First, we must go to the edge of the worldA place that can not be found by traveling a straight line.For to look down over the edge requires more than eyesight. 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. […]
philosophy
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 […]
The Delta
I don’t know why I became an atheist,Yet some days I can tastethe divine. It sits still in mymouth, as a pair of crouchingeyelids in the tall, midday grass. 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 […]
How a Philosopher Looks at a Glass of Water
Some people are halfglass full types.Others see the glass as half empty. I’m the kind of person who wants toknow why there is water in the glass,and why there are glasses that can holdwater. Why is there even water at all? George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such […]
Dear Zhuangzi
Dear Zhuangzi, last night I dreamtwe were stargazing on a cloud of Dao.You were the butterfly. I was the human.Having woken up I was chased by a red-eyed boarthrough woods at night to a moonlit lake.I made my escape swimming vigorously and found reston the opposite shore. Taking time to remember,a dark cloud of defilement […]
2019: A Year for Pastoral Caregiving to the World
Today we published a Buddhistdoor View advocating a “pastoral” perspective on the world. In the editorial we mean “pastoral” in its broadest, oldest possible sense: the act of listening and bearing witness, beyond even its common religious connotations, modern psychotherapeutic applications, or activist implications. This is the space of the shepherd: ever guiding yet ever open. […]
A Sound Reminding Me
Photograph by Jens Kolk When I was 9, I knewthat I was ugly. I did notknow how, but I knew. I looked at my reflectionlike a bonobo studies his teeth – both boorish and fervid. Today I know that I am beautiful.Falling asleep to a cold rising dew, I awake just to listen to the soundof […]
Moral laziness, vegetarianism, and government intervention
This month Thomas Wells, a philosophy professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, offered a plea for more active government intervention in our lives. He couches his request in the language of ethics: particularly his own moral laziness. He writes: Some years ago, for instance, I worked through the arguments around animal rights and decided […]
Gathering Nectar
In my life as a Buddhist practitioner, I have gone from early days with the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (now Triratna) to primarily Geluk Tibetan teachings, to Vipassana, to a bit of a mix of a few parts Zen and a few parts Theravāda. I sometimes tell people about this and their expression […]
How Do We Return to the Path?
A spiritual path is a challenge to continually become something better than what we were. It’s a commitment to adapt to new conditions. Temptations and toxins encircle us all the time. It wasn’t a coincidence that the first monk who called me a student was a boxer in his youth in Burma. As a monk […]