Rusty Ring

"I am a continuation, like the rain is a continuation of the cloud." Thich Nhat Hanh (Photo courtesy of Anderson Man...

Many years ago, I learned from Thich Nhat Hanh – either in one of his books or a recorded teisho – a useful meditation technique . Whe...

"At a peace rally in Philadelphia in 1966, a reporter asked me, 'Are you from North or South Vietnam?' "If I had ...

I've been rereading The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching , the succinct little Thich Nhat Hanh book that amounts, so far as I...

"One of the most powerful teachings that [Thich Nhat Hanh] shared with us before he got sick was about not building a stupa for ...

Last year I linked to an excellent Jason Pargin article called 7 Reasons Americans Have Stopped Trusting One Another . (He writes un...

Events this week have me thinking about my favourite Zen teaching story. (I say that about all of them, though my very favourites a...

"People who don’t have a sense of shame have no future." Thích Nhất Hạnh ( The Cloak of Conscience courtesy...

I'm not much of a rock. As a Zenner I aspire to be unmovable. Fudo Myō-ō , the patron of my practice, has made a career of it. And...

San Francisco is the capital of Western Zen. The sangha there – the Western one; Asian residents were already practicing for over a centu...

I've purposely held off posting about Robin Williams until the tidal wave of pro forma anguish washed past and left us in a place of c...

We need hermits. OK, it's a self-serving point. But trust me: leave it to the priests and temples alone, and they'll botch this...

I'm not a big incense guy. Some Buddhists are. They like to set up an exotic Asian vibe, and incense is one of the foreign accoutrem...