Interview with Dr. Kin Cheung Lee, author of the first comprehensive book on a framework of Buddhist counselling
mind
In Review: “Threads of Awakening,” “Rebirth”
Here are some books I’m reviewing or have recently reviewed.
The Parable of the Vessel
In his memoir, Vessel (Pínáng / 筏喩), Cai Chongda (蔡崇達) describes the tough-love advice given to him by his great-grandmother (太姥爷 / 太婆): “Your body’s a vessel. If you wait on it to do something, there’s no hope for you. If you put your body to work, you can start to live.” Those words made […]
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 […]
Different expectations
bird tugs worm out of soft groundworm does not think “this should not be happening.” Support Our Dharma Work
A Mind Engaged
The world may not needmore poems but it certainlyneeds more parks where poemscan be written – the poem here withus, thirsty as the roots fed and a mind engaged again. 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 Journal. George’s […]
Daydreamers
Despite my urgent need to tap into somethingthat is necessary for my time, I am left with a visionof numbers. My pagan blood and sleeping momentson the beach. Why do I still want to be Jimmy Buffett? Idle and brutal from all eternity, like Rimbaud, sittingon a park bench with my two best friends.The wind blowing. The day glowing. […]
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. […]
Two Masters on the Great Expanse (A Collage Poem)
Why make so much of fragmentary blue1 What we call ‘mind’ is not something that exists elsewhere;2 in here and there a bird, or butterfly,1 so without being swept away and following wherever it leads,2 or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,1 look directly into its face, its very own essence—2 when heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?1 at that […]
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 […]