The Golden Rule

Tzu-Kung asked saying, Is there any single saying that one can act upon all day and every day? The Master said, Perhaps the saying about consideration: ‘Never do to others what you would not like…

Closer than Your Jugular Vein

“Look not for my reality in the realm of appearances or in the Void. Seek it in your own mind. There only it resides.–Kuan Yin, in John Blofeld, Bodhisattva of Compassion: The Mystical Tradition of…

Sangha of Poets

Dear Friends, As we are reading Nhat Hanh’s poems for our June session, I thought I’d share a few poems by other Zen poets in the weeks ahead. Here is one by Han-Shan, who lived…

Not Flustered, Not Melancholy, Not Anxious

James Laughlin, Ezra Pound’s publisher, observed that “Pound’s translations of Confucian texts, beautiful as is their language, are seldom applauded by Sinologues.” But we common readers may appreciate such versions from the Analects, when  they…

Quit Complaining!

Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T’ang Poet Han-shanTranslated and with an Introduction by Burton Watson I first learned of Han-shan 30 years ago when reading Jack Kerouac’s novel, The Dharma Bums, which starred Japhy…

Taking Refuge in Po Chü-i

Enough already of Useful Idiots, Counterpunch, flare-ups at The Intercept Political yammering by self-appointed soothsayers This Friday night I fade far away from news of assorted American Psychos And am welcomed by Po Chü-i Who…

Gratitude/555

I give thanks for translators whose labors allow me to meditate on the teachings of sages throughout time, like David Hinton’s work with  Confucius’s Analects…   1.16 The Master said: “Don’t grieve when people fail…

From Three Chinese Books

1. The Master said, To learn and at due times to repeat what one has learnt, is that not after all a pleasure? That friends should come to one from afar, is this not after…

Finding One’s Lost Mind

Julia Ching, The Philosophical Letters of Wang Yang-ming University of South Carolina Press, 1972 I previously studied with delight Julia Ching’s To Acquire Wisdom: The Way of Wang Yang-ming. Wang was the towering philosophical figure…