Category: Daily Success Habits
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the whole of the world is blooming
There is a grapefruit tree in my front yard that isn’t the picture of a grapefruit tree, at least not anymore. It has been old and sick-looking for all of the 27 years we have been here, and perhaps for many decades before. Its shrunken trunk is pitted and scarred. The bark, mostly gone. The…
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Zen Fridays – 2022 Diary / Journal
Another year will be over soon. We will be welcoming another new year soon. Anything new offers us an opportunity to look at things from a new perspective. I write journals or reflections daily. For the coming new year, 2022, I have purchased a planner and a Pursebook from Mori. Mori is a women-run business,…
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96. Buddha Nature Is Not A Thing
Oftentimes in Zen literature, qualified teachers will make a sincere effort to provideclear direction by using words like emptiness, silence, calm, serenity , stillness,tranquility, simplicity, quiescence. The sixth ancestor additionally gave encouragement by adding that we shouldcultivate an openness of “not being moved around by anything” while also “notattaching good or bad (judgements) to our…
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95. When Doubts Arise, Simply Say Not Two
The Third Ancestor Hsin Hsin Ming’s now famous Trust In Mind is quoted in it’s entiretyelsewhere on this website. Towards the end, the ancestor states:“To come directly into harmony with reality.Just simply say when doubts arise, not two.”In this “not two” nothing is separate, nothing excluded.No matter when or where, enlightenment means entering this truth.”…
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Learning to be Intolerant
Acceptance is a big deal in Buddhist circles. We’re told that we must accept suffering, accept mistreatment, accept the opinions of others. We’re told to be like the ocean, which accepts all things and rejects nothing. Much of this thinking is rooted in a slavish dependence on the absolute. This is especially true in Zen…
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Lost Cats and Buddhist Love
As I write this one of our cats, Finn, is sprawled across my lap. He is an all-white, American short hair with blue eyes and below average intelligence. I’ve watched him carefully plan his leap onto the bookshelf only to jump headfirst into the wall. And he regularly gets lost wandering through our house; meowing…
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here for you
For a few months I’ve been hearing this phrase—here for you—in unlikely places. The words have stayed with me like a thrum beneath the sickening roar of our civic dismantling. Someone is here for me. Someone is here for me in my forsakenness; someone stands ready to help. It started in the still, small quiet…
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A chair in snow
One afternoon not long ago, as I was walking in a local gym, I watched a student shooting hoops in an unusual way. On the fingertips of his right hand, he held a basketball. In the palm of his left, he held a cell phone. After taking a single-handed shot, and before the ball had…
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Judgment and discernment
Imagine, if you will, that you are having lunch with a friend in your favorite diner. It’s a cold winter’s day, and both of you have ordered bowls of chili. Sampling a spoonful, your friend notes that the chili is spicier than usual. That’s fine with him but not so fine with you. It’s far…