Rain and Rhino
Love Letters from the Hermitage
Wishing Friends Well
On Being Absent from the Beginners Retreat
white clouds drift
lone crow calls
slow footsteps
shadow and light
turn the corner
a stone buddha gathers silence
sitting again together
breath upholds breath
mind meets mind
the occasion
though ancestral
is not ancient
every time you enter it
you enter it new
A Single Vegetable Stalk
Lately Impromptu student talk offered at the Sunday June 3 sitting of the Lexington Zen Center, on the invitation of Myozen Osho. there appears to be an element of risk associated with showing up at the Zen Center, as Myozen Osho has got in the habit of nudging us in various ways: we were just becoming accustomed to the notion of preparing a student talk in advance, and now we are invited to make something up on the spot! But as there is risk in showing up for anything at all in life I might as well give it a go.
May 2018 Retreat, Furnace Mountain
Proposed for Inquiry
I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will go in and come out and find pasture. — John 10:9.
Ajar, it blocks Heaven and Earth;
boltless, there is no forcing it.
You are no different than me,
and yet I am not you.
Meeting again without remainder
in the third watch of the night
we pass through.
On Taking Up Koan
From the October 2017 retreat, Furnace Mountain.
Zen and the Refugee
An address given at an inter-faith service on behalf of refugees at Christ Church Cathedral in Lexington, KY, January 31, 2017. Zen Buddhist people tend to shy away from settled statements of principle, so when we seek insight and direction on matters of justice we often take a cue from other religious traditions, especially the Desert monotheism of our Jewish, Christian and Muslim friends, whose unique and perhaps greatest contribution to humanity may be their insistence on the central place in salvation history of the marginalized—the poor, the weak, the stranger—and the determination of their prophets to hold the powerful to account for how they are treated.