The Dewdrop
THIS WEEK'S BLOG
Emily Dickinson – I Died for Beauty, But Was Scarce…
Emily Dickinson’s allegorical reflection on the relationship between beauty and truth.
Chris Abani on the Balance and Patience of West African Beauty
In West African thought, beauty surpasses the principles of symmetry and perspective and instead goes deep into the balance of being itself.
Tishani Doshi – Hope is the Thing
Tishani Doshi’s poem pays homage to a twelve-year-old girl who died of exhaustion last year during the Covid-19 lockdown.
INTERVIEWS
Pamela Denyes – The Fog of October
Marsha Warren Mittman – No Name
Rebecca Ramsden – Be Thou My Vision
Eugene Platt – September Poem
Read deep - breathe easy
My Backspaces
BY CHARLENE MOSKAL
As I age I find I can no longer enter certain rooms. I see backspaces inhabited by specters of a world fading into my past.
Morning Toast
BY VINCENT PUZICK
I remember the smell of toast. I was in the middle of my morning minutes of Transcendental Meditation when my mother got home from her graveyard shift at the hospital.
MICRO GALLERY
Gabriela De Paz – Enredadera
Gabriela De Paz’s flower paintings are portraits of emotions and a homage to the perpetual flux of the human condition.
Learning How to Breathe Again
BY DANIELLE BAIN –
I went through the five stages of grief to find my own sexuality in a world that was far from supportive
Malignant – A Love Story
BY CYNDY CENDAGORTA
As her friend fell sick while she fell in love, she realized we don’t get to choose our miracles or our malignancies.
FEATURED AUTHORS AND POETS
BOOK EXCERPTS
Working With the Soul Nerve – Resmaa Menakem on Grounding Our Bodies
Starting with the damage done by racism to human bodies, Resmaa Menakem presents a pragmatic approach to healing through the body.
What is Meditation? Shinzen Young on How to Deepen Our Focus
Shinzen Young on the most basic principle of mindfulness meditation: the cultivation of focus that can be practiced at any moment of the day, during any activity.
The Most Beautiful Thing We Can Experience Is The Mysterious: Albert Einstein’s Living Philosophy
Albert Einstein lays out his living philosophy and the set of ideals that he held in his personal, spiritual and political life.
The Full Awareness of Breathing
In the Anapanasati Sutta, the Buddha presents a visceral kind of practice with the breath, that illuminates the experience of joy, calm and impermanence.
The Self is Tied to This Body Like an Ox to a Cart
One of the most well-known sections of the Chandogya Upanishad is the story of Indra, King of the Gods, Virochana King, of the Godless and their encounter with the sage Prajapati.
Each Breath One Takes is a Step Towards One’s Destiny
Teachings about the cultivation of wisdom by the Sufi Master and the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin, Hadrat ‘Alî.
The Buddha’s Last Teaching: Be Your Own Island, Your Own Refuge
The Buddha’s final words of advice to his students before he died were to take refuge in the dharma and in themselves.
Dogen’s Seal of the Ocean: How Meditation and Life Can Flow Like Water
Japanese Zen Master Eihei Dogen invokes an oceanic state of non-identification as something that expresses the true Dharma, or our true nature, according to the teachings of Buddha.
Want More?
THE ALAN WATTS CORNER
Running With Life: Alan Watts on Freedom and Poverty
Alan Watts unpacks the imperative not to hold on to things, but to adopt a kind of psychological poverty—or simplicity— in which the mind is clear and unfettered in a way that allows it the space for true spontaneity.
Alan Watts and Divine Play
Alan Watts delves into one of his favorite and recurring subjects – the way in which we over-identify with the parts we play.
What Have You Left Out? Alan Watts on the Limits of Perception
Alan Watts often said that in order to come to your senses, you have to get out of your mind. Watts was emphatic about self-realization and breaking through cultural and psychic barriers in order to live as a fully-fledged, fearless human being.
Brahman, God, Allah and the Tao – Alan Watts
Among Alan Watts’ most compelling qualities was his fascination with different systems of faith and his
Body Like a Rag, Mind Like a Mirror – Guo Gu Breaking Through Boundaries
Chan teacher Guo Gu on silent illumination, punk music and his teacher Sheng Yen’s legacy.
Surviving Intact – Norman Fischer on Zen, Language and Growing Old
Zen teacher and poet Norman Fischer on where and how poetry and Zen practice meet and interact.
Why I Write – A Conversation with Kathleen Dean Moore
Author and activist Kathleen Dean Moore on what inspires her, what drives her, and her struggle to write about hope.
‘Telling Stories is the Single Thing That Makes Us Human’ – A Conversation with Adam Mansbach
A conversation with Adam Mansbach about loss, grief, and the process of writing his new book, I Had a Brother Once, in the form of an epic poem.
