Radiance of the Dark

2004 - 2005 | Springs Mountain Sangha, Colorado Springs, CO and Mountain Cloud Zen Center, Santa Fe, NM A bouquet of talks on the Heart Sutra, the distillation of the vast Prajna Paramita literature of the Mahayana. That's Prajna Paramita herself, the mother of buddhas, above. Because the Heart Sutra is a distillation, it's dense, nothing extra, bracing. Turns out when you pour in the stories and associations that surround it, the potion becomes sweeter and more complex. The first talk is the most straightforward introduction to the text, and after that, well, it wanders where it wanders - being the heart of the world and all.

2004 - 2005 | Springs Mountain Sangha, Colorado Springs, CO and Mountain Cloud Zen Center, Santa Fe, NM A bouquet of talks on the Heart Sutra, the distillation of the vast Prajna Paramita literature of the Mahayana. That's Prajna Paramita herself, the mother of buddhas, above. Because the Heart Sutra is a distillation, it's dense, nothing extra, bracing. Turns out when you pour in the stories and associations that surround it, the potion becomes sweeter and more complex. The first talk is the most straightforward introduction to the text, and after that, well, it wanders where it wanders - being the heart of the world and all.

Springs Mountain Sangha, Colorado Springs, CO | April 9, 2005, April 28, 2006 The old folks talked about how we all unfold sutra scrolls from our toes as we walk and our mouths as we speak, waving from the bright green tips of our new growth and falling out the tops of eggs as we peck them open. It's spring, the season of unfoldings both delicate and flamboyant — a good time for two talks inspired by artists. The first is an exhortation inspired by an old-style preacher and painter, Hakuin Ekaku of eighteenth century Japan — whose, um, directness I seem to have been channeling a bit that night; the second is a meditation on how koans are like the paintings of Johannes Vermeer, seventeenth century Dutch master of the pervading light. Hakuin would probably be pleased that his Prescription for the Penetrating-One's-Nature-and-Becoming-a-Buddha Pill was passed around during a retreat, while Vermeer might be surprised to find his oil and canvas evocations of peace enlisted to show how we work with koans, and koans work with us.

2004 - 2005 | Springs Mountain Sangha, Colorado Springs, CO and Mountain Cloud Zen Center, Santa Fe, NM A bouquet of talks on the Heart Sutra, the distillation of the vast Prajna Paramita literature of the Mahayana. That's Prajna Paramita herself, the mother of buddhas, above. Because the Heart Sutra is a distillation, it's dense, nothing extra, bracing. Turns out when you pour in the stories and associations that surround it, the potion becomes sweeter and more complex. The first talk is the most straightforward introduction to the text, and after that, well, it wanders where it wanders - being the heart of the world and all.

Springs Mountain Sangha, Colorado Springs, CO | April 9, 2005, April 28, 2006 The old folks talked about how we all unfold sutra scrolls from our toes as we walk and our mouths as we speak, waving from the bright green tips of our new growth and falling out the tops of eggs as we peck them open. It's spring, the season of unfoldings both delicate and flamboyant — a good time for two talks inspired by artists. The first is an exhortation inspired by an old-style preacher and painter, Hakuin Ekaku of eighteenth century Japan — whose, um, directness I seem to have been channeling a bit that night; the second is a meditation on how koans are like the paintings of Johannes Vermeer, seventeenth century Dutch master of the pervading light. Hakuin would probably be pleased that his Prescription for the Penetrating-One's-Nature-and-Becoming-a-Buddha Pill was passed around during a retreat, while Vermeer might be surprised to find his oil and canvas evocations of peace enlisted to show how we work with koans, and koans work with us.

2004 - 2005 | Springs Mountain Sangha, Colorado Springs, CO and Mountain Cloud Zen Center, Santa Fe, NM A bouquet of talks on the Heart Sutra, the distillation of the vast Prajna Paramita literature of the Mahayana. That's Prajna Paramita herself, the mother of buddhas, above. Because the Heart Sutra is a distillation, it's dense, nothing extra, bracing. Turns out when you pour in the stories and associations that surround it, the potion becomes sweeter and more complex. The first talk is the most straightforward introduction to the text, and after that, well, it wanders where it wanders - being the heart of the world and all.

June - October 2019 | Northern Coast of California An erratic series prompted by the erratic events of our times, in hopes of offering ways to hold their complexities, grieving what there is to grieve and remembering the veins of gold that mend a broken tea bowl — the radiance in the shattered, the unexpected beauty of the mended.

June - October 2019 | Northern Coast of California An erratic series prompted by the erratic events of our times, in hopes of offering ways to hold their complexities, grieving what there is to grieve and remembering the veins of gold that mend a broken tea bowl — the radiance in the shattered, the unexpected beauty of the mended.

June - October 2019 | Northern Coast of California An erratic series prompted by the erratic events of our times, in hopes of offering ways to hold their complexities, grieving what there is to grieve and remembering the veins of gold that mend a broken tea bowl — the radiance in the shattered, the unexpected beauty of the mended.

June - October 2019 | Northern Coast of California An erratic series prompted by the erratic events of our times, in hopes of offering ways to hold their complexities, grieving what there is to grieve and remembering the veins of gold that mend a broken tea bowl — the radiance in the shattered, the unexpected beauty of the mended.

June - October 2019 | Northern Coast of California An erratic series prompted by the erratic events of our times, in hopes of offering ways to hold their complexities, grieving what there is to grieve and remembering the veins of gold that mend a broken tea bowl — the radiance in the shattered, the unexpected beauty of the mended.

A day of remembrance. How do you memorialize something that hasn’t happened yet? The United Nations says that a million species could go extinct in the coming decades. What will that look like coming across our news feed? Imagine that the extinctions are announced one by one as they occur : How many alerts per day will that be? (Memorial Day, May 2019)

A day of remembrance. How do you memorialize something that hasn’t happened yet? The United Nations says that a million species could go extinct in the coming decades. What will that look like coming across our news feed? Imagine that the extinctions are announced one by one as they occur : How many alerts per day will that be? (Memorial Day, May 2019)

An ongoing series imagining from a perspective both wide and piercing some of the deep stories underneath the climate crisis and the future of humans

An ongoing series imagining from a perspective both wide and piercing some of the deep stories underneath the climate crisis and the future of humans

When the foundation stone for Notre-Dame de Paris was laid in 1163 everyone, architects to stonemasons, knew they’d be working on something they wouldn’t live to see completed, nor would their children or grandchildren. They couldn’t be certain that the engineering would hold, or what the light, filtered through rose windows into a stone glade, would be like. (Earth Day, April 2019)

An ongoing series imagining from a perspective both wide and piercing some of the deep stories underneath the climate crisis and the future of humans

/*What does Dongshan teach? The dark way, the bird path, and the open hand.*/ At the edge of the sea, the rumble and roll of the waters pull on some deep memory of our first, floating home, when we were diaphanous, barely matter, aeons before the empires of thought and industry were built upon the land. Wind pours through the coastal forest, joining the boom of the waves, and the world is a unity of impersonal and completely consoling roar. (Bodhi Day, December 2018)

An erratic series prompted by the erratic events of our times, in hopes of offering ways to hold their complexities, grieving what there is to grieve and remembering the veins of gold that mend a broken tea bowl — the radiance in the shattered, the unexpected beauty of the mended.

An erratic series prompted by the erratic events of our times, in hopes of offering ways to hold their complexities, grieving what there is to grieve and remembering the veins of gold that mend a broken tea bowl — the radiance in the shattered, the unexpected beauty of the mended.