
BROWSE ALL AUTHORS


Self-Realization – Brahman and the Absolute

Vanessa Escobar – Why I Can’t Eat My Grandmother’s Fried Liver and Onions

Bad Drivers and the Short View

Elizabeth Bishop – In the Waiting Room

Hey, Mockingbird

Buddha On The Phone, Buddha Watching TV

Amy-Sarah Marshall – Shelled

The Culture of Healing: Louise Glück on Art’s Restorative Power

Katya Belena – Dawn Dusk

G.K. Chesterton – The Convert

“The Total Functioning is You, The Consciousness is You”

Vanessa Watters – Amnesia

Sleep Faster, We Need the Pillows: Suzanne Buffam’s ‘A Pillow Book’

Wanda Coleman – Nocturne

Religious Training, Equanimity of Mind

Erin Pickersgill – For the Pleasure

The Value of Honey – Susan Brind Morrow on the Oldest Form of Agriculture

Diane Ackerman – We Are Listening

When the Lion Roars

Jones Irwin – Around Here

The Landscape of Loss – Liz Tichenor’s ‘The Night Lake’

Embodying Grief – A Conversation with Liz Tichenor

Muriel Rukeyser – Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)

“Do Not Visit the Sufi Unless You Want to Benefit”

Their Love of Life Should Never Weaken

Han Shan – A Bug Crawling in a Bowl

The Path Through the Gateless Gate

George Stein – Specter

Born in the City of David

Dilruba Ahmed – Phase One

Mencius – To Fathom the Mind

Taylor Mallay – New Life

A ‘Difficult’ Disease

Intersection

Rebecca Elson – Antidotes to Fear of Death

Martha Nance – Waterwords

On the Anxiety of Non-Being

Margaret Bleichman – upon waking

The Ecstasy of Paying Attention

Audre Lorde – A Litany for Survival

Letters to My Unborn Daughter

How to Dance? Lessons from a Zen Master

Amanda Smith-Hatch – Redemption

To Possess Is To Give

Mary Oliver – Wild Geese

Better Than We Think: Directing Self-Love

Todd Williams – Lost Socks

Tacey M. Atsitty – Anasazi

Gin and Coconut Curry

Bodhidharma’s Bloodstream Sermon

Mark Christopherson – Interval and Slip

Seamus Heaney – The Peninsula

The Love of Particulars and the Dignity of Difference

Robin Knight – Vulpine Nature

Ordinary Devotions

Dad Too Late

A.R. Ammons – Play

A Terrible Assistant Manager

The Great, Generous Laugh

Robert Okaji – Three Poems

Extinction and the Turbulent Forces of Change

Yes, This

Jack Gilbert – Failing and Flying

Kodo Sawaki Gathered Together: Arthur Braverman’s ‘Discovering the True Self’

Avoiding Extremes: Buddha’s Discourse on the Middle Way

Andrew Withers – Beside the Water

The Difficulty of Looking at Your Own Face

The Rose-Pink Porcelain Bathtub

Ross Gay – Thank You

D. H. Lawrence – Phoenix

‘Better to Light a Candle’ – The Healing Power of Vespers

Peter Spaulding – Déjà Vu, According to The Matrix

The Magic Lives of Swifts

Gregory Pardlo – Raisin

All Real Living

Returning Home – From Keizan Jokin’s Zazen Yojinki

Janette Schafer – Passagio

What is Attention?

The Fly Antecedent

David Whyte – The Bell and the Blackbird

Respecting Ourselves, Respecting Things

Holly Allen – Michigan Green

Love and Death are Inseparable

Esso Station

Wendell Berry – The Peace of Wild Things

Words of Advice from Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The Gift

Elizabeth Alexander – Equinox

Boshan and Fostering Great Doubt

Alan Watts and Divine Play

Heard Island

William Shakespeare – When I Consider Everything That Grows

Champions

Don’t Hit Your Head, Just Pass Through the Door

The Only Kind of Courage That is Required of Us

Let the River Reach the Lake

Eihei Dogen – Death Poem

The God of Ideas

Bradley Samore – There Was Never a Door

At Sea With Don Quixote – Thomas Mann

Philip Larkin – High Windows

Hakuin’s Song of Zazen

Susan Cummins Miller – Pandemic Aubade, Sonoran Desert

How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?

