Buddhism

  • Remembering Thich That Hanh

    Today I would like to pay respects to Thay. His books had a big impact on me when my mom started having them around the house in the mid 80’s, which was how I started to get interested in Buddhism. Thay gave me the Dharma name Great Patience of the Heart during a 3 week…

  • Gnawing on the Bone now available!

    Gnawing on the Bone now available!

    The upcoming releases section of this website has felt a bit like a closet in need of cleaning out.  That load has lightened as of yesterday with the digital release on Bandcamp of Gnawing on the Bone.  This is an instrumental project that was written in Watertown MA in 2011 in one sitting as a…

  • Top 40 over 40.18: Peter Hughes and Dipa Ma

    I was once listening to an episode of Car Talk on NPR and heard a woman call in to Click and Clack with the following dilemma:  she had a Honda that was running perfectly, and that had proven to be very reliable over the years. Nevertheless, she found the car boring.  She found herself eyeing…

  • Studio Samsara

    I found this on Francis Prève‘s Facebook page.  To this I would add step 7, “I am awesome,” and then step 8, “Go back to step 1.”  Then it would be an even better representation of what I like to call “Studio samsara.” The Buddha used the term samsara to refer to the endless cycle…

  • Sunday Paper with the BPF: Ahhh, Mindfulness

    Well, I don’t really read a Sunday newspaper anymore.  Either they’ve been driven out of business by the internet or intellectually eviscerated by corporate centralized ownership.  But I’ve been kicking back and checking out some posts on the Buddhist Peace Fellowship (BPF) website after renewing my membership today.  Among them was a piece with a…

  • Impersonal Problems.1: Thanissara

    We’re used to thinking of problems as a word that goes hand in hand with “personal.”  Of course, there are problems in our professional lives.  But when we struggle with things that happen or come from outside of that realm, we tend to look at them as personal.  I’ve been interested in several articles I…

  • The Core is Getting Soft.9: Ring my Bell

    For many years now, I have been using software in my meditation practice.  In Buddhist meditation, we traditionally open and close each sitting by ringing a bell three times.  One is instructed to follow the sound waves until they subside, providing a gradual transition in and out of the silent state of awareness.  In today’s…

  • R.I.P., M.C.A.2: More Than a Feeling

    I wrote a post on Adam Yauch’s passing in August of 2012 that I thought at the time would be the first in a series on posts on the ironies and interests of the intersection of rock and hip hop with the dharma, but never got around to continuing with it. I pick up the…

  • Prarie Wind P.S.

    As an addendum to my post of April 8th on Neil Young’s album Prarie Wind in general, and song “It’s A Dream” in particular, I’m posting this video clip of the late Thai monk Achaan Chah, in whose lineage many of the Western Insight Meditation teachers I have studied with over the years trained..   “(One…

  • Top 40 Over 40.4: Prarie Wind

    I don’t usually pay much attention to stories about the circumstances in which a particular record came to be.  However, the stories about the timing of this record are an exception.  Neil Young made this record in Nashville in 2005, shortly before going to the hospital for surgery for a brain aneurysm.  Combined with the…