BROWSE ALL AUTHORS
Spence Pfleiderer – A Simple Morning Prayer
Violeta Garcia-Mendoza – Seasonal Affective Disorder
W.S. Merwin – Rain Light
Giving Away More Than We Keep – Ayya Khema on Cultivating Generosity
Remember the Bear
Rose Strode – Saint Cuthbert Proclaims the First Sanctuary for Birds, 676 A.D.
Antoinette Kennedy – Soul in the Sky
T.S. Eliot – The Journey of the Magi
The Courage of Our Mistakes – Joan Didion on Self-Respect and Moral Nerve
Salamander
Carolyn Decker – An Approximation
Philip Booth – First Lesson
Discourse on the Absolute Truth
Samantha Wright – And Again
Ode to the Radio Telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Before its Collapse
Vanessa Able – Bhakti
The Glimpse of Eternity – Martin Buber and Our Relationship With The Divine
June Jordan – Poem for a Young Poet
The Curse
Gay Guard-Chamberlin – “Do You Have Any Advice for Those of Us Just Starting Out?”
Lawrence Bridges – The Fresh Fulcrum
The Expression of a Better World – Anaïs Nin on Transience and the Painful, Familiar Beauty of Music
Between Writers
Tamerlie Philippe – Fading Memories
Marie Howe – Death, the last visit
Christopher James – Cider, memories, and dreams
Sunset Meditation
Martine van Bijlert – this life we built
John O’Donohue – Beannacht / Blessing
Outer and Inner Ecologies: Activist Satish Kumar on the Importance of Seeing Our Own Divinity
Derek Furr – The Meadow
Jacob Lehmann – Constructed Spaces
Pamela Denyes – The Fog of October
Emily Dickinson – I Died for Beauty, But Was Scarce…
Chris Abani on the Balance and Patience of West African Beauty
Learning How to Breathe Again
My Backspaces
Marsha Warren Mittman – No Name
Tishani Doshi – Hope is the Thing
Letting the Old Thrills Die: C.S. Lewis on Being Alive to New Joy
Malignant – A Love Story
Rebecca Ramsden – Be Thou My Vision
Gabriela De Paz – Enredadera
Eugene Platt – September Poem
Anne Hillman – We Look With Uncertainty
Working With the Soul Nerve – Resmaa Menakem on Grounding Our Bodies
Morning Toast
Jenna Wysong Filbrun – Church
On Being Plan B
Jane Hirshfield – All The Difficult Hours and Minutes
What is Meditation? Shinzen Young on How to Deepen Our Focus
Barry Casey – Wait Here
Shangyang Fang – Chaconne
The Most Beautiful Thing We Can Experience Is The Mysterious: Albert Einstein’s Living Philosophy
Owen Brown – Emerging
Susan Coultrap-McQuin – Seeking Stars
Jericho Brown – Bullet Points
Pandemic Snow
The Full Awareness of Breathing
Cristina Legarda – Mary
Joseph Campbell On Experiencing Mystery
The River Cabin
Leonard Cohen – Roshi
You Have To Say Something: Dainin Katagiri on What To Say When There Is Nothing To Say
Brian Yapko – My Hunger for You
Astronomer Pippa Goldschmidt on Seeing Far and Seeing Up Close
Seamus Heaney – Wheels Within Wheels
The Self is Tied to This Body Like an Ox to a Cart
Lily Jarman-Reisch – Camino Real
Nancy Holt’s Mystifying Sun Tunnels in the Great Basin Desert
Around the Rings of Saturn
Adrienne Rich – The Corpse-Plant
Jeff Mann – Emerging
Each Breath One Takes is a Step Towards One’s Destiny
Katie Bowers – Even Though I Am Weary of Church Pews, She Is Not
Carl Jung and The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man
Allen Ginsberg – A Supermarket in California
The Buddha’s Last Teaching: Be Your Own Island, Your Own Refuge
Brandon McQuade – Two Whiskies
‘A Heart Slowly Reduced to Embers’: W. G. Sebald on the Fires That Burn Inside and Outside
No Way Out
Maggie Smith – Good Bones
Body Like a Rag, Mind Like a Mirror – Guo Gu Breaking Through Boundaries
Guo Gu’s Guide to Silent Illumination
Kevin James – Just for You
‘Nature is Never Finished’ – Artist Robert Smithson on Cultural Confinement and Finding Real Freedom in Art
Robert Bly – When William Stafford Died
Keeping Silence of the Heart: Cultivating Attention and Sobriety According to the Philokalia
