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I liken the multiple losses I have experienced in the past year or so to a death, which would make the last year of posts almost like reciting Kaddish for me. Kaddish is the prayer that Jews say for their close loved ones for eleven months after they pass and then it becomes a one year anniversary event. This morning, before dawn, I met with the Zen master teacher for Dokusan* at MidCity Zen and…
I was at Tin’s parent/teacher meeting today and hearing about his leadership qualities, his presence amongst the other children, his pride in a doing a good job, his developing to big boy duties, and what I heard the loudest was when they said Tin has the “IT” quality. This is something I have seen in him from the get go. He uses all faculties, charm, wit, intelligence, and talent to move everyone he comes in…
Wild Geese “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies…
Up with the chickens this morning, which means I got to bed on time last night with no distractions. I woke, meditated, and read the Sunday New York Times from a few weeks ago while I drank my one and only cup of decaf. It was dark outside. I then read a few pages out of The Power of Now. This stayed with me: To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and…
Since Tin first learned how to speak, he has called some things the “wup” – and generally this is when we are on the I-10 headed to Metairie. I’ve come to define wup as the guardrails, the sound wall barriers, and the big ass pump that is right before the cemetery, installed post-2005 Federal Flood. Day before yesterday, we passed the pump and he pointed and said, “The wup.” The wup is mysterious but lives…
I was driving to pick up Tin and passed the church on Canal and Jeff Davis that always has the best teasers on their marquee – today it was DJesus Unchained. Earlier I had gotten out of the shower and taken a look at my shower curtain – the one with the goldfish jumping out of the water. I purchased it as I had had that dream of Tin and I watching a fish jumping…
Let’s play the yes, and game. You know how it goes, instead of saying no, but which is what most of us say to any possibility of anything in our life, we say yes, and. I started playing this game a few weeks ago, and suddenly everything changes. And everyone changed. It’s as if the minute I started looking at the world differently, the world was different. I’m telling you – you can change your…
There is a story of a young, but earnest Zen student who approached his teacher, and asked the Master, “If I work very hard and diligently, how long will it take for me to find Zen? The Master thought about this, then replied, “Ten years … .” The student then said, “But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast — How long then?” Replied the Master, “Well, twenty…
I’m still watching In Treatment, even though tonight, finishing one disc, I felt like throwing the whole thing out the window. How to tell when you are done watching other people’s problems – when you get sick of them. I watched the first episode with the woman who gets pregnant but never wanted to be a single mother (um, thanks); I watched the cancer patient whose hair is about to all fall out (the woman…
I met an interesting woman at the conference this weekend, her name is Lynn Jericho. She was doing a workshop on Anthroposophy, Rudolph Steiner’s philosophy that I still find is so steeped in esoteric vocabulary that it’s difficult for me to plunge the depths of Steiner. So I was looking forward to the session to learn more about this man’s writings and teachings. It was a fascinating session both from staring into the blue, blue…