Patheos Blog » Monkey Mind
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Patheos is the world's leading multi-faith site dedicated to hosting the conversation on faith. This blog is written by James Ford, who is a Zen Buddhist priest and author, which mostly addresses aspects of the Zen life.
Patheos Blog » Monkey Mind
8h ago
Allen Ginsberg was born on the 3rd of June, in 1926, in Newark, New Jersey. His father was a poet and school teacher, while his mother was an activist and Marxist. He had a brother Eugene. His mother’s schizophrenia was a constant issue within the family. Her illness would be a recurrent theme in his ..read more
Patheos Blog » Monkey Mind
3d ago
I’ve been thinking about foolish wisdom. While this is another season, it made me recall April 1st. That day marked out as many things. For one it’s the Assyrian New Year. For another it’s the feast for Mary of Egypt, a rather interesting desert mother. I also like to note it’s Edible Book day. And, of ..read more
Patheos Blog » Monkey Mind
3d ago
The novelist Lidia Yuknavitch tells how once in her youth, “Joan of Arc visited me in a dream—in the dream, I was standing in our front yard and our house was on fire. She stepped out of the burning house and said ‘No one is coming to save you.’” Joan comes to us in dreams ..read more
Patheos Blog » Monkey Mind
5d ago
As I sense the falling sands in my hourglass slipping away, over the past couple of years my focus on politics has begun to wane in favor of the burning questions of life and death itself. These questions and our social lives, our political lives are, of course, not unrelated. But for me my heart ..read more
Patheos Blog » Monkey Mind
1w ago
Trinity Sunday. The old joke has it that on Trinity Sunday the congregations in the vast majority of Christian churches around the globe will be hearing some heresy or another. The Trinity is a passing strange thing. A wonderful attempt at at least approaching the mystery. And, so, perhaps its not a bad thing for a ..read more
Patheos Blog » Monkey Mind
1w ago
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on the 25th of May, in 1803. I try to note it every year as it arrives. Emerson was a central founder of Unitarian Transcendentalism. For most of America, Transcendentalism was a literary movement. However, in fact it was a theological and spiritual revolution within American Unitarianism and only incidentally ..read more
Patheos Blog » Monkey Mind
1w ago
On the 24th of May, the Romani, or at least some Romani, celebrate Saint Sarah, sometimes called Black Sarah, or Sarah the Black, or Sara e Kali in Romani, as their patron. Like many popular saints in the Roman Catholic calendar, her historicity is shrouded. Some like the idea that her cult in ..read more
Patheos Blog » Monkey Mind
1w ago
What follows is a Dharma talk by Dr Chris Hoff delivered at our 18th of May, 2024, Empty Moon Zen Saturday morning gathering. He is one of our Zen dharma teachers at Empty Moon Zen. Dr Hoff leads our Zen recovery sangha. He is also Executive Director of the nonprofit California Family Institute, which ..read more
Patheos Blog » Monkey Mind
2w ago
Shunryu Suzuki was born on the 18th of May, 1904, in a village about fifty miles from Tokyo. In those days that was as if it were a million miles. Maybe a tad less. It is not possible for me to adequately address just how important Suzuki Roshi was to me in my personal life ..read more
Patheos Blog » Monkey Mind
2w ago
On the 17th of May in 1900 L. Frank Baum’s the Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published by the George M. Hill Company. It was an instant runaway bestseller. Within six months the first edition of ten thousand copies sold out. By the time it hit the public domain in 1956 it had sold a ..read more