GRAMERCY, 2023, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, PHOTO BY SOKEN Each of us is inevitable. Each of us limitless; each of us with his or her right     upon the earth. WALT WHITMAN The current, breezy days in New York remind me of spring when I was young here.    I was twelve. The air and sun filled me with excitement. I fell in love with pepper trees, maples, leafy, 100-year-old streets, and tulips. From my aunt’s apartment on Cornelia St., ten stories above sweltering Avenue of the Americas, I watched through tall windows as cars and pedestrians circulated about Sixth A ..read more

Mount Lu, National Park, Jiujiang, Jiangxi, China THE BUDDHA UNDERSTOOD that his purpose was to help people attain enlightenment. By this he meant, to help people to see the truth so they could overcome the sufferings of old age, of separation, of infirmity, and of death. It’s the Buddha’s vow, for example, to help the 6-year old who recently shot his teacher in the hand in Newport, Virginia, as well as the teacher, the students, the teacher’s parents, the mayor, and the reporters who reported on the story, as well as the reporters’ parents, editors, newspaper owners, those of ..read more

Goethe in the Roman Campagna By Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein The world we knew is disintegrating and a new one is taking shape.  The Economist magazine tells us, “Today’s world is much more unstable, convulsed by the vicissitudes of great-power rivalry, the aftershocks of the pandemic, economic upheaval, extreme weather, and rapid social and technological change.”  (“The World Ahead,” Nov. 14, 2022)   This is nature. As we look toward a new year, I wonder how we’ll live in this newly emerging world.    A large part of my yearlong reflection has been about h ..read more

I wonder if emotion is disappearing from the world. Fall came four days ago. The weather in New York is perfectly cool and crisp—so much so that my poet neighbor stopped me in our lobby to remark in a stunned manner, almost with tears in his eyes, “The air—the air!” He couldn’t finish his sentence, and I was running late for work, so I left him stammering in the lobby. But outside the clear blue vault of sky said what he couldn’t. The cool oxygen lifted me like a balloon. A bike messenger howled with excitement as he turned right off Bleeker onto Sixth and headed the wrong way into one-w ..read more

Self-Renewal happens in spite of our designs. The sun warms mountainsides. Our cells regenerate. With Spring—in New York—comes primeval frustration. Friends shout among themselves with a kind of crazed, ebullient impatience, as if encouraging their slow, sleepy lovers to rush out of the house to “come out and play already!” The city cries itself awake.  Heaven holds out its promise of Summer but then retracts it. Yellow daffodils flower under leafless alders. The demiurge pushes through us as it has for centuries.  Basho (1644-1694) We meet in Spring the same wildness that 334 ..read more

Fall is upon us. As the hurricanes pass through New York, I’m energized by the feeling of moving on and appreciating the rich experience of letting go—into a new beginning.   The last year and a half have been marked by several fierce transitions. A week before the pandemic put New York City into lockdown, my dharma sister met me at the end of my Rolfing day, as she always does. But this time she explained that the temple we were building in the mountains had been struck by a mudslide and that my teacher wanted us to fly down to North Carolina at once, so we left that night and arrived a ..read more

Few people will disagree that life improves with money and love. The more one has of both, the better life is.    Of course, it can happen that the pursuit of one repels the attainment of the other, and such a dilemma brings complications to one’s life. For example, the pursuit of money can leave a family scarce time for hiking or looking up at clouds together, with the sky’s leisure filling their limbs.    Oddly—love appears more vividly with suffering. A life that’s too easy, without moral education can make one less empathetic. (This is why religious people invite s ..read more

Play the Mindfulness of Breathing guided meditation followed by the Dharma talk, How to Rewrite Your Destiny with Meditation. Included below is a written summary of the Dharma talk.  Soken · How to Rewrite Your Destiny : Untangle the Knots in Your Mind Dharma talk: How to rewrite your destiny The real work involved in mediation is linguistic, and when you grasp this massively misunderstood fact then you can actually start rewriting your destiny.  By slowing down your thoughts and creating more space, meditation helps you to notice the relationship between your se ..read more

I wonder if emotion is disappearing from the world. Fall came four days ago. The weather in New York is perfectly cool and crisp—so much so that my poet neighbor stopped me in our lobby to remark in a stunned manner, almost with tears in his eyes, “The air—the air!” He couldn’t finish his sentence, and I was running late for work, so I left him stammering in the lobby. But outside the clear blue vault of sky said what he couldn’t. The cool oxygen lifted me like a balloon. A bike messenger howled with excitement as he turned right off Bleeker onto Sixth and headed the wrong way into one-w ..read more

We experience two connected yet different realities: the physical and the spiritual, and by understanding their connection, you may learn how to become more spiritual. The physical is everything we can engage with our senses. On its own, this plane of existence cannot be meaningful. To reach a spiritual reality, we must ask ourselves questions that don’t have tangible answers, for example, “Who am I?”. The idea of you has no corporeal form, yet it is as real as the words you’re reading now. People become more spiritual by challenging themselves with deep introspection. This process of self-dis ..read more