From the category archives:

Beyond Windgrove

After enlightenment, the dishes

August 25, 2010

Just a month ago I spent six quiet days at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in northern California — the oldest Japanese Buddhist Soto Zen monastery in the United States. Meditating twice daily in the zendo with the monks and nuns while also quietly soaking in their hot spring tubs and gratefully dining on their [...]

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Practicing what was learned

August 18, 2010

Last week I was swimming in the warm waters of Hawaii where palm patterns caught my attention. Today I am back in wintry, yet sunny, Tasmania trying to settle into a more “normal” daily routine than the coffee/Danish pastry/coffee one I “suffered” through for three months while whirling into and out of England and America. [...]

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Science/Religion postscript

June 7, 2007

To carry on from last week’s discussion on the need to unite science and religion, rather than each of them disparaging the other, here are two simple, yet clear poems that address this unification. Between the conscious and the unconscious, the mind has put up a swing: all earth creatures, even the supernovas, sway between [...]

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Seeking a greater Truth

May 31, 2007

We all want and need to walk towards the light. Moving into, through and beyond life’s mystery is innate. Discovering that the riddle has no answer should not stop us from engaging with this great unknown. Both Richard Dawkin’s book, The God Delusion, and Christopher Hitchens’ book, God is Not Great, seek to separate science [...]

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The colour of home

January 24, 2007

After a long trip away, how does one reconnect with home? After speaking in broken sentences for weeks in a foreign language barely understood, where does one relocate the language common to one’s self of well being? Tongues in trees as Shakespeare said? I ask these questions because it has been just over two weeks [...]

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Back from China

January 18, 2007

I’ve been back for over a week now from China and have found the process of settling back into a “normal” routine is taking longer than expected. For sure, I am more than happy to be back on home soil and tending to the Peace Fire and such, but like the photo above, a partial [...]

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Last Climb

January 8, 2007

A fitting ending to my month long stay in China was to climb Tai Shan (Peaceful Mountain); the most climbed mountain in China and the most revered of its five sacred mountains. Getting to the base of the mountain for the start of the climb provided the usual minor hassles – taxi to bus station, [...]

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New Year’s Weekend

January 3, 2007

Winter came briefly to Jinan this past Saturday. Exciting, but at the same time a bit of bother as this was supposed to be the day Sally and I were going to the town of Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius. After sitting in snarled traffic for nearly an hour and only getting half way to [...]

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Christmas travels

December 28, 2006

Looking somewhat like a Muslim is how Sally presented herself to the world on Christmas Day. Nothing religious in intention; just what one has to do to keep healthy in air that knocks most Westerners about. Air, that makes for great sunsets and sunrises. Big red sun filtering through the smog is always dramatic. Makes [...]

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Red and Gold

December 19, 2006

Looking out of the hotel window here in Jinan (a relatively small city by Chinese standards of 5 million where Sally is studying Chinese Medicine at a TCM hospital) the haze and numerous undistinguished buildings make it not unlike any other polluted global city. However, what I am finding out is that the city’s visual [...]

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