José M. Tirado (’ö-Zér Jamgön Dorje) is a Puertorican poet, Buddhist priest, and political writer living in Hafnarfjorður, Iceland, known for its elves, “hidden people” and lava fields. His articles and poetry have been featured in CounterPunch, Cyrano´s Journal, The Galway Review, Dissident Voice, La Respuesta, Op-Ed News, among others. He practiced and studied over 20 years in Zen, much of that with Joshu Sasaki Roshi, Vajrayana with Dzogchen Pönlop Rinpoche, and in 2003 he was ordained a Jodo Shinshu priest in Japan. Currently he is an apprentice within the Aro gTér lineage. He has a BA in Religious Studies, an MA in Buddhist Studies, and an MA in psychology, later doing doctoral work in psychology focusing on the psychophysiology of meditation. A long-time member of the Engaged Buddhism movement, he has worked as a Chaplain in Colorado, Wisconsin, and San Francisco, a union president at Warner Bros. Pictures, as president of the Latino Writers Group (for screenwriters in Hollywood), and now teaches meditation at the University of Iceland where he is head of the Buddhist Meditation Society of Iceland. He is currently working on a Ed. D in education. He blogs at A Deliberate Life: Musings on What´s Important (https://naftali2012.wordpress.com/) and can be reached at tirado.jm@gmail.com.
Some people are beneficiaries of a system that enables certain individuals to amass inconceivable riches while countless others are condemned to lives of squalor and disenfranchisement. And while Buddhism extends its systemic lenses on a much wider framework of human suffering, the in-between area of the immediately near us is sometimes neglected.
I. Widening our circle of awareness We stretch out- Expanding so far We come to embrace everything. Like a clear sky Which holds nothing: Not… Read More »THE CIRCLE OF AWARENESS
the bookcase, silent a sign without elucidation its own signal, its own meaning watch the shadow of my hands moving painted on the wall across… Read More »THE SHADOW OF MY HANDS MOVING
The lack of what might be called, as Jung suggested, soul connectedness, to the deeper aspects of our interior world, has become replaced instead with endless distraction and continuous, immediate, bombastic stimulation, and it is exhausting. We are not only constantly struggling with what assaults us daily, by the minute, in fact, but, instead of seeking out another with whom to commiserate, or a field of others to simply enjoy some real human connectedness, we are now trained to seek further stimulation and excitement, only to find it as empty of substance and dry of human touch.