Embodying Grief – A Conversation with Liz Tichenor
Author and priest Liz Tichenor talks about her book The Night Lake, about dealing with loss and what the topography of grief looks like after seven years.
Why I Write – Nicholas Trandahl
Religion and faith are two of the most difficult subjects to write about according to Nicholas Trandahl, author of the poem, The Chapel.
THE BEATS
BROWSE BY THEME
MYSTICS
Eighteen Thousand Universes Through Eighteen Thousand Eyes
The Sacred is the Everyday – Joan Chittister
Thomas Merton on Solitude, Authenticity and Being
Gurdjieff and The Two Rivers
Blinded by the Sun – St Teresa of Avila
“Don’t Tell Me Who I Am Yet. It Is Still Being Spelled Out”
Kabir – The Moon Shines in my Body
Rumi’s Guest House
POPULAR READS
BROWSE SUBJECTS
FROM THE ZEN GARDEN
Anger Is Me and I Am Anger
Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh on how we can become intimate and compassionate with our own anger and even transform it into love.
Dave Sims – Watercolors
Dave Sims’ watercolor paintings are a submission to the chance of creation and a surrender to emptiness.
Buddhism’s Most Basic Teaching: Everything Changes
Shunryu Suzuki on our inability to accept the truth that we and everything around us are in a state of constant flux.
Improvisations in Jazz – Bill Evans’ Kind of Blue Liner Notes
Bill Evans on Miles Davis’ vision of the direct deed, and how they improvised something that evaded explanation.
You Have to Have a Cup
The Empty Mirror is Janwillem van de Wettering’s memoir of his time at a Japanese Zen monastery where he stayed for over a year in the late 1950s.
The Moon in the Water, the Body in the Mirror
Samurai Yagyu Munenori uses the popular Zen image of the moon reflected in the water to explain its application in martial arts training.
How to Dance? Lessons from a Zen Master
Jundo Cohen paints a picture of the universe as an integrated and indivisible dance, in which certain elements temporarily swirl out then return to the whole.
Bodhidharma’s Bloodstream Sermon
Bodhidharma’s fundamental teaching was that the Buddha can only be found in the mind since its essence is mind itself.
The Great, Generous Laugh
Susan Murphy’s book, The Red Thread, addresses the guts and gore of the flesh-and-blood humans who sustain spiritual practice in the midst of desire, mortality and heartbreak.
Kodo Sawaki Gathered Together: Arthur Braverman’s ‘Discovering the True Self’
Arthur Braverman gathers all of Kodo Sawaki’s teachings together in his impressive new book on the Zen Master.
Returning Home – From Keizan Jokin’s Zazen Yojinki
The Zazen Yojinki, written by 14th century Japanese master Keizan Jokin, covers the fundamental aspects of zazen, the form of Zen meditation.
Respecting Ourselves, Respecting Things
Zenkei Blanche Hartman discusses respect for the physical world, which starts with respect for ourselves, grounded in interconnectedness.
KEEP READING
You Have To Say Something: Dainin Katagiri on What To Say When There Is Nothing To Say
According to Katagiri, it can be difficult to find the words or modality to enter back into the world from a place of silence, but it is something we ultimately have to do.
Astronomer Pippa Goldschmidt on Seeing Far and Seeing Up Close
Astronomer Pippa Goldschmidt on working in the starry deserts of Chile during a time when new technologies meant a more remote relationship to the act of stargazing.
Carl Jung and The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man
Carl Jung knew that the sense of something important missing from our lives would eventually lead to the search for a path back into ourselves.
‘A Heart Slowly Reduced to Embers’: W. G. Sebald on the Fires That Burn Inside and Outside
“From the earliest times, human civilization has been no more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour, of which no one can say when it will begin wane and when it will fade away.”
Guo Gu’s Guide to Silent Illumination
The core of Chan meditation is the concrete experience of being in the present moment, not holding on to any mental concept or idea about oneself or one’s activity
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Keeping Silence of the Heart: Cultivating Attention and Sobriety According to the Philokalia
Philokalia means ‘love of the beautiful and the good’, and the writings that were added to this collection were mostly concerned with the importance of awakening and developing attention and consciousness.
La Mar, El Mar: Ernest Hemingway’s Kind, Beautiful, Cruel Ocean
Ernest Hemingway’s ‘The Old Man and the Sea’, has to be one of the most accomplished accounts of a lifetime’s intimacy with the sea.
Out Of the Body and Into the Mountain: Nan Shepherd’s Journeys Among the Scottish Cairngorms
Published thirty years after it was written, Nan Shepherd’s nature memoir describes a very physical intimacy that grew and developed through the author’s exploration of the Cairngorm Mountains.
