Rusty Ring

An intoxicant is any external source that draws you deeper into yourself, your beliefs, your egocentrism, and away from direct experien...

Like a lot of old people, I've come to find myself adrift at Christmas. Family mostly gone. Friends busy with their own. I nev...

Courtesy of a Zen droogie on social media.

A lifetime sitting with the central tenet of Islam has led me to accept it. You must submit. Islam means submission in Arabic....

What is zazen? Just sitting. What is practice? Just doing. What for? For nothing. Just do it. Practice the dharma for...

Here's insight we can use. In this short meditation, Rusty Ring favourite Peter Mayer sums up the lesson we all should have l...

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

If you haven't discovered Avi Steinberg, you're in for a treat. (And if you have, a welcome visit back.) Avi's deceptiv...

Died aged 18 near this spot. April 25th, 1915. Did his best. Australian tombstone at Gallipoli. (Photo courtesy of Chris Sansbur...

"Open during remodel." (Photo courtesy of Amy Serin and Wikimedia Commons.)

"An infinite number of monks, with an infinite number of zafus, and an infinite amount of time, would eventually get around to...

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...

The hardest thing in this world, is to live in it. Be brave. – Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Photo of young Iranians standing ...

"I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ...

Long ago, in the first years of my Zen practice, I encountered a teaching that's remained in my mind through the intervening year...

Practice isn't just sitting; nor is it just form. Practice is what happens in your head while you're out living . This tr...

It's been a long time since I had a dramatic sit – the thing Zenners call kensho. This is mostly down to lifestyle constraints that...

In the fifty-odd years I've worked with pets and farm animals, I've learned that anxious and abused ones often fear men – but wo...

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” I've recently been pondering this Philip K. Dick l...

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