Kamaiyah – Ten Toes High

The Self is Everywhere – Isha Upanishad

Chris Alaimo – Lovely Kid

The Absolute Nature of Suffering

Alice Dunbar Nelson – The Idler

Shunryu Suzuki’s Waterfall – On Separation and Death

David Rosenheim – Pineapple Sage

“You Can’t Pray a Lie” – Mark Twain’s Huck Finn

Samia Singh – The Storms Within

Mary Oliver – When Death Comes

The Path That Leads Into the Mountains

Matthew Kohut – I Me Mine

Aldous Huxley and Beauty

Jorge Luis Borges – Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf

Florence Scovel Shinn and the Game of Love

Jennifer Hollis – Baby Boy Hollis

Smelling the Flowers in Dogen’s Gardens – Marcia Lieberman’s ‘Clean Slate’

To Name and Describe, You Must First See

Theodore Roethke – The Waking

The Better Way to Catch a Snake

Raymond P. Hammond – F Train

Only Justice Can Stop a Curse

Galway Kinnell – Saint Francis and the Sow

The Guidepost of Silent Illumination

Every Book is a Failure – George Orwell on Truth in Writing

Gwendolyn Brooks – Boy Breaking Glass

Eighteen Thousand Universes Through Eighteen Thousand Eyes

Clifford Venho – Forest of the Unsung

“Now More Than Ever” – Morgan Parker

Margaret Atwood – Habitation

Mother Teresa – Compassion in Action

Dan Branch – The Carrying Strength of Water

The Danger of the Single Story – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Ada Limón – Wife

Imagine That Our Only Job is to Mirror Each Other’s Goodness

Lyall Harris – Collateral Damage

If Love Will Not Swing Wide the Gates, No Other Power Will

Lucille Clifton – why some people be mad at me sometimes

The Ground is Always Shifting – Pema Chodron

The Inscrutable Energy that Preserves the Breach

Ryokan – Playing with the Children

F*cked Up, but Always Beautiful

Being With Dying – Kerry Egan

Jocelyn Ulevicus – A Home Safe to Call Home

William Stafford – A Ritual to Read to Each Other

Life and Death Do Not Exist

Robert Miner – Flying Kites at Night

Why I Write – Nicholas Trandahl

Running After Loves – Ray Bradbury on Fostering Hunger in Writing

Erich von Hungen – The Moment

Beck – Everlasting Nothing

The Dexterous Butcher – Zhuangzi

Robin Knight – The Dog on the Train

What Are We Calling “I”?

Jerome Berglund – Manure

Edna St. Vincent Millay – “When You, That at This Moment Are to Me”

The Sacred is the Everyday – Joan Chittister

Holly Kelso – Suspended

Not One Nor Multiple: Deleuze and Guattari’s Rhizome

Joan Lauri Poole – Why, Miró

Alice Walker – Be Nobody’s Darling

A Fool’s Folly: Tales from the One Hundred Parable Sutra

Simone Weil – The Infinite in an Instant

Osip Mandelstam – And I Was Alive

The One Motive Power in the Universe

Nicholas Trandahl – The Chapel

Solace, Courage and Asking the Beautiful Question

Li Bai – Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain

Staying With the ‘Ouch’ – Tara Brach

Kurt Cole Eidsvig – Seasonal

Brian Doyle’s Uncommon Prayers

Pablo Neruda – Keeping Quiet

Which are the Unanswerable Questions?

