Category: Meditation For Success
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this perfect way
Here we are, in the midst of this perfect way, and our practice is to realize it. — Maezumi Roshi Chapin Mill Retreat October 9-12, 2025 Register here Every year around this time, the people who practice with me come together at Chapin Mill Retreat Center in Batavia, NY. There are many reasons we keep…
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survival training
It started, as most things do, with me. I was the one who needed encouragement. After that impossible November day, it no longer mattered what I believed. It sure as hell wasn’t true. And then the fires from nowhere swept our homes. Everywhere, disasters exploded. Before long, we were broken by sickness, stress, and the…
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Two Fingers Pointing to the Moon
A complete grasp of non-duality is beyond limited beings such as ourselves. This is why Dōgen wrote “when one side is illumined, the other is dark.” Even in satori, we only have hints at and intimations of the undivided wholeness that we call “reality.” There is always a greater understanding of that undivided reality to…
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Book Review: The Garden of Weeds and Flowers
Two years ago a representative from the Monkfish Book Publishing Company based in Rhinebeck, New York asked if I would review The Garden of Weeds and Flowers: A New Translation and Commentary on The Blue Cliff Record (2021) written by Korean Jogye Order Zen teacher Matthew Juksan Sullivan. I let the publisher know I…
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Book Review of David McMahan’s Rethinking Meditation
It is hard to know how to even begin to review of a book of the beauty, depth, nuance, and complexity of David McMahan’s excellent Rethinking Meditation: Buddhist Meditative Practices in Ancient and Modern Worlds (Oxford, 2023). David’s previous book—his seminal The Making of Buddhist Modernism (Oxford, 2009)—is undeniably the most important book about Buddhist…
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possession
I had just turned 17 when my older sister and I went to see a movie that had taken the public by storm. It was called “The Exorcist,” and it was based on a bestselling book by the same name. Since at least half of the world’s current population wasn’t born by 1974, you might…
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goodness and mercy
A good person produces good out of the good stored up in his heart. An evil person produces evil out of the evil stored up in his heart, for his mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. — Luke 6:44-46 The other day I was working the New York Times crossword when one of…
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Book Review of Revamp: Writings on Secular Buddhism
Winton Higgins is a prominent Australian secular Buddhist, and Revamp: Writings on Secular Buddhism (Tuwhiri, 2021) has been hailed by Stephen Batchelor, as “the most comprehensive account of secular Buddhism currently available.” Since Stephen Batchelor’s name is, in some ways, almost synonymous with secular Buddhism, this is high praise indeed. Higgins has been influenced…
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Book Review: Reflective Meditation
Linda Modaro and Nelly Kaufer’s Reflective Meditation: Cultivating Kindness and Curiosity in the Buddha’s Company (2023, Precocity Press) is a lively written conversation between the authors on their understanding of meditation and the meditative path. Linda Modaro is the founder and lead teacher at Sati Sangha, a Southern California based online meditation community, and Nelly…
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I am not free
There are a few things I need to fill you in on. First, I am not free from fear. I am terrified. Second, I am not free from anger. I am furious. And third, I am not free from greed. No, I am furious and terrified that I will never see a penny from Social…