I made a vow that I would return to the high desert. I made my promise to the scrubby hills and the adobe walls, to Roshi Joan, and to myself. Vows are not lightly made and this one is ripe to be honoured. I’m a little terrified, tremulous, and excited. Trying to simply be ready …
Category: Upaya Zen Center
Always leaving, always coming home
Go away with no string on your straw sandals. —Dogen Zenji Today I left home and arrived home. I wedged the door of the turtlebus closed with a stick, and rode the ferry across the Salish Sea. Home to the Appias, Apt. 306. Home to my storage locker full of clothes and photographs and love …
What you find has everything to do with how you get there
Once in New Mexico I decided to go for an adventure to Albuquerque, and I asked if anyone had recommendations for what to do there. “You want to go to Albuquerque? Albuquerque is an armpit! Just move on through,” replied one car-dependent resident. Undiscouraged, I put my bike on the train in Santa Fe and …
The giving muscle
There’s this old Zen chestnut where the monk asks, why does the Bodhisattva of Compassion have so many eyes? The master replies: it is like a hand reaching for a pillow in the night. I love that image, of compassion or generosity as an autonomic nervous response, as natural as breathing. Every cell like an …
Lessons of Chaco Canyon
Early this morning I sat wrapped in a blanket on the frosty back patio of Querencia. The sun rose over Pikacho Peak. Ravens and chickadees chattered, dogs barked, coyotes scattered, footsteps crunched on snow. The highway woke up then too, commuters zooming through the valley to Santa Fe. Each engine momentarily obliterating the birdsong and …