A broken jaw; a pool of blood — everybody keeps on dancing. What else are you supposed to do?
Author Archive
Robert Schumann. The undisputed master of the sad song. I remember one night, thinking to myself….what is all this meditation for? And from time to time, it’s clear. Tonight was just such a time. I bought tickets to hear Susan Gilmour Bailey sing The Schumann Letters. I went with my son. Without thinking, I do […]
“being a human being is like playing Bach on the ukelele”
In discussion, a(fellow) atheist acquaintance, asked me essentially, “yes, but what about all these spiritual experiences…does being an atheist mean I can’t, shouldn’t, or won’t have them?” There are many avenues that afford a non-theistic experience of what we might call numinous. The one I have direct experience of is kenshō in Japansese Rinzai zen […]
Another’s Story just when it feels as if I might drown in my own tears, if I can but open my heavy, swollen, clouded eyes; my plugged ears; if I can open my cracked, stiff lips just enough to bring this dry voice through aching lungs, and ask, I may be honoured with another’s story. […]
I’m sorry, Lori that I haven’t written more of my herstory. Sometimes I think it’s important and I begin. but then I know it’s not. There are so many words! all over the world words and words and words and words. Why should I add to them? …just so that future generations will have more […]
Today a close friend returned to me a book on shamanism that I had lent to her some months ago. It has been years since I read it. Before I replaced it on the shelf, I leafed through it. I skimmed a section entitled, “The Healing Journey”, and as I did, I noticed, as I […]
Like any powerfully transformative experience, one wants to share it – like Nish says – we are pack animals and we measure and validate our existence relative to the group. We seek constant validation; we’re human and this is normal. But as I cast around for someone to share this with, I simply can’t, and […]
As Nish predicted, nothing has changed and everything has changed. I awake differently, at first waking is the old habit; I am irritated at having to be awake. Always I want to sleep. I am a sleepy person. And then I am awake. And as I wake up, the joy comes. It’s like water is […]
Indeed. “Nothing” happened. “[the] I can’t have it.” Rinzai is about torturing the mind until it gives up control. At other times in my life I couldn’t understand the use of koans. So we are grasping at a paradox. So what? Isn’t Buddhism about opening the grasping fist of consciousness; about not grasping, chasing, striving, […]
Everything adjusts itself after kenshō. It doesn’t seem to do it slowly; it’s already done. I looked for the writing trouble and it was gone – just gone – not like it had been and had gone, but like it had never been. It doesn’t seem to do it slowly; it’s already done. I looked for […]
Back to Nish. Back to the meditation hut. Good to see him – perhaps a new instruction would help. No. Discussed infinity – the Grand Hotel of Hilbert’s Paradox: an infinite number of guests in an infinite number of rooms, and the hotel is full. Liked the story, but wanted to go home. Then back […]
Arrived at Nish’s farm fed up, anxious, exhausted, feeling harried, useless, frustrated. Yes, I could see Gecko Mind. Last sesshin Nish had harried me, “Who, who is watching? Who is feeling this? Who is noticing that?? Owl Mind. Who, who, who! And every time I look, I only find…me, looking. Aaaaargh. But this morning, Nish […]
I’ve noticed my mind is a raconteur, endlessly telling stories as perception instantly becomes history. Is there a now in between? As the space between impulses grows, even just enough to recognise it, there is a sudden upwhelming of pure fear. Not just anxiety; not a nervousness, but sudden terror and then arising within me, […]
Hurry up and wait. Slow everything down and pounce quickly. And still, Gecko Mind is so quick and sneaky, it makes me laugh, this identity of mine. But “who” is laughing? Slow it down. Let it be. The sight of the horse, a new unknown creature (beginner’s mind), for a split second (has it been […]
Zen Master Nish taught me more about looking at the actions and machinations of my mind in one afternoon than I had learned in decades of sesshins, zazen and books. …my mind is like a Monkey — perverse, seemingly everywhere at once, unfocussed, provocative, ill-discliplined. Following it is hell’s own job. but after several sesshins […]
People often see women at the turn of the century as downtrodden and powerless creatures, or worse, the female artists and poets of the era as simpering idealists, heavily romantic, with their heads in clouds of angst. In this sonnet, Edna St. Vincent Millay “puts the boot in” to all that with a poem as […]
I needed a Rinzai teacher again, and this time I knew what to do if I found one. I wanted to find a teacher who would not ask me to have faith or believe in anything; one who would tolerate, perhaps even welcome my relentless questioning, my rootedness in the notion of grounded, practical spirit. […]
Ill, threatened, beleaguered, I divorced and remarried (again); a process that literally almost killed me, but that’s another story. There was now room for zen in my life, and I built a life that made room. Every day was practice – my work was my practice; my learning to live with the chronic pain and […]
And so it went. I married my second husband formally, in a Unitarian service, and my first attended in a red t-shirt. Although the marriage started out full of promise, friendship, travel, what seemed to be shared values, and fun, as time wore on, I came to understand that my second husband was even more […]