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Who Am I to Judge?
As David Gates seems to have been forced to note in last week’s Newsweek, Jack Kerouac‘s On the Road was published fifty years ago, and that has engendered a fair amount of activity from the book’s original publisher, Viking. Despite the apparent involuntary nature of his effort, David has done an admirable job of sorting… — read more
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Death of a Doorman
Last night, one of the doormen in our building was apparently killed by a drunk driver. We’re still not clear on the details, and I’m not even sure if the linked article refers to our doorman (after all, this was late at night and a long way from New York City, and he was scheduled… — read more
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In the Middle of the Night in a Dark House Somewhere in the World
Ingmar Bergman died last week, and I don’t think that he or his heirs need my assessment of his genius added to the pile that’s been rightly accumulating since then. But I do feel the need to note that he was, at the time of his passing, one of perhaps two or three living artists… — read more
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Two Truths… Three Truths… Whatever it Takes
In his Tibetan Buddhist condensation of the Tripitaka, called the Gateway to Knowledge, Jamgön Mipham describes the climax of a bodhisattva’s traversal of the ten bhumis thus (as translated by Erik Hein Schmidt): [21,14] At the end of the ten bhumis, the path of no-learning is realized by means of the vajra-like samadhi. In other… — read more
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The Real Secret
On the way to work after therapy the other morning, I was listening to the most recent episode of the 21st Century Buddhism podcast, which is about anger. Ethan was offering the insight, which can be found in the teachings on the five Buddha families among other places, that there is wisdom in anger. He… — read more
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Woe Is Us
There is so much dissatisfaction in the world today. It turns out at that, just like the first eighty-five episodes, the eighty-sixth episode of The Sopranos didn’t transform the lives of its viewers or grant them a definitive insight into the wisdom to which so many seem to assume that David Chase has some unique… — read more
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In the Long Term, We’re All Still Here
I was talking to a friend who’s a therapist last night about decision horizons. He told me that he learned about a treatment technique for people suffering from borderline personality disorder where they imagine a scenario in which they might act out (yelling, hitting, etc.) and write down the advantages and disadvantages of tolerating the… — read more
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The Truth of Impermanence
One evening this fall, eating a MOP in our room while recovering from a five or six hour drive, I will turn forty. Though I’ve taken pretty good care of myself (I don’t drink, I’ve never smoked or taken recreational drugs, I don’t eat as badly as I could, and I exercise a bit), I… — read more
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My Teachers Are Not Separate From Me
As much as Buddhist practice ultimately comes down to solitary practice and realization, it relies crucially on teachers. As Hui-neng puts it in the Platform Sutra: Good Friends! You already possess the prajna wisdom of enlightenment! But because your minds are deluded, you can’t understand by yourself. You need to find a truly good friend… — read more
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Absence of Obstructions, Absence of Fabrications
As so many who have explored Mahayana Buddhism before me, I’ve struggled with the notion of emptiness. I’ve tried to understand it through its analogues with space, but that can be a subtly dangerous metaphor. Emptiness is like space in many ways, but it’s not the same as space. Given the rough equivalence of emptiness… — read more
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