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WRITERS

AYURVEDA’S WISDOM FOR WINTER

The rise in a multitude of ways to have a quick fix, a good body, and perfect health is another manifestation of our cultural sickness. Simple direct ways to live, eat and follow the flow of nature have become totally uninteresting to our hyped-up western culture. If it’s not sexy, trendy or going to make you famous, then it’s not of value to us at all. This is the danger of our current way of being in relationship to our lives and a direct affront to the sacredness and true purpose of life itself.

LIQUID GOLDEN EMBROIDERY OF LIGHT AND DEATH

Know this labyrinth, Friend. Know this dream. Know its luminous, transparent, liquid, holographic nature. Gnothe seauton, know thyself, as the Greek formula went, and know the dream. Feel its texture, for nowhere is its nature and mystery revealed but in the electricity of its experience. Feel the rainbow in whatever color or shape you see, whatever sound, texture, taste, smell. Whatever emotion, whatever thought, even sadness and pain.

A CONVERSATION WITH DEATH

God of Death: Now let’s discuss what it means to die. Understand the workings of this organism. Imagine you were brought up in an environment where you were not taught any alphabet or words. You had just this working mind, which is inbuilt in every creature for its survival. That working mind does not think in terms of words or sentences. Its working are entirely based upon electrical impulses produced by light, sound, touch, taste and smell, striking the sensors of the sense organs, which send impulses to reach the brain.

THE BLINDSPOT IN THE WESTERN EYE

The origin of the beliefs that lie behind the Judaeo-Christian world-view and the political systems based on them are not well known. Jon Norris has done some important detective work to shed light on western traditions that are rarely questioned and sacred truths that are little more than superstition. Buddhadharma offers the West a path back to sanity, but time is of the essence.

SARASWATI

Better to buy a book than to buy weed! Sit, and do your meditation. Go, go, to the cemetery, practice there!’ So I did, for many, many years, night and day. Even though I was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder aged twenty-five after many hospital admissions, only my practice kept me well. My faith grew exponentially as a result of this. Even though people mocked me, laughed at me and called me a madman, I continued practicing.

RETREAT AT JADE CAMP

I’d been dreaming. Something about that dream made me feel like I was soaked with joy. Not joy like kicking it at a party. Joy all through me. Every muscle loosened, like during the night I’d set something heavy down I’d been carrying my whole life. It felt important. But Buddha? Really? Who would ever have thought that this black girl from the East Bay would be meditating and dreaming about Buddha?

KOBUN

In 1991 in Beijing, one of my Chinese colleagues at the Beijing Airbase English Academy asked me: “do you know what teacher, laoshi, 老师, means?” I knew that yes was the wrong answer. I said no. He said it means father. From this ancient word, morphed in meaning as roshi in Japan, I began to understand the nature of my connection to Kobun.

DEEPER FREEDOM VERSUS CRIMINAL MISCHIEF

Basic freedom from psychic dry rot isn’t basic for everyone. Some folks get warped and stay bent, ignoring great opportunities to reinvent themselves. Choosing wiser ways up can prevent a fall down, keeping head in the sky, but feet on the ground. It is always our choice to wear horns or the crown.

GOD LIVES HERE

A brotherhood of gulls rises from the shore, pushing off from the wet sand; their footprint hieroglyphs tell me everything, then not, as a sliding pool of clear seawater gently washes over them, dissolving their messages. They travel east on the last of the breeze, just above the breaking waves, paralleling the shoreline, silhouetting themselves against the last glimmers of sun.

HOMESICK / HOMESEEK

For those who search blindfolded and find nothing, and for those who are given a chance to find an answer without searching. For those who look for a new place because they cannot fulfill their energy, and for those who look for a place where life would be more pleasant. For those who build houses and feel living in them is like living in a waiting-room in a bus stop.

YESTERDAYS

“Timing is only everything”, A professor whose name has been washed away by the sands of time, recalling the words of his professor when he and his fiancé were never happy with one another and ready to get married at the same time.

WORDS

The story goes: when Barack Obama was in high school, a teacher asked him what is the most powerful thing in the world and he responded without hesitation, “Words.” Most of us learn them quickly from an early age and accumulate more and more of them.

SOFTNESS OF KNOWING

Suddenly embraced, By softness of knowing, Grateful, but confused, I reach for my ground
So simple, yet I resist, This softness of knowing, Come fruitless habits, Drown this heart

NEPAL

Nepal, the fragile beauty of this moment, celebration and mourning dance of what is and what is not, and what is yet to be.