BY EDWARD M COHEN I only write this down because it causes so much pain. It involves so much loss that in the moment, when I awake with no desire to rush for a pen, it’s hard to see the value in what is happening.
Tag: memoir
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.
Serape
BY SARAH CHAVERA EDWARDS I never knew him in life. The man with calloused hands and almond eyes that would turn into half-moons when he laughed.
Sleep Faster, We Need the Pillows: Suzanne Buffam’s ‘A Pillow Book’
It's hard to define a writer like Suzanne Buffam who so easily jumps between different poetic forms, from lists to snippets and musings in prose.
Being Intimate with the Essence of the Teacher’s Practice
This biographical snippet, taken from the introduction of Tenshin Reb Anderson's book Being Upright, tells a bit of the story of how he met his teacher, Shunryu Suzuki, and what the first days of their teacher-student relationship were like. Anderson says of the drive he had to be near his teacher, "I would make myself… Continue reading Being Intimate with the Essence of the Teacher’s Practice
“Don’t Tell Me Who I Am Yet. It Is Still Being Spelled Out”
'For all its obligations and demands, its idealism and elaborations, monastic life is a way of entering into the cosmic dance,' Trappist monk Paul Quenon writes in his memoir, In Praise of the Useless Life. The monk's life being counterintuitively 'useless' in this way - something his mentor Thomas Merton taught him - is Quenon's… Continue reading “Don’t Tell Me Who I Am Yet. It Is Still Being Spelled Out”
What is Essential is Only to Understand with Immediacy – from Dogen’s Hokyo-ki
The Hokyo-ki is a short memoir written by Dogen later in his life that chronicles his exchanges with Master Ju-ching (Tendo Nyojo in Japanese, also known as Rujing). Dogen only spent two years studying under Ju-ching at his monastery on Mount Tiantong, but the master's teachings were highly transformative for the young Japanese monk and… Continue reading What is Essential is Only to Understand with Immediacy – from Dogen’s Hokyo-ki