A Small Part in the Cosmic Play
Mukunda: In the Iyrics to that song “Awaiting on You All,” from the All Things Must Pass album, you come right out front and tell people that they can be free from living in the…
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
Chinese Communists, Vietnamese Buddhists
Liu Shao-Chi, How To be a Good CommunistForeign Language Press, Peking 1964 Thich Nhat Hanh, Interbeing: Commentaries on the Tiep Hien PreceptsParralax Press, Berkeley, 1987 An immature revolutionary has to go through a long process…
Share the Wealth with Sarah Bollinger: How to Get Lost – A Field Guide to Healing from Evangelical Fundamentalism
I am a mental health therapist in the south, which means that I run my private practice in the heart of the Bible Belt. Many of my clients have been marginalized and even traumatized from…
Train Wholeheartedly
Attention [prosoche] is the fundamental Stoic spiritual attitude. It is a continuous vigilance and presence of mind, self consciousness which never sleeps, and a constant tension of the spirit. Thanks to this attitude, the philosopher…
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…
A Letter from Yael
Recently Yael asked me to share some favorite haiku writers, which I happily sent along, along with Yoel Hoffman’s book, Japanese Death Poems. I received the following response. 10/24/21 What a delight. Three big envelops all…
Questions for an Independent Journalist
I prepared this list for Danielle Mackey’s Share the Wealth in November 2020. Where can a person go to get the news? What is an echo chamber and what, if any role, does it play…
Cause and Effect 101
Andrew Wimmer shared the following headline and lede with me, and then his one word question. Really?
The Main Compass
First Thought: Conversations with Allen GinsbergEdited by Michael Schumacher When it comes to interviews with Ginsberg, I prefer the larger and deeper Spontaneous Mind, which warrants a complete rereading. But then I come across…
Share the Wealth with Danielle Mackey: Thinking Critically about Violence in Central America
I’d like to talk a bit about — and think aloud with the gathered friends — ways to see violence in Central America through a critical lens. Often, Central America is summed up as the…