Rusty Ring

This unlikely 1967 Arlo Guthrie classic has become a Thanksgiving ritual for American radio stations, many of which spin it on that day....

If you'd like to explore a rich source of provocative, not overly-technical Zen reads, check out Sotozen.com . Among its many offe...

New Year's is upon us again, and as usual I'm in a reflective mood. This time I've got the Cowboys Fringants' Ici-bas ru...

( 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. ...

Here's another great example of a video that adds striking dimension to the song it accompanies. Not that it isn't fine as it is; ...

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

I'm just catching up with David Hayward, a cartoonist who has published under the provocative nom de guerre of The Naked P...

'Way back in March of 2012 CE (how strange to have such a deep vault) I reviewed Zen at War , Brian Daizen Victoria's exposé o...

Here's another burst of insight from that cagey lot down at Monty Python. This time they put humanity in context with a song draw...

This is pure genius, but bear with me, because it won't seem like it just from the description. In Garfield Minus Garfield , Iris...

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...

If you don't know John Gorka, you should know John Gorka. Few artists sing the human heart like John. A number of his songs s...

Five years ago I got tired of paying the ridiculous prices razor blades command these days. As trivial as that sounds, like many Buddh...

So I'm reading Adam Savage 's Every Tool's a Hammer , an elaborated meditation on "making", that thing that mak...

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

I've used a lot of meditation timers since I started doing this. First was a CD of surf sounds. Two half-hour tracks, Atlantic f...

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

Back in the 70s, a spoken-word performance of Desiderata became a sensation in North America. Soon everyone from Pierre Trudeau to Mr....

This song holds a special place in my heart, because it held a special place in my practice when I first became a monk. As is often the...