December 25, 2012 It has been, in many respects, a year of night. No doubt our human species has had its share of it at large — unceasing and expanding war, recession, and our continuing ignorance of the environmental destruction that could fatally undermine the habitability of our planetary home by the end of this…
Author: brian
Sleep, Peace, and the Good Death
May 5, 2014 Whenever I read over some of the content I post here, it occurs to me that I frequently fail to follow my own best advice. But any teacher or pundit or writer worth his salt should be able to make that admission; and those who don’t are to be given a wide…
Sincerely Yours
May 1, 2014 I am drawn toward the invisible realm, toward the quantum reality that lives beneath the appearances amid which we strive and struggle. True, I play the game: work, money, human interaction. I go to meetings; try to pay enough attention to finance to get by; I follow the news and especially sports…
Of Recession
February 8, 2014 When I was a boy, I loved recess. It was a break in the school day from the drudgery and oppressive silence of the classroom, a brief opening into noise and laughter and play. I suspect I did more real growing during recess than in any amount of time I spent in…
What is Ego?
August 15, 2012 I can recall sitting in a project meeting one day a few years ago. I was the Business Analyst, the fellow responsible for creating documentation that would become the “project book” — the functional, business-oriented, technical, and performance specifications or requirements for the application that was being developed for this project….
Seeking the Edge of Body
April 1, 2014 Where, I wonder, does your body end? This is what the old Zen masters called a koan, one of those puzzles that can’t be held in the hand of Reason, any more than air or smoke can be gripped by the fist. The general, common sense answer would of course be: at…
Drunks in the Church, Saints in the Tavern
May 12, 2014 This is the kind of thing that can change your day and maybe — if you’re not careful, that is — even transform your life. Like all true art, it challenges, penetrates appearances, and calls upon what is true and universal within and among us all. Rumi was a great Persian poet and…
A Dress Falls; The Lover Rises
April 18, 2015 The secret of the mountains is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself: the mountains exist simply, which I do not. The mountains have no ‘meaning,’ they are meaning; the mountains are. The sun is round. I ring with life, and the mountains ring, and when I can hear it, there is a…
Night Life of the Troubled Mind
February 3, 2012 I’m sitting on a horse, the wrong way (tail-facing). I am facing a woman who I don’t know well but have long loved, reaching to embrace her. As I hold her in my arms and feel her energy entering me, I feel the horse starting to move. The question arises: “can I…
Of the Journey Downward
March 11, 2013 I write, in part, because it distracts me, diverts me. This is more than about “keeping me off the streets at night.” The diversion is not away from external reality, but towards my own. It is about seeking — and occasionally finding — meaning within where there is none around me. If…