Reading/713 (Master Chu)

In reading, you must keep your mind glued to the text. Only when every sentence and every character falls into place have you done a good job of thinking through the work. In general, the…

May We Always Be Amateurs

Nonrequired Reading: Prose Pieces Wislawa Szymborska Translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh Herein are a few score short pieces by the Nobel laureate (Literature, 1996), usually no more than a page or two, although…

Drugged by Books

Soon after my father’s death, I started reading Leon Wieseltier’s Kaddish, his journal of reflections on his year of going to shul and saying Kaddish. In the days and weeks ahead, Wieseltier offered me some…

Books

My father had an Appalachian education That went through sixth grade I went after and got a BA, MA And a PhD I doubt my father Ever finished reading a book (I once asked him…

Kafka’s Axe

Dear Bella Levenshteyn, Was reading Kafka’s letters earlier today.  The passage caught my eye: “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading…

Good Citizens/1

Dear Friends in the Sangha, I first encountered The Miracle of Being Awake (later published as The Miracle of Mindfulness) in 1982, when a monk from the Abbey of Gethsemani gave me a mimeograph of…

Dear Mark

Dear Mark, Here is my reflection of Dear Layla, I thought at first that I should apologize for the scatter-brained style of writing I’m sure this letter will take. Then I thought, he probably doesn’t…