Earlier this year, our family doctor departed for pastures new. Like many other members of the Alfred, New York community, I found myself looking for a suitable replacement. Last week, I finally met with my new primary-care physician. Shortly thereafter, I remarked to my wife that this doctor might well become my caregiver “for the duration.” When she glanced at me as if I’d newly arrived from another era, I realized that I was showing my age. On further reflection, however, I also noted that this evocative expression, however dated, sorts well with three of the main tenets of Zen Buddhism. “F ..read more

Not long after I retired from college teaching, at least a half dozen friends and acquaintances, meeting me on the street or in the supermarket, asked me whether I was keeping busy. My practiced answer: “Busier than ever,” which seemed to settle the matter. Common to both the question and the answer was the unstated assumption that keeping busy is a good thing. Busyness is a virtue. Which quite often it is. Busy people get things done. Whether those things are worth doing is an open question. But if nothing else, keeping busy structures time and keeps the blues away. And for those who might b ..read more

“I like my thoughts,” a student once told me. She was not alone. Our passing thoughts can entertain, console, and inspire us. They can be the seeds of future creations. But our thoughts can also burden and oppress us, especially when they become repetitious or obsessive. And all too often our thoughts can deceive us, creating a delusive filter between our minds and things as they are. Zen teachings address this issue in various ways. The most basic instructions for Zen meditation direct us to sit upright and still and pay attention to our posture and breathing. To assist in doing this, we can ..read more

Last month, an Alfred State College student, who was working on a project concerning “spiritual life in the Alfred area,” contacted me to request an interview. Although I am hardly an authority on such matters, I agreed to speak with him. His questions, submitted in advance, struck me as serious and provocative. Foremost among them was the question, “Why do you think it is important for students to explore spirituality while in college?” However well formulated, that question contains a debatable premise and an ambiguous abstraction. As it happens, I would concur with the underlying assumption ..read more

“We rarely contact this simple moment,” wrote the Zen-trained teacher Toni Packer (1927-2013). “So used to constant input and excitement, we lack fine-tuning into all the subtleties of this instant, the ability to register a quiet aliveness without the stirring of expectation.” In this otherwise straightforward reflection on the place of meditative practice—or “contemplative inquiry,” as Packer preferred to call it—in contemporary Western culture, the word aliveness may give us pause. What, exactly, is “aliveness,” and what has it to do with meditation, a practice conventionally associated wit ..read more

One night at the dinner table I posed three questions to our granddaughter, who has now entered fourth grade. “What is something,” I asked, “that children are interested in but grown-ups are not?” “Pokemon,” she replied, not skipping a beat. “What is something that grown-ups are interested in but children are not?” “Economics,” she replied, a knowing look in her eyes. “And what is something that both children and grown-ups are interested in? “Food!” she answered. Perhaps it was time to eat. The subject of food—and of late, food insecurity—is indeed of universal interest. Its importance transc ..read more

If you have studied music, you are familiar with the five-line staff, the most fundamental component of Western musical notation. You may also remember the standard mnemonic for learning the notes on the lines of the treble clef: Every Good Boy Does Fine. I learned this mnemonic as a child, and even then it didn’t sit well with me. For one thing, it expressed a half-truth, at best, if not an outright falsehood. And later, when I’d studied English grammar and usage, I realized that fine, an adjective, was being misused as an adverb. Yet, if I questioned the quality of the mnemonic, I never tho ..read more

During her recent visit, our nine-year-old granddaughter learned to send Morse code. Having found the code in her activity book, she printed it out in her own, precise hand on a 4 x 6” notecard. As it happens, I learned Morse code myself when I was not much older than Allegra is now. Tapping a pencil on our dining-room table, I taught her how to translate the printed dots and dashes of the code into rhythmic patterns of sound. By the end of her stay, she was able to send “I love you, Dad” to her father. And to her grandfather (who was still in his pajamas), “Have a nice shower, Grandpa.” The a ..read more

To mark my most recent birthday my wife gave me a Conway Stewart fountain pen. Conway Stewart & Co., Limited, the most venerable name in British fountain pens, was founded in London in 1905. During the First World War, their handcrafted pens were used extensively by soldiers writing home from the front. During the Second World War, Winston Churchill enlisted a Conway Stewart pen to sign important wartime documents. More recently, Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh were presented with Conway Stewart pens to commemorate their golden wedding anniversary. Known as the Wordsworth Shi ..read more

Years ago at a literary conference, I lent a book to a Japanese friend. A few days later, as the conference was ending, she returned the book, holding it with both hands and presenting it to me as if it were an offering. Silent, direct, and present-minded, her gesture filled the space between us. And though she was not a Zen practitioner, so far as I know, her action epitomized the practice of Zen. In the early years of my formal Zen training, I learned to do everything—or almost everything—with two hands. No one taught me to do this. Rather I learned it through observing longtime Zen practit ..read more