I dream of a world where people live small. It’s happening. It’s a meme. Small houses, small gardens, small vehicles, small pleasures. Small incomes. Small needs. My path is to live and to model that life. Enrich my networks. Take care of what I have and get rid of what I don’t need. Place myself …
Category: Zen & Dharma
Mountains and molars sesshin
I sat this sesshin with my best buddy, the angry Molar. The Zen retreat was at a small Tibetan Buddhist center at the foot of Black Tusk, in the forest near Squamish. I got a ride up to the retreat with Kaye, an RN specializing in mental health care. She counselled me to take Ibuprofen …
Sangha
Silent in the zendo face to the wall, Sangha surrounds me. Conventional wisdom says that the reason we gather is to support our practice, but I wonder again whether really the practice is just reason for sangha. Stripped down to essence of presence we don’t even pretend to drink coffee or walk or even talk. …
A twig in my teeth
A daydreaming monk falls off a cliff. As the monk is plunging downward he sees a twig sticking out from the side of the sheer cliff, and he manages to grab the twig with his teeth (yeah!). He is hanging by his teeth, above certain death, when a student arrives on the beach far below. …
A little pink notebook
I am having an identity crisis in the fancy-ass stationery store on Granville Island. A little pink notebook is messing with my head. You see, I am the Kind of Person who carries a notebook all the time. It is the repository and record of my life, from to-do lists to major epiphanies. I get …