Rusty Ring

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 saw this film when it was new, beside a beautiful young woman with whom I did not yet realise I was in love. She was also a German...

As the world swings into Christmas, I believe justice demands I use this forum to correct a historical inequity that's been allowed...

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...

"He's a nihilist." "That must be exhausting." – The Big Lebowski (Photo courtesy of Pexels.com and a genero...

So it's July again, the month when the Internet takes a vacation and I can post stuff that's just cool and not necessarily abou...

( Update, 13 October 2025: The YouTube file I originally embedded here has gone 404, but I found this one to replace it. Though I have...

Here's a fabulous old NFB film from 1984 that has nothing immediately to say about Zen – though it does evoke eremitical monasticism. ...

"Life is cause and effect. And you certainly are no stranger to the cause." So says the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, ...

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...

Three weeks ago I wrote about the tendency in Western Zen to downplay the ongoing role of Korea in the development and direction of o...

Among the more dubious traditions of Western Zen is a particularly frustrating custom we might sum up as "crap on Korea". ...

"I can't do X until I have Y." That's the fundamental delusion, according to Ian Martin. Essentially, he suggests,...

Zen monasteries traditionally close in midsummer, when the zendo gets too hot for comfortable (or safe) sitting and the travelling is g...

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (that's a sic on that missing Oxford comma, good buddy) has been an underground holiday favouri...

"Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the centre of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Ear...

"And then they found me guilty." I've been meaning to post on this found teisho since I launched Rusty Ring, away bac...

Here's a neat convergence of genius, for a little customary Rusty Ring summer fun. First off you've got Sabhyata , by Indian/...

"I don't permit the suffering - you do." God . (Photo of Guantanamo, by sculptor José Antonio Elvira, courtesy of...

"It could have been worse." So says the young protagonist of Mitt liv som hund ("My Life as a Dog"). For him, ever...