juillet 2011
Befriending heat and rain
After another hot day, a storm appears to be brewing. I sit down for a moment with that. Just that: accumulated heat and impending rain. I rest in it, "befriend" it as someone said to [...]
Méditation hebdomadaire/weekly meditation
Les lundis soirs, 20h-22h méditation et entretiens (interviews) avec Amy Sensei 4 Passage Courtois 75011 Paris (porte gauche, interphone 'maison', dernière étage) Tél. 06 10 87 82 19 (Joa) Les vendredis soirs, 19h45-21h15 méditation et [...]
Program Autumn 2011, Winter-Spring-Summer 2012
Autumn 2011 One-day retreats, Paris: 2 Oct. 17 Dec. Weekend retreats: 4-6 Nov. Lisbon City retreat, including a museum meditation led by Frank De Waele Sensei 19-20 Nov. Paris In Full Bloom: The Bodhisattva Way [...]
juin 2011
Parting together (Je est un autre)
Leaving sitting tonight, we see a sharp, clean graffiti painted in red on a wall: Je est un autre, it reads, quoting Rimbaud's famed line. I think of Marguerite Yourcenar... I is another, it is [...]
This human adventure
From Marguerite Yourcenar's notes for the writing of her beautiful Mémoires d'Hadrien: "Tout être qui a vécu l'aventure humaine est moi." (Every being who has lived the human adventure is me.) What if we could [...]
Famous last words
Things change: Word has come that Joko Beck's last words before dying were not, as I noted in a previous posting, "This, too, is wonder..." The successor of Joko who had sent the first message [...]
Just this word
Off to Lisbon for a Zen Art workshop. What is Zen Art? The joining of creativity and awakening, simply the "activity of non-aggression," as Trungpa said. We sit and we open, we sit and we [...]
Happy Bloomsday
Today is the 107th anniversary of that fine day when Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus stepped out for their great adventures around Dublin in James Joyce's Ulysses. The world has never been the same since. [...]
Joko Beck
This morning at 7:30 in America the Zen master Joko Beck died, we are told. She of "Everyday Zen" fame, she who is considered a pioneer of a contemporary Zen for our times in the [...]
Suddenly, this morning
Suddenly Monday already, and yet another holiday here in France. The day began with a surprise when I flipped the switch for the light in the bathroom: suddenly no electricity. Whatever I might have been [...]
Becoming, on and on
Came across this tonight, a wonderfully rich summary of practice and life, life and practice from Shunryu Suzuki: Without any idea of time, your practice goes on and on. Moment after moment you become you [...]
Feast of right amounts, wandering home
A day of sitting today in the summer garden, graced with the right amounts of shade and sun and wind. Our lunch table, too, was filled with the right amount of the right ingredients contributed [...]
mai 2011
A deliciously irreversible evening
Amid talk among friends at a dinner party in the delicious garden last night, someone asked the question: Is an "awakening" experience irreversible? Everyone seemed to have something to say about it, whether a question, [...]
Tree of life
Saturday afternoon at the movies can change your mind... if you see Terence Malick's new film, "The Tree of Life." It's just things as they are, start to finish, or finish to start, the "beginning" [...]
Back again, night (slow and late)
Almost feels like I never left. I felt so much "here" wherever I was. And yet... New York is a big, hard, tall city, without round edges or cushions, constantly busy and in motion. It [...]
Velvet, violet, here, there, everywhere
Moonlight on the canal as we left sitting tonight. Lovely, easy, quiet evening in spring. Dark, yet not dark, almost a velvety violet. Meanwhile... Heading off to America tomorrow, leaving the "old" continent behind for [...]
Action and actor, justice and compassion
Inundated as we are with carefully crafted information since the killing of Osama Bin Laden, what has emerged at the very least is a clear picture of everyone trying to give their meaning to the [...]
Merci (The Red Wheelbarrow)
Merci à tous ceux qui sont venus à la lecture ce soir à la librairie The Red Wheelbarrow. J'apprécie avec gratitude votre soutien de mon "travail" dans ce champs poètique, qui, comme notre pratique Zen, [...]
Reading at The Red Wheelbarrow
For those in Paris, I'll be performing with two other poets on Monday, May 9: Paris-based poets Amy Hollowell and Pansy Maurer-Alvarez joined by poet and publisher Robert Hershon from Brooklyn for performances of their [...]
Retraite de méditation en France, été 2011
Retraite de méditation Zen avec Amy Hollowell, Sensei, fondatrice de la Wild Flower Zen Sangha 20-27 août Au centre Le Tapis Vert, en Normandie Asseyez-vous et réveillez-vous! La méditation Zen est un acte de liberté. [...]
