Rusty Ring

The theory is really simple. The only problem is that theory alone will not help us to be content with our practice. Although...

The title of this post is a line from Mad Max: Fury Road , the 2015 instalment of the Mad Max film series. Much has been said abo...

"I always think friction and having annoying things around is absolutely essential for good meditation. Otherwise, you become inc...

The wildlife of the North Pacific rainforest is famously reserved; where the East has its flashy cardinals , red efts , and indigo bunti...

Though this seems at first glance avant-garde sculpture, in real life it's the famous one-legged torii of Nagasaki. You can fil...

Everything happens for a reason, but the reason doesn't happen until everything happens. (Earlier meditation here .) ...

Alan Watts once said, "Now I’m a grandfather, and so I am no longer in awe of grandfathers." If I liked this 20 years ago, wh...

I was homophobic as a young man. It's true the logging town I grew up in wasn't the cultural nexus of the world, but that's...

After 20 years of this I know that practice is not like mending a roof and now the roof doesn't leak. It's more like patching...

"We have nothing to live but life itself." Roger Ebert (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographe...

I've loved this song for years but only recently searched out the video, which adds incisive context to the lyrics. It's a detai...

This week I learned two things: that something called "the Buddha-like mindset" is trending among young people in China a...

Regulars may have noticed that posting on Rusty Ring has become a little haphazard. That's because I've been managing my m...

It just struck me that I've never posted on these before. Which is remarkable, since they're central to my practice, and indeed m...

… is something I don't like. Yeah, I know; Zen is all about acceptance of the immutable, ubiquitous, unresting nature of the u...

A bee was browsing the clover blossoms in a pasture one fine spring day when a cow ate her. "Well," she said, "this is ...

"All you single people who think you'd be happy if you were married, ask a married person. "All you married people who th...

If you chew anything long enough, you can swallow it and poop it back out. (Photo of Oligocene coprolites courtesy of the Poozeum and...

(Readers who are new to meditation might find How to Meditate useful. More experienced meditators might also appreciate Meditation T...

Kobayashi Issa is my all-time favourite poet. Regular readers will find this tediously typical, for though he's one of Japan's ...