The Dewdrop
THIS WEEK'S BLOG
Focusing the Mind: Santideva’s Verses on Meditation and Relationship
Santideva talks about the practice of meditation as a means to reveal Awakening Mind, here particularly focusing on the discipline and skill of relationship.
Billy Collins – The Dead
Billy Collins runs with the folkloric notion that the dead are watching us and pushes the image all the way to a reverie of the departed ‘rowing themselves slowly through eternity’ in glass-bottomed boats.
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’.
INTERVIEWS
Pamela Wax – Capricorn Loses His Star
Samara Landau – Happenstance
Angelic Armendariz – Nonbeliever
Read deep - breathe easy
Flow
BY JESSE CURRAN
For the first mile, I replay last night. New Year’s Eve. We’re celebrating from our separate living rooms…
Leaving
BY MICHELLE NICHOLAYSEN
When I left the Seventh-day Adventists, I thought I could keep the love and forget the wrath.
MICRO GALLERY
Dave Sims – Watercolors
Dave Sims’ watercolor paintings are a submission to the chance of creation and a surrender to emptiness.
I Am Not Garysomething
BY SCOTT D. VANDER PLOEG
When a popular TV show killed off its loved professor, a real-life teacher paused to consider the implications of what it means to share in the student-teacher bond.
Sanctuary
BY KENT JACOBSON
A baseball field was a sanctuary for a small community of boys who were surrounded by angry fathers they were too young to understand.
FEATURED AUTHORS AND POETS
BOOK EXCERPTS
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.
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.
‘Simply Be Aware of the Oneness of Things’ – Lao Tzu’s Lost Teachings from the Hua Hu Ching
It is thought that in addition to the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu authored another text called the Hua Hu Ching whose full title translates as ‘Lao Tzu’s Conversion of the Barbarians.’
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.
‘Simply Be Aware of the Oneness of Things’ – Lao Tzu’s Lost Teachings from the Hua Hu Ching
It is thought that in addition to the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu authored another text called the Hua Hu Ching whose full title translates as ‘Lao Tzu’s Conversion of the Barbarians.’
Focusing the Mind: Santideva’s Verses on Meditation and Relationship
Santideva talks about the practice of meditation as a means to reveal Awakening Mind, here particularly focusing on the discipline and skill of relationship.
The Koan of Baso’s Very Mind
Baso’s Very Mind is the 30th case or koan in the Mumonkan, The Gateless Barrier, a collection compiled in the 13th century by Rinzai master Wumen Huikai.
Milarepa’s Song of Transiency and Delusion
Milarepa is a much-loved figure in the Tibetan tradition, renowned for his songs that expound the teaching of the Buddha and his own dharmic worldview.
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
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.
Why I Write – Caroline Goodwin
Writing can be anything, from self-discovery to incorporating pain to establishing direction, according to poet Caroline Goodwin, who featured in The Dewdrop a couple of weeks ago with her poem, Not I’ll Not, from her book, Custody of the Eyes.
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
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.
Eihei Dogen – Death Poem
A death poem was composed on one’s deathbed, with the aim of encapsulating the understanding of impermanence at that moment.
Bradley Samore – There Was Never a Door
There Never Was a Door was composed at Hokyoji, a Zen Practice Community in Minnesota. The passage to the abandoned shed without a door echoes
The Path That Leads Into the Mountains
In 1993, Zen teacher Joan Halifax published a book called The Fruitful Darkness based on her anthropological engagements with Tibetan Buddhists, Mexican shamans, Native American elders and other tribal communities.
The Guidepost of Silent Illumination
“When wonder exists in serenity, all achievement is forgotten in illumination. What is this wonder? Alertly seeing through confusion is the way of silent illumination
Ryokan – Playing with the Children
Ryokan loved children, and played with them so much that other adults began to question his sanity. He says, ‘Even if I were able to say something/how could I explain?’ His wholehearted immersion in playful activity is the essence of Ryokan’s very particular Zen expression.
KEEP READING
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?
Alain de Botton on Why We Marry the Wrong People
Alain de Botton takes a sledgehammer to the notions of romanticism that spawn unrealistic expectations in relationships which eventually lead to disillusionment and painful parting.
Rooting Firmly Into Life – Thomas Merton on Accepting Reality as It Is
Thomas Merton underscores the danger of over-identifying with notions and abstractions rather than with the flesh and bones reality of our own lives.
Sealskin, Soulskin – A Fable About Returning to Our Wild Origins
The myth of losing a pelt speaks deeply to being divested of time, resources and creative energy in the service of psychic support of others.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
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.
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.
Healing With Our Wounds – Henri Nouwen on Working 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Dane Lyn – holy musings at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2019
Dane Lyn’s “holy musings at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2019” is a brilliant work of ekphrastic poetry, inspired by a religious painting by an unknown artist, titled “The Great Harlot of Babylon”.
Pamela Wax – Capricorn Loses His Star
Poet and rabbi Pamela Wax’s poem touches upon the themes of sacrifice, tragedy, regret, and atonement.
Samara Landau – Happenstance
‘Happenstance’ by Samara Landau is a work of complexity, pattern, and rhythm, set around fate, coincidence, and loss.
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.
Angelic Armendariz – Nonbeliever
Angelic Armendariz, with her poem “Nonbeliever”, gives readers a brief but poignant piece with three distinct stages in questioning faith, spirituality, and God.
Pablo Neruda – The Sea
Pablo Neruda wonders at the draw that pulls us in to the unknown, shifting ablutions that are the action of the sea and of water.
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.
Gary Snyder – For the Children
Gary Snyder’s poem on the healing and enlightenment we need to find as a race in order to once again locate ourselves in earth’s valleys and pastures.
Flow
BY JESSE CURRAN
For the first mile, I replay last night. New Year’s Eve. We’re celebrating from our separate living rooms…
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.
Kelly Joslyn – Before the Hunt
Kelly Joslyn’s quiet and simple poem Before the Hunt is a childhood reminiscence of her father. The child’s early-morning attentiveness to her father extends to the dim lighting and the smell of the tangerine, like looking at an old Polaroid of something from childhood.
William Stafford’s Last Poem
Written in the morning of the day he died, William Stafford’s last poem rattles with augury gilded by a sense of acceptance.
‘Simply Be Aware of the Oneness of Things’ – Lao Tzu’s Lost Teachings from the Hua Hu Ching
It is thought that in addition to the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu authored another text called the Hua Hu Ching whose full title translates as ‘Lao Tzu’s Conversion of the Barbarians.’
Julia Park Tracey – Tufas
In Tufas, Julia Park Tracey offers a simple and quiet poem focused on the landscape and nature, with a sense of tragidy that’s only hinted at through her words.
‘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.
Ellen Bass – If You Knew
What if you knew you’d be the last to touch someone? Ellen Bass draws us in to the brief moments of contact that fill our day and urges us to consider the fleeting nature of every life we meet.
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.
Everything is Made of Mind: Norman Fischer on the Playing-Out of Impermanence and Eternity
“Life is the wind. Life is the water. As long as life appears as phenomena there will be the stirrings of delusion. Delusion is in fact the movement, the stirring,
Ellen Skilton – Like Every Good Thing
Ellen Skilton’s poem offers poignant words that touch on a universal feeling experienced by humanity in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic – the sacredness of human interaction.