Jon Kolkin’s “Inner Harmony: Living in Balance” – Visual Stories from the Heart of Asia

Dr. Jon Kolkin’s photographic volume Inner Harmony: Living in Balance exudes creative ambition and heart. A cursory look at the time it took for him to compile this collection of images – seventeen extended visits to Asia from 2007 to 2018 – attests to the time, patience, and toil that the distinguished and globe-trotting creator […]

Breckenridge

Unimpressed with me or my camera, the raven, clove black with a touch of tar, draws easily from the pine needle-covered stream. So easily, the way honeysuckle curls over the broken necks of cedar, or how, in slumbering isolation, a reddish shade of Colorado awakens as a poet ready to desert his own mind. 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 […]

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, […]

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 […]