Rusty Ring

"Dying is easy. Practice is hard." (My monastic riff on a hallowed show biz pun .) (Photo of Chàn ancestor Hanshan De...

(According to information painted on its crossbar, this marker memorialises a young person. It's nailed high on a Douglas fir on t...

(Happened upon this young grouse on the deck in front of a small uninhabited cabin well back in the woods. It must have smacked into t...

I augur this the right moment to mention my regret at the passing of graveyards, which ironic development has left my society impover...

(This rhododendron grows just outside my mother's kitchen window. Since she moved here 6 years ago it has never bloomed – a fact s...

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

My mom died three nights ago. I had been looking after her for several years, managed her home hospice daily over the last six month...

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

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

An old friend last week posted a link to The Cruelty of Call-Out Culture: How Not To Do Social Change , David Brook's timely and inc...

(Eight-strand kongo kumihimo in funerary white, red, and black on a joss coin ring. Hung in a stand of bamboo.)

(This is a funerary fudo I made for a cat friend of mine. [The cord is white, red, and black, the three bardos of death.] She was bu...

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...

“Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing you have received - only what you have given.” Saint Francis ...

Asleep on my lap in bed. Three days ago I had the sad duty of accompanying my mother's cat out of this life. A cherished family mem...

(Deer bones found on the forest floor.)

To commemorate this New Year's Day 2015 I offer a meditation on the passage of time. My brother's poetry here is so powerful...

Today I will sit In this place, unmoving, Until I have transcended all suffering Or until my legs begin to hurt In which case, I wi...

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...

(The white, red, and black cord stands for each of the three Tibetan bardos of death. Hung by the grave of a canine friend.)