True Relations in a False Age – Ralph Waldo Emerson on Friendship

Dane Cervine – The World is God’s Language

Why I Write – Caroline Goodwin

Start Where You Are: Ajahn Sumedho

The Priest Must Become a Teacher (Part 3)

Heidi Woo – The Heart of Our Home

What Have You Left Out? Alan Watts on the Limits of Perception

Religion Without Science is Blind (Part 2)

Caroline Goodwin – Not, I’ll Not

Thomas Merton on Solitude, Authenticity and Being

What We Have Forgotten – Einstein on Science and Religion (Part 1)

Du Fu – Dreaming of Li Bai

Does Spirituality Need Religion? – Rabbi Rami

Sheila Heti – When Love Slips into the Death Drive

Judith Wright – The Lost Man

Fukanzazengi – Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen

E.E. Cummings – A Poet’s Advice to Students

Wendell Berry – Do Not Be Ashamed

Expressing Yourself the Way That You Are – Shunryu Suzuki on Communication

‘The Love Between Angels’ – C.S. Lewis on Friendship

Walt Whitman – When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

Dear Oblivion – The Very Practical Matter of Faith

We Are Meaning-Seeking Creatures: Karen Armstrong on Myth

Ha Jin – The Detached

Why is a Buddhist Monk So Interested in Science?

When the Sun Disappears

Arthur Sze – First Snow

What is True Freedom?

Tria Chang – I Was Once in Love

Bankei and the Unborn

Joshua David Stein – Consider the Marshmallow

AR Ammons – Still

Purifying Muddy Water – The Surangama Sutra

Rebecca Solnit’s Blue of Distance

Susan Barba – How Should We Live Our Lives?

Wandering in the Desert: This is our Life

On Falling in Love – James Baldwin

Forough Farrokhzad – The Wind Up Doll

Am I Conscious Now?

The Bhaddekaratta Sutta: The Sutra on Knowing the Better Way to Live Alone

Kendrick Lamar – Alright

Neil deGrasse Tyson and the Cosmic Perspective

You Must Go Beyond All Words – Ajahn Chaa

Chiyono’s Enlightenment Poem

Phil Jackson and the Zen of Basketball

Gary Snyder on Radical Social Change

One Art – Elizabeth Bishop’s Poem About Learning to Lose

Ram Dass on the Anxiety of Extinction

Deneen Fendig and Duncan Trussell Talk About Active Dying

What is the Middle Way that Leads to Self-Awakening?

“The Violence in Our Minds Manifests in the World” – Thich Nhat Hanh on Smiling Away Your Anger

‘We are born in mystery and we die in mystery’ – Huston Smith

Black Earth – Marianne Moore

“When you release it, it fills your hand; when you speak it fills your mouth” – Dogen’s Bendowa

Jijuyu Zanmai – Master Dogen’s Self-Receiving and Employing Samadhi

Behind Me – dips Eternity – Emily Dickinson

What Science Can’t Talk About: “the Tears in Things” – Marilynne Robinson

‘If you’ve really learned how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options.’

