Once, when my life was going very badly, and I was so angry every moment that it was like a white-hot inferno raging inside of me, Thích Nhất Hạnh soothed me. Actually, he probably saved me. At the very least he made it possible for me to live the life I have now, (relatively) peaceful. In…

I am working on my death. Well, actually, it’s more like I’m working on my life up to my death. But I’m trying to hold that singularly discomforting goal in mind — the one event no one avoids. My friends are dropping around me. Like petals from a perfect white Iceberg rose, they drift into…

The Buddha talks quite a bit about teaching, about learning. He did almost almost all his teaching outside, to my knowledge (which isn’t as encyclopædic as I’d like!). Not in a circle of too-small desks, in a room w/out windows, dominated by a green chalk board and a broken clock. Not in anything remotely resembling…

I hate laundry. Really — I mean it. I once told my sons, in a fit of I’ve had it! that I would remember their childhood years as great mountains of laundry. And while I also remember games and hugs and shared confidences and the smell of baby hair, I still remember laundry, too. It’s…

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