Rusty Ring

(This entry from my ango log is a timely reminder of how difficult life was in the jungle during those first frigid, rainy months. I...

I had never heard of this alt hymn, or the artists who built it, or even the television series that launched it, before I first heard i...

Love is an act of courage, a losing bet that makes all who place it holy. Absurdity, sacrifice, and heartbreak are integral to it; mark...

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

(My nephew, currently 28, photographed at 16 in the forest where I sat ango .) Appearing also on My Corner of the World .

Palladius said, "One day when I was suffering from boredom I went to Abba Macarius and said, 'What shall I do? My thoughts aff...

(This is the trail up Elk Ridge, just across the ravine from the jungle camp where I sat ango .) Appearing also on My Corn...

True nature; It is on this mountain. Because of the heavy mist, the exact location is unknown. – An Ancestor's commentary on the...

Today's top headline: "Free-range Buddhist Eaten By Health-Conscious Cougar." – Haiku written eleven years ago, in ant...

"Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her s...

One of the advantages of eremitical monasticism is the freedom to adapt practice to needs and conditions. Among the disadvantages is ha...

(This is a tree on the edge of my camp during ango . As I've mentioned twice before , humans like to hang skulls in conspicuous...

(A shot of a creek in the jungle where I sat my 100 Days .)

I didn't want to read this book. And I really didn't want to keep reading after I started. But as I've often said, denial is...

What I most ached for on the mountain was a musical instrument . They're like languages, each complete and distinct and irreplaceab...

Though the word translates as "just enough", oryoki has grown to mind-numbing complexity in Zen monasteries, where every secon...

I'm not sure he'd appreciate the label, but Claude AnShin Thomas is the most prominent hermit of our generation. Though an orda...

Most books available in the West on life in Japanese monasteries are written by Westerners. Perhaps that's why they tend to take...

Thoreau's cabin at Walden My decision to live in a tiny tent during my 100 Days on the Mountain , rather than more comfortable ...

I had never made ghee before I went to the mountain . In the planning stages of that project, having been raised on tales of people...