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…

Trying To Be One-Pointed

In the autumn, on retreat at a mountain temple Although I try to hold the single thought of Buddha’s teaching in my heart, I cannot help but hear the many crickets’ voices calling as well….

Trying To Be One-Pointed

In the autumn, on retreat at a mountain temple Although I try to hold the single thought of Buddha’s teaching in my heart, I cannot help but hear the many crickets’ voices calling as well….

“If Not You, Who?”

Having recently read Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism and Deep Work, I thought of Marcel Proust’s Time Regained, volume 7 in his In Search of Lost Time. 1. As for the inner book of unknown symbols……

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…

This Pilgrimage of the Heart

I first read the seven volumes of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time spring through autumn of 1997.  A couple of years later, I read the collection of Proust’s essays in On Art &…

Making It Be  Spring with Everything

Burton Watson, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, Columbia University Press, 1996 Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know…