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 […]
The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace. –Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress” Advance into the territory of pubic hair only increased Playboy’s circulation. Hefner by the mid-1970s, well into his role as iconic hero living the Playboy life, nevertheless […]
If Coke Is a mystery Michael Jackson History If beauty is truth And surgery the fountain of youth What am I to do Have I got the gifts to get me through The gates of that mansion –U2, “The Playboy Mansion” Hefner landed consistently great quarterly earnings reports, and though his empire faltered and […]
It would not be better if man could get what he wants. –Heraclitus I’m fascinated by Hugh Hefner’s one in a billion karma. Not only did he rise quickly out of the middle class into a life awash in millions of dollars, he transgressed […]
Two divas who reign currently over the global pop world—Taylor Swift and Beyoncé—released major records this year. Both rocketed into music as teen phenoms; both eventually wrested complete managerial, fiduciary, and aesthetic control into their own hands, and they’ve both flourished. No one tells them what to do. They choose the other artists they want […]
There’s much to appreciate in Kerouac’s haiku descriptions of human emotions and humanity: Her yellow dolls bowing on the shelf— My dead step grandmother The artifacts of the person now dead stand in that person’s place, and continue to articulate who she was. Are they bowing to her? I rather think they’re […]
Allen Ginsberg liked to say, “Notice what you notice,” by way of meditative writing advice. We notice things, but then we’re in a hurry and already on to the next one. Or we self-edit, and tell ourselves what we saw has no importance or meaning, and paper it over with something else. But things do […]