Jane Hirshfield’s Ode to Optimism and Resilience

Why I Write – Cuong Lu

Practicing Behind Bars

The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton – John Darnielle

Being Intimate with the Essence of the Teacher’s Practice

The Draw of the Dark Ages – Rachel Cusk

W.S. Merwin – Variation on a Theme

Ordinary Mind is the Way

There is No Bolt That You Can Set Upon the Freedom of My Mind – Virginia Woolf

Chuang Tzu’s Action and Non-Action

Buddhism and the Agnostic Faith

Infinities of Blue – Maggie Nelson

Dorianne Laux – Life is Beautiful

Mitsu Suzuki on Teaching Tea Ceremony

Just Take One Step – Dainin Katagiri

The Caged Bird Sings of Freedom

Master Daito’s Original Face

The Lesson of a Tree – Walt Whitman

On the Lip of Oblivion We Linger – Hafiz

Disorder in Your Mind Shows in Your Feet – Shunmyo Masuno

Ursula le Guin and the Importance of Imagination

A Buddha in the Woodpile

DT Suzuki on Eckhart, God’s Love and Prajña

Clouds are Mere Guests in the Sky – Haruki Murakami

Be Like One Moment is Ten Thousand Years

Babak Ganjei – Don’t Interrupt the Adults

Uselessness as Survival

Snow Makes a Mountain

Pulling Out the Rug – John Daido Loori on the Barrier Gate

Falsehood Triumphs Everywhere – André Gide

Eagle Poem – Joy Harjo

The Buddha’s Basic Breathing Meditation

On Nurturing Hope

It is Better to Write, Then Die – Patti Smith

Letting Go of Hope – Pema Chodron

Brahman, God, Allah and the Tao – Alan Watts

Let Us Be Contented – Winston Churchill

Gurdjieff and The Two Rivers

Leo Tolstoy on the Crisis of Reason and Faith

One Must Have A Mind Of Winter

Why I Write – Les Kaye

Materialism and the Monastic Life

I Am Not Seaworthy – Toni Morrison

Taisen Deshimaru on Becoming Truly Free

Not Their Kind of Prey – Thomas Merton

Thinking of Wallace Stevens by Robert Bly

Those Who Seek the Way Must Enter it With the Suddenness of a Knife-Thrust

A Blessing by James Wright

Know for Yourselves – The Kalama Sutta

Awakening is Not the End – it’s Just the First Step into the Stream

Why I Write – Danielle Pieratti

Triptych by Danielle Pieratti

Blinded by the Sun – St Teresa of Avila

Something There is That Doesn’t Love a Wall

We Only Have One Story – John Steinbeck on Virtue and Vice

The Most Penetrating Preachers: Herman Hesse’s Ode to Trees

It Now is Me, I am Not It – Dongshan

Nansen Kills the Cat – Koun Yamada

Mary Oliver – Teach the Children

Counting Cats in Zanzibar: Why We Should Travel

Why I Write – Ben Connelly

What Love Looks Like in Public: Ben Connelly on Cultivating Intimacy

In the beginning there was darkness concealed in darkness

There’s No Salvation in Elsewhere

What is Love? Love is a Verb – bell hooks

A Lifetime is Empty Like the Void – Wang Wei

What is Death? You Are Already Dead

Aldous Huxley: Our Goal Is to Discover That We Have Always Been Where We Ought to Be

Antoine de Saint Exupéry and Night Flying

When One Can Know What is the Truth of the Heart

Hakuin on Enlightenment – Never Ask Your Teachers to Explain

You Reading This, Be Ready

Elegance and Spiritual Repose in the Darkness of a Japanese Latrine

The Death of the Moth and the Pure Bead of Life

Do Not Pass Your Days and Nights in Vain – Shitou’s Sandokai

Between Walls – William Carlos Williams

Spiritual Care Is The Essential Right of Every Human Being

Suffering, Crying, Happy Buddha

There Is No ‘I’ In Self

Following the Thread, Finer Than a Cobweb – Denise Levertov

Searching for a Master – Zen Master Raven and the Brown Bear

“Don’t Tell Me Who I Am Yet. It Is Still Being Spelled Out”

Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi

Altered States and Changed Perceptions

Bodhidharma, Hui-k’o and Hui-k’o’s Arm

Who Am I?

David Whyte on Love and Separation

Thomas Merton on Zen Koans and Untying the Knot of Individuality

Centreing – The 112 Ways to Open the Invisible Door of Consciousness (Part 8: 99-112)

Ch’i-chi’s Little Pines

Jumping off the 100-Foot Pole

Hermann Hesse and the Young Saint Francis

Centreing – The 112 Ways to Open the Invisible Door of Consciousness (Part 7: 85-98)

Dogen – Remember That You Are Alive Only Today In This Moment

Fu Ta-shih’s Poem: Empty Handed, I Hold a Hoe

Psychology and Satori – Erich Fromm

Stop Avoiding the Uncomfortable Questions – David Foster Wallace
