Tag: dailysuccesshabits
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if not now
There is a long-held view that at this time of year we should take stock of where we are and where we’re headed. I subscribe to that. It’s a good time to renew our intentions and redirect our actions. In Buddhism, “intention” refers to that part of the Eightfold Path which is called “right intention.”…
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I should have thought
Many years ago, when I was still an undergraduate, I traveled from eastern Iowa to the North of England to study English literature at the University of Leeds, a so-called “redbrick” university in West Yorkshire. There I lived for a year in a village on the outskirts of that soot-laden city in a hall of…
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what I’m working on
For my birthday my daughter gave me this monogrammed notebook. It fits in my hand. She inscribed it, “Take this with you everywhere. Use it for everything.” A few days ago I picked it up and put a pen to the pages. This is what I wrote. People ask me what I’m working on now.…
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A peaceable heart
Like the word silly, which once meant “innocent” (“the silly sheep”) but now means “foolish, frivolous, lacking in common sense,” the word contention has a distinctive history. Derived from the Latin contentio, it once meant “striving, struggle, competition.” But sometime in the sixteenth century, contention came to mean “disagreement, argument, fighting.” Unlike silly, contention has…
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zen: the authentic gate
We cannot attain genuine enlightenment unless we practice under an authentic teacher; we will be led to a spurious experience if we practice under a false teacher. ― Kōun Yamada, Zen: The Authentic Gate When I started my practice I received a very specific imprint, a very specific instruction on working with a teacher.…
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The practice of veneration
In the closing line of his poem “Sandstone Keepsake,” the Irish poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney describes himself as “one of the venerators.” That line is striking, not only because the verb venerate has largely disappeared from everyday discourse but also because the spirit of veneration itself, like water in certain parts of the…