Shunryu Suzuki on our inability to accept the truth that we and everything around us are in a state of constant flux.
Category: Book Bits
Healing With Our Wounds – Henri Nouwen on How to Work With Loneliness
Henri Nouwen wrote that when we can be with our own loneliness, we can begin to understand the suffering that underlies all of humanity.
Rilke and the Labors of Love
Rilke stresses the importance of work in relationship and cautions against the youthful fancy that romance is the domain of play and pleasure.
As Long as Your Dewlike Human Life Lasts
Dogen answers the questions of his students regarding monastic renunciation - how can one have faith that one's basic needs will be met?
Living Like Birds, Loving Like Birds
With her book, Earth's Wild Music, Kathleen Dean Moore asks, what can we do in the midst of so much extinction? What is our moral imperative?
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.
A Boy and His Woodland Friends: Charles Mackesy’s Heartwarming Tale of Discovery
Charlie Mackesy's short graphic novel follows a young boy who connects with a wise horse and a mole, and a more reticent fox.
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.
The Free Woman is Just Being Born – Simone de Beauvoir and Freedom in Creativity
Simone de Beauvoir on women in art and why there was never a female Van Gogh.
The Struggle of a Buddha’s Wife
The Buddha's abandonment of his wife is a thorny subject in a tradition that has generally promoted equality.