‘Your Job Is to Put On a Splendid Performance’: Epictetus’ Design for a Skillful and Happy Life
Epictetus’ path to freedom attends to the aspects of life that can be controlled, while meeting with equanimity the things we can do nothing about.
To Share Fear is the Greatest Bond of All: J.A. Baker’s Loving Portrait of the Peregrine
Sometimes described as England’s greatest cult book, The Peregrine is a beautiful, lyrical expression of one man’s fascination with this hunting bird that he came to know intimately on a daily basis for over a decade.
The Poem Is a Place in Which to Feel: Mary Oliver’s Tribute to Walt Whitman
In this stirring tribute to her shadow-companion and first poetic love Walt Whitman, poet Mary Oliver describes the experience of awakening to poetry as a door to the temple, a place ‘in which to feel’.
Running With Life: Alan Watts on Freedom and Poverty
Alan Watts unpacks the imperative not to hold on to things, but to adopt a kind of psychological poverty—or simplicity— in which the mind is clear and unfettered in a way that allows it the space for true spontaneity.
This is the Life: Annie Dillard Asks, Then What?
Annie Dillard celebrates humanity by taking the widest view of its activities, hopes, dreams and values. She then asks, what would we really do with this new, expanded perspective?
Welcome to The Dewdrop! This little journal is a digest of reflective and powerful writing focused on reading, writing and being. Scroll on for poetry, essays, book excerpts and classic texts.
Pamela Denyes – The Fog of October
The Fog of October is Pamela Denyes’ call to the wild, an invitation to look beneath the surface of the mundane–to the mysticism beyond the veil.
Emily Dickinson – I Died for Beauty, But Was Scarce…
Emily Dickinson’s allegorical reflection on the relationship between beauty and truth.
Chris Abani on the Balance and Patience of West African Beauty
In West African thought, beauty surpasses the principles of symmetry and perspective and instead goes deep into the balance of being itself.
Learning How to Breathe Again
BY DANIELLE BAIN –
I went through the five stages of grief to find my own sexuality in a world that was far from supportive
My Backspaces
BY CHARLENE MOSKAL
As I age I find I can no longer enter certain rooms. I see backspaces inhabited by specters of a world fading into my past.
Marsha Warren Mittman – No Name
With her poem No Name, Marsha Warren Mittman details the transition from urban to rural living, and coming to embrace and become one with new experiences.
Tishani Doshi – Hope is the Thing
Tishani Doshi’s poem pays homage to a twelve-year-old girl who died of exhaustion last year during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Letting the Old Thrills Die: C.S. Lewis on Being Alive to New Joy
Holding on to what is thrilling to us can be stifling and prevent us from paving the way for new experiences.
Malignant – A Love Story
BY CYNDY CENDAGORTA
As her friend fell sick while she fell in love, she realized we don’t get to choose our miracles or our malignancies.
Rebecca Ramsden – Be Thou My Vision
In Be Thou My Vision, Rebecca Ramsden reminds us that poetry and holiness can be found anywhere, and in anybody.
Gabriela De Paz – Enredadera
Gabriela De Paz’s flower paintings are portraits of emotions and a homage to the perpetual flux of the human condition.
Eugene Platt – September Poem
Eugene Platt’s September Poem is a story of squandered romance, set against the backdrop of autumn’s arrival.
Anne Hillman – We Look With Uncertainty
Hillman’s poem about uncertainty and regeneration acknowledges the vulnerability of human existence ‘which is every moment / at the brink of death’, standing, waiting, ‘learning to love.’
Working With the Soul Nerve – Resmaa Menakem on Grounding Our Bodies
Starting with the damage done by racism to human bodies, Resmaa Menakem presents a pragmatic approach to healing through the body.
Morning Toast
BY VINCENT PUZICK
I remember the smell of toast. I was in the middle of my morning minutes of Transcendental Meditation when my mother got home from her graveyard shift at the hospital.
Jenna Wysong Filbrun – Church
Jenna Wysong Filbrun’s Church is an ode to nature, life, and belonging in a time of spiritual upheaval, an ode to the wilderness, which was humanity’s first place of worship.
On Being Plan B
BY ELIZABETH BLUE
The car that had been broken into wasn’t mine. It wasn’t his, either. Technically it belonged to his girlfriend – his primary partner of fifteen years.
Jane Hirshfield – All The Difficult Hours and Minutes
In Hirshfield’s poem, calamity turns to calmness when things turn into themselves, a principle that goes to the heart of transformative practice.
What is Meditation? Shinzen Young on How to Deepen Our Focus
Shinzen Young on the most basic principle of mindfulness meditation: the cultivation of focus that can be practiced at any moment of the day, during any activity.
Barry Casey – Wait Here
Barry Casey’s poem “Wait Here” explores the themes of finding God and healing through the wild miracles of nature.