Keep It Simple
If you are mindful, you can choose with wisdom how to respond. If you are not mindful, your life is run by reactivity. It’s up to you. –Munindra, teacher of Jospeh Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, &…
Month: August 2019
The Buddha Is Hanging with the Groundlings at the Globe Theatre
“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At…
Recent Classes
Bob Dylan Approximately [Summer 2019] The Essential Edward Said [Summer 2019] An Introduction to Simone Weil: Concentration Is Consecration [Spring 2019] Ram Dass and Be Here Now: American Sadhana and the Search for the Real…
Reading Roth on Writing and Reading
George Searles, editor, Conversations with Philip Roth Literary Conversation Series University Press of Mississippi 1992 I settled in this morning with a collection of interviews with Philip Roth, from the bright beginning of his career…
“Surely, Thich Nhat Hanh Doesn’t Think that the Diamond Sutra Applies to Trump, ICE, and the Republicans!”
The Buddha said to Subhuti, “In a place where there is something that can be distinguished by signs, in that place there is deception. If you can see the signless nature of signs, then you…
“Born Only Yesterday, and Already She Speaks Like a Perfect Mensch”
12.14.17 Dear Dianne, I think this is the 4th time I’m reading Meshugah. It was originally serialized in the Yiddish Daily Forward. Because I’m reading it with you, and because Hedy is on our minds,…
“If the Messiah Comes, He’ll Come to This Cafeteria in Miami”
Isaac Bashevis Singer, Shadows on the Hudson Translated by Joseph Sherman Like Meshugah, this is another novel translated from the Yiddish and published after Singer’s death. In Shadows I was gripped by the various characters…
What’s Possible
1. If one really wishes to be master of an art, technical knowledge of it is not enough. One has to transcend technique so that the art becomes an “artless art” growing out of the…
After Kishinev
I’ve shared this story with hundreds of friends and students over the years. After a pogrom in Russia in 1903, the author was invited to contribute to a literary collection to be circulated to aid…
“Did You Watch the Debate?” “No, I Got Caught up in an Old Novel”
And if that wasn’t funny, there were lots of things that weren’t even funnier. [The doctor] was a very neat, clean man whose idea of a good time was to sulk. Fortunately, just when things…