Zen Talk: One Thing at a Time
I gave a version of this talk on Nov. 18, 2025, at Still Mind Zendo in Manhattan.
Read More'Being alive is enough'
In an Oct. 11 dharma talk delivered at a day-long retreat at Still Mind Zendo in Manhattan, Sensei Marisa Cespedes quoted Roshi Shunryū Suzuki: "Being alive is enough."
Read MoreAllen Ginsberg's instructions for meditation
The Beat poet Allen Ginsberg’s once explained to a skeptical interviewer how to sit in Zen meditation. It begins and ends with the breath. Like life.
Read MoreLook at the sky
Some advice from Pema Chödrön.
Read MoreYou must be breathing
Reflecting on some Buddhist wisdom found in a BBC series from 1977.
Read MoreZen Talk: The narrators in my head
I gave a version of this talk on July 1, 2025, at Still Mind Zendo, where I am a senior student.
Read MoreZen quote: Poco a poco
“There is a beautiful expression in Spanish, poco a poco, little by little. Our life is always poco a poco, and the way we practice poco a poco is zazen. In each moment, in each little step by step, the Buddhadharma is completely revealed. So little is not little, it is boundless.”
— Bernie Glassman
Read MoreZen Quote: Touch your beard
I cam across this line in Kōun Yamada’s commentary on Case 4 of the Mumonkan.
Read MoreZen Talk: Reflections on the Great Bodhisattva Vows
“Creations are numberless, I vow to free them.” This is the first of the great bodhisattva vows for all. This is the text of a talk I gave about the vows at Still Mind Zendo in April 2025.
Read MoreZen Talk: Noticing, allowing, breathing
Notice. Allow. Breathe. Together these words form a powerful koan. This is the text of a brief talk I gave in December 2024 at Still Mind Zendo on the subject of breathing meditation and the biological phenomenon of habituation.
Read MoreQuotation: Solzhenitsyn on Ideology
“Ideology -- that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.”
Read More'Civilizations come and go. Civilization continues.'
The quote in the headline is from an essay by Stewart Brand, “The Elements of a Durable Civilization,” recently published by the Long Now blog, a site devoted to long-term thinking about the future of life, including human life.
Read MoreZen Talk: Panshan's Cut a Fine Piece
I have been working with some of the 300 koans collected by the Japanese Zen Master Ehei Dogen in his Shobogenzo. This short talk is about one of them, Case 21: Panshan’s Cut a Fine Piece.
Read More'Cash Me Outside: How to Keep Your Cashmere Slaying' (by ChatGPT)
I enjoy giving stupid prompts to the not-really-intelligent large-language model ChatGPT.
Today’s prompt: “Write a 250-word blog post in Gen Z TikTok slang about how to care for cashmere. Give it a headline with a bad pun.”
Read MoreZen Talk: On breaking a favorite mug
"Flowers decompose, but this does not prevent us from loving flowers. In fact, we love them more because we know how to treasure them while they are still alive."
That is a quote from the Thich Nhat Hanh, the writer and Zen teacher who died in 2022. It is from an essay he wrote on the topic of impermanence.
Read MoreGreed, hatred and ignorance
Evil eventually defeats itself. It over-reaches. It is ugly, corrupt, incompetent, and weak. It is powered by greed, hatred and ignorance.
It underestimates the decency, courage and strength of ordinary people. Yes, many people might suffer. But generosity, love and truth will prevail, again.
Addendum: Yes, “eventually” is doing a lot of work here. And so is “itself” — part of evil’s undoing comes when it gives rise to opposition from ordinary, decent people.
Zen Talk: Why do we bow?
I want to examine something that was a barrier for me when I first came to zen. As our teachers say, every barrier is a gate. This gate came in the form of a question: What’s up with all the bowing?
Read MoreThe Jackery Explorer 1000 is a beast
In the middle of hurricane season during the 2020 pandemic, The New York Times sent remote workers a Jackery power station to weather any power failures. No blackout was going to stop the news.
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