in the verdant grasslike a falcon devours a field mousebloodon the rust-hued walls of a campfirethrowing sparks in your eyes, andthe numbers: 09650, 05653 Peering deeper intothe pagesuntil they can no longerbe read in English For the Japanese- Americans who lived through internment. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. […]
America the Beautiful
In Charlottesville they worechinstrap bombs that turnedout to be nothing but dust and stone.In Sacramento, thrown like rag dolls,the flies evolved long, sucking mouths;in eternal darkness, reaching, if pushed,for the voice command in your throat. In St. Louis, the bodies leave no footprintson the land, and the nesting cliffs becomebattlegrounds, as they always have, wailingbehind the […]
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 […]
Tea by the Batten Kill
Rinsing away theworld, from a widow’speak above the Batten Kill, with a cup of rose tips, everything burned leavesthe fragrance of her dried lips,like old questions interrupted. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, […]
China’s Harmony and Freedom from Fear
Amid the turmoil and scandal of the contemporary political world, many eyes are turning toward China as a natural counterbalance to the stumbling United States. The continued growth, both internally and externally in influence, trade, new ports and infrastructure around the world should give pause to any China skeptics still remaining out there. The political […]
Spiritual Colossi: Buddhism and Christianity in China and America
As the United States launches its long-awaited trade war against China, I wonder whether something subtler, but just as significant, is bubbling under the already tumultuous surface. I pondered for a short while whether this observation held any water. After all, indirect pressures or persuasions, rather than outright pronunciations and their enforcement, characterize the influence […]
Buddhism and Today: Ancient Principles, Contemporary Conscience
Buddhism. It’s a millennia-long religious story that begins at Lumbini, at the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal, where the historical Buddha, Prince Siddhartha Gautama, was born. There, he lived in comfort, until, the legend tells us, he was motivated to begin his journey to Buddhahood after seeing a white-haired, wrinkled old man dressed in […]