“Don’t pat the feet! We need them to be dry!” Those were the stern words that the abbot of a forest monastery said to me as I was drying his feet and the feet of monks who had just cleansed them with water before entering the meditation hall. Drying the feet of monastics was the […]
meditation
Delusions and Diversions
A direct experience of death speaks to the heart in a way that philosophical musings never can. There was a time when I was struggling with my meditation during a stay at a forest monastery on the East Coast of the United States. I was experimenting with a wide assortment of techniques to calm my […]
A Graveyard Meditation
I know the forests are burningto the charnel ground, and probably, there is little that can be done about it nowYet sometimes the best medicine is a mind of not knowing, all that has been writtenon those silken scrolls, the inner alchemy of illicit loveOr why the Nasamonians required brides to have intercoursewith many men on their […]
After Meditating On My Front Porch
I again realize that mindfulness is noticingstillness, how the inkon my paper has more than one color of black and feelsfluid as silk. And how the hard plastic wheelsof a stroller across the street,scraps the gravel, making soundslike crackling embers.It’s noticing the stillness of a solitary pine needle pulsing in the sighing wind. An eternal thing that must be […]
Chi
It felt like cupping a shapelessbubble, delicate as a stolen Robin’s egg,yet weightless and resting in nothingness. I should have known it was within me. 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, The Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 […]
96 Hours In
I’m no ******* Buddha,that’s for sure.Legend has it that he meditated and fasted for months at a time. After one moment he stopped.For me, a meager four days in,that feat might as well be like going to Marsin a paraglider. And my seatbelt is too tight. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work […]
An Offering
It’s 6:30 pm, on a SeptemberSunday, too late to be calledsummer and the clouds are suddenly transformed into bands of energy, like a vulva, and the sky gods begin to birth,cinematically slow, an egg of fire,oozing from the space thatseparates the temporary fromendless beauty. A long time ago, people- not sodifferent than you and I- awaited this hour, as a […]
Is Buddhism the Problem?
I have recently been recommending Sam Harris’ meditation app. Waking Up to some of my atheist friends who would not go near anything that smacked of religion. I like this app more than some other secular meditation apps I have come across, mainly because it doesn’t simply aim to help people to become less stressed. […]
Simon Hui’s Mindful Studio for Life
Simon Hui is founder of Mindful Studio HK, a yoga studio offering courses to seekers of physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing. Try imagining someone born in Hong Kong who grew up in Nigeria, was educated in the US, learned yoga in India, and ordained as a monk in Myanmar. That is my continuously unfolding adventure, and […]
The Blankness of Being (For Alan Watts)
Consciousness is what we do not pay attention to.It is too free. We cannot even think about it. Likelooking at your head. We cannot find anything there. So much like the stars in outer space, it is what we cannot see.The blank. The whatever is necessary. Space all around. Like the severed head of Kali, we cut […]