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Beginner's Heart

I’m an expat brat — raised from the age of 8 overseas.  Spending those years when experts say you ‘attach’ to a place somewhere else. Then somewhere after that, and somewhere after that, and somewhere else after that. I can count more than 20 moves that I remember; I’m pretty sure there are more than…

You can see almost anything at the State Fair. Cakes that look like Chinese porcelain, fried butter (really), newborn lambs so wobbly they fall over, grown men carrying giant stuffed animals, Golden Driller bottles of beer… And more. Lots more. People come to the fair I never see at any other time of year. It’s…

This is, ostensibly, a dog story. Of a dog — Ricochet — who was born & bred to be a service dog, but disappointed. And what happened afterwards… Buddhism talks about letting go. The opposite of letting go is attachment, which Lama Surya Das likens to “holding on tightly to something that is always slipping…

There are so many things right with this saying… I wouldn’t be alive today without ‘art.’ At a time in my life when even my two beautiful sons couldn’t make me want to go on — when the entire world seemed shattered and full of scarlet glass — a writer saved me. Laid her words…

Lately it seems like everywhere I look I learn. I’m learning from the poems on the lists I subscribe to. I’m learning from the birds feeding on the deck (the much-maligned sparrows line up to take turns at their saucer of water). I’m learning (always) from my students. I’m thinking that’s what Buddhism means when…

He doesn’t look 94, does he? And in fact, he probably shouldn’t even be alive. Much less 94. So I’m hopeful. Because Stephane Hessel is not only alive, but still outraged by what’s wrong with the world. And he should know. Hessel, a French Resistance fighter in WWII, survived capture by the Germans. Survived it…

True confessions: I actually don’t have rows in my classroom. We sit in an old-fashioned circle, and I don’t let the students put the chairs back after class. ‘Everyone,’ I tell them, ‘should sit in circles. You can see each other.’ (They think I’m just being nice to them, not realising I mean it :))…

In my next life, should I have one, I’m willing to come back as tea. A nice, comforting China black, preferably. Keemuns — Hao Ya — Panyangs — even a Muscatel-fragranced Darjeeling, although I like milk and raw sugar in my tea, usually. Tea is the perfect metaphor for beginner’s heart. It doesn’t ask anything…

…One hates the sanctimonious Buddha-goo But loves to meditate. To think one word And the breath balanced on its floor of muscle … Falling and rising like years. The brain-roof chatter Settling among the eaves. …  ~ Robert Pinsky Sometimes, poetry works so well it’s hard to catch my breath. I have to stop, look…

There’s an article on the Tricycle website about ‘original nature,’ and the Buddhist saying ‘return to your original state.’ I like to think the admonition is more like ‘Go home!’ Because that’s what it is, our original nature — whatever that means. It’s where it all began, where it all ends. It’s the home stretch,…
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