GENKAKU-AGAIN (adam fisher)

. Once upon a time, when I was a reporter, there was a local story about a young woman who climbed two, low fences and put her hand through ...

. Is there anything which, having captured a person's intense interest and dedication, doesn't lose its force over time? Baseball, s...

. As when a blizzard strikes New York, changed circumstances in the newspaper office seem to have nourished a changed populace. There is a w...

. The one-time sports writer, Red Smith, was once quoted as saying, "There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewr...

. James Ishmael Ford posted this clip of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi on his blog and I thought I'd boost it from him and post it here. My ow...

Did you ever skip stones on a lake when you were a kid? It always seemed so magical to me that you could throw something that would sink lik...

. At a time when fewer and fewer read and more and more seek out what is short, I find myself writing longer and longer. OK ... short and sw...

. This morning I was reading an Internet post by a fellow who had recently returned from a retreat. His tradition is not exactly like Zen pr...

. Former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun,62, jumped off a cliff and killed himself Saturday, May 23, 2009. A rags-to-riches politician w...

. Did you ever notice how right you are when you discover or acknowledge you have said or done or thought something wrong? But it never seem...

. Funny but touching: Those who take up a spiritual practice do so, I guess, because they are uncertain in one way or another. Death, diseas...

. When I was 16 or so, I took an interest in the question, "Who wrote Shakespeare?" My father taught Shakespeare and in school I w...

. It is a time of economic difficulty around the world. Suddenly, the word "poverty" is not just something that belongs to someone...

. I think it is important to acknowledge in spiritual life -- in the efforts and endeavors and even the beliefs and hopes -- that no one nee...

. I was doing zazen today in front of a Kuan Yin statue that always seems to catch the incense smoke that meanders upward in front of it. I ...

. You can't make this stuff up or, if you can, how could it compare with what actually happens? All I know is, it's enough to blow m...

. The old buzzard and the young buzzard sit on the same branch. Both of them are waiting for something to drop dead. Both of them have to ea...

. In Zen and other forms of Buddhism, you can read or hear people referring to "my master." I guess it is meant to express a sense...

. I was brought up in an atmosphere that counseled or enforced an unwillingness to accept praise. If those I might have expected to support ...

. Yesterday, a chum and longtime Zen student sent me an email that said, "We both know zazen doesn't do shit..." James and I, ...

. Last night, in the parking lot, I ran into Don, one of the photographers at the newspaper. Don is a good guy and a good photographer, some...

. The other day, I read a comment on a Buddhist bulletin board that said, more or less, "I don't care for hanging out with Buddhist...

. There is dignity and peace in all times and places, but the human desire to improve upon things ... well, there is the old, crass and utte...

. Years after her 20-month old son, Charles Lindbergh Jr., was kidnapped and later found murdered in 1932, Anne Morrow Lindbergh was intervi...

. Little or large, old habits die hard, so I imagine that leaving the newspaper business -- retiring, as the expression goes -- will have un...

. Barry, the guy who more often does the news-wire job at work, sent me an email the other day. Not only had he been laid low by bronchitis,...

. I guess it's an unkindness and a blind spot to imagine -- or insist -- that if others hold beliefs, they would therefore be curious ab...

. As much as I may cuddle and counsel myself that language is mutable and really does fall into the secondary and that therefore I shouldn...

. In this neck of the woods, it's Mother's Day, a day that calls attention to a relationship and implication everyone has had and pe...

. This morning there is a wee troll in my mind growling, "Spiritual life -- what the fuck does that mean?!" The cuss word is meant...