Dane Lyn – holy musings at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2019
Pamela Wax – Capricorn Loses His Star
Samara Landau – Happenstance
La Mar, El Mar: Ernest Hemingway’s Kind, Beautiful, Cruel Ocean
Angelic Armendariz – Nonbeliever
Pablo Neruda – The Sea
Dogen’s Seal of the Ocean: How Meditation and Life Can Flow Like Water
Gary Snyder – For the Children
Flow
Out Of the Body and Into the Mountain: Nan Shepherd’s Journeys Among the Scottish Cairngorms
Kelly Joslyn – Before the Hunt
William Stafford’s Last Poem
‘Simply Be Aware of the Oneness of Things’ – Lao Tzu’s Lost Teachings from the Hua Hu Ching
Julia Park Tracey – Tufas
‘Your Job Is to Put On a Splendid Performance’: Epictetus’ Design for a Skillful and Happy Life
Ellen Bass – If You Knew
Surviving Intact – Norman Fischer on Zen, Language and Growing Old
Everything is Made of Mind: Norman Fischer on the Playing-Out of Impermanence and Eternity
Ellen Skilton – Like Every Good Thing
To Share Fear is the Greatest Bond of All: J.A. Baker’s Loving Portrait of the Peregrine
I Am Not Garysomething
Focusing the Mind: Santideva’s Verses on Meditation and Relationship
Laura Schaffer – Evening
Billy Collins – The Dead
M. Christine Benner Dixon – Portrait of Dad at the Cutting Board
The Poem Is a Place in Which to Feel: Mary Oliver’s Tribute to Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman – O Me! O Life!
Running With Life: Alan Watts on Freedom and Poverty
Wendy Blaxland – That Wind
This is the Life: Annie Dillard Asks, Then What?
Sanctuary
Robert Frost – Acquainted with the Night
The Koan of Baso’s Very Mind
Lenora Steele – From the Patient Lounge, Before the Bypass
Alain de Botton on Why We Marry the Wrong People
Carrie Shipers – Mother Talks Back to the Monsters
Rooting Firmly Into Life – Thomas Merton on Accepting Reality as It Is
Nicholas Trandahl – Francis and Sistani
Sealskin, Soulskin – A Fable About Returning to Our Wild Origins
This Might Seem Stupid
Marc Bamuthi Jospeh – You Have the Rite
Why I Write – A Conversation with Kathleen Dean Moore
Milarepa’s Song of Transiency and Delusion
Pete Mackey – Mourning
I Had a Brother Once: A Poetic Ritual for a Sibling’s Grief
‘Telling Stories is the Single Thing That Makes Us Human’ – A Conversation with Adam Mansbach
Agha Shahid Ali – Prayer Rug
Jonathan Koven – Stilled Wings Will Soar
Anger Is Me and I Am Anger
When I Run Out of Murakami
T.S. Eliot – East Coker from Four Quartets
Dave Sims – Watercolors
Buddhism’s Most Basic Teaching: Everything Changes
Hari B Khalsa – Three Poems
Jennifer Chesnut – Little Bird
Improvisations in Jazz – Bill Evans’ Kind of Blue Liner Notes
Leaving
Amy Lowell – A Blockhead
Healing With Our Wounds – Henri Nouwen on Working With Loneliness
Erika Michael – Entanglement
Rilke and the Labors of Love
Stephen Dunn – Allegory of the Cave
As Long as Your Dewlike Human Life Lasts
Matthew Kohut – White Ash
Living Like Birds, Loving Like Birds
Issa – This Dewdrop World
Cynthia Ruse – The In-Between
You Have to Have a Cup
Stuart Gunter – The Wind Telephone
A Boy and His Woodland Friends: Charles Mackesy’s Heartwarming Tale of Discovery
Three-Pack as Another Name for Beauty
Philip Larkin – The Mower
The Moon in the Water, the Body in the Mirror
Tracy Ahrens – Thicket of Memories
The Free Woman is Just Being Born – Simone de Beauvoir and Freedom in Creativity
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Mother and Poet
The Struggle of a Buddha’s Wife
Lori Rottenberg – Heresy
Nietzsche on Why It Is Also Important to Forget
Lora and Jack
Barbara Kingsolver – How to Do Absolutely Nothing
Serape
The Vast Blue Ocean – Cuong Lu’s Love Letter to Those in Despair
Emma Wynn – Sitting Dawn
Life Stand Still Here – Virginia Woolf and the Little Miracles
Robert Bringhurst – Sutra of the Heart
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