In the Indian tradition of Buddhist poetry, as inherited and practiced by the Tibetans, we get a predominant didacticism–it’s poetry that’s meant to explain the dharma to you. But that’s not everyone. The Indian siddhas (Sanskrit: “realized ones,” “accomplished ones”) aren’t so academic sounding, though they may be teaching dharma; when they speak , […]
I hadn’t been on any extensive retreat in four years, when I went it into a solitary one here at my house ten days ago. In fact, I can’t really remember the last solitary retreat I did of more than two or three days or how many years ago that was. I’d been in a […]
I have an obsessive interest in shooting photos of leaves and flowers. I never tire of it, for some reason, now many seasons down the line. I always think there’s an innate artfulness to the colors, shapes, lines, and textures that doesn’t exhaust itself. The more you look, the more you see. That’s connected in […]
In The Lord of the Rings, Grima Wormtongue, one of its memorable villains, subjugates the king of Rohan, Théoden, through toxic use of his deceptive, manipulative speech, thus wresting away Théoden’s proper interest in the good of his kingdom, handing the reins over to his master, the malevolent wizard Saruman. However subservient to Saruman Wormtongue […]
I’ve been meaning, since first I saw it, to write about Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), but no way could I even begin to wrap my mind around it unless I watched it again and took notes. As my friend Margot pointed out, it resonates well with the sensibility in my own book, Transmigration […]
They may conceivably be pulling out of it, but the Denver Nuggets, our local NBA team, fell into a tailspin, recently dropping five of six games, just as the regular season has started to intensify in its stretch run to the playoffs. In first place in the western conference since December and up 4.5 games […]
I’ve been studying Indian texts on Mahamudra, a superlative statement of the most essential kind of instruction on the very pith of the Buddhist teachings. So when our little on-line study group of old dharma students met last week and got into a discussion of “ordinary mind,” it immediately brought up for me Saraha’s […]
In the past year I’ve gone back to studying my way through enormous dharma texts, turning myself back into the Buddhist scholar I never intended on being. I took on the task of writing what became an epic, out of control book on the life of Buddhist saint Tilopa, but morphed […]
If you’ve read any books comparing the views of philosophers or theologians, what often stands out are their vehement disagreements on how to describe nuances of reality. Karen Armstrong’s great chronicle, A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (1993), assures us that who God is, how God is to […]
“I go willingly into the sound of the crickets.” –Pat Donegan, on her deathbed I hadn’t planned to write on Pat, but then, who really plans on death—even when they see it coming? She died on the evening of January 25th in her hometown of Chicago after a difficult illness. Interestingly […]
