This post is an adaptation of a talk I gave at the Santa Rosa Creek Zen Center on May 11, 2015. I. There’s an old, well-known haiku by the poet Basho that goes like this: Even in Kyoto— hearing the cuckoo cry, I long for Kyoto. In koan practice with the Pacific Zen Institute,…
A poem for Flood Wall Street and the People’s Climate March September 21-22, 2014 Today I’m staying in my pajamas because I can. I’m curling back in bed with my computer and checking Facebook, not one time, not two times, but eighteen times while my children are at school. I might bake cookies.…
When the archives of your life are disturbed you uncover some interesting things. Layers of yourself, that you buried for one reason or another. Some you meant to return to; some you were determined to remember; some you very clearly meant to forget. I have been working my way through a fifteen-year-old file cabinet, clearing…
First published by the Pacific Zen Institute at pacificzen.orgDecember 2013 On Monday night at the Santa Rosa zendo we sat with the koan about peach blossoms. It went pretty much like this: A woman wandered in the mountains, and became lost. As she rounded a bend, she saw peach blossoms on the other side of…