A Mindful Life

It is daffodil time, so the robins all cry, For the sun’s a big daffodil up in the sky, And when down the midnight the owl calls “to-whoo”! Why, then the round moon is a daffodil too; Now sheer to the bough-tops the sap starts to climb, So, merry my masters, it’s daffodil time. –Clinton [...]

Allie Brosh sums it up beautifully. While I am not soul-crushingly depressed as she was, even a bout of soul-pinching depression has deleterious effects. It’s insidious. I’ve known something is askew, but stumbling in the fog I wasn’t clear about it specifically. Until I read Allie’s Depression Part 2 post, and found myself re-reading it [...]

I wish my blog were famous and had millions of readers so this video could reach many, many people. If the video doesn’t show/play then click to watch it here. I’ve not read any of David Foster Wallace’s books, but hearing this speech I can’t help but wish he was still alive.

Analysis has its peculiar scientific value, but the Spirit which passes from one person to another as a flame leaps from one coal to another grasps truth in its wholeness as a living thing united within itself. …Spiritual truth cannot be sharply defined like scientific truth. It exists on the dim edge of the unexplored [...]

Oh, to sink into silence. To breathe. To wait. No rituals, no incense, no chants, no words. Just silence and a straight-backed wooden chair. The silence is alive. Traffic zips down the highway. Chairs creak. Birds gossip. Someone coughs or sniffs. But if you really listen, you can hear the sunshine singing. Sometimes the entire [...]

…over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living which we know we are passing by. Strained by the very mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasiness, because we have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer [...]

THE AFTERLIFE They’re moving off in all imaginable directions, each according to his own private belief, and this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal: that everyone is right, as it turns out. you go to the place you always thought you would go, the place you kept lit in an alcove in [...]

One of my teachers in Zen is Karen Maezen Miller, whom I have known for seven years; I have visited her, and she guided me through my first sesshin. However, her sangha is located in Los Angeles, which is over 300 miles away. So it hasn’t been entirely practical to attempt to join or practice [...]

On the black cushion a stone sinking and floating into the dark light.

Accept indeterminacy as a principle, and you see your life in a new light, as a series of seemingly unrelated jewel-like stories within a dazzling setting of change and transformation. Recognize that you don’t know where you stand, and you will begin to watch where you put your feet. That’s when the path appears. -John [...]