Tag: writing
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Good neighbors
As the world knows, Zen Buddhism is a practice of stillness and silence. Its iconic image is a figure sitting cross-legged in meditation. But Zen is also a practice of active questioning. And no question is more central to the practice than one a child might ask: “What is this?” Zen teachings enjoin practitioners to…
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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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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…