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I could make a very convincing case to you for the practice of sitting meditation — just to do that and nothing else — and an equally convincing case for going out and serving the world.
By Jack KornfieldMay 1987Dear Frank,
You always liked it short and sweet. Here it is: Don’t sleep and sigh and move around on your cushion in the zendo. It disturbs others, and is conspicuous and self-centered.
As a Westerner turning Buddhist in 1982, I was concerned about abandoning my “Christian heritage” for a foreign culture. I had never felt completely at home with that heritage: church seemed like a sterile routine, and any form of dogma affected me like one more arrogant know-it-all telling me how I should live.
By Stephen T. ButterfieldMarch 1987There comes a point, a threshold crossing, where everything that you’ve been taught is of no use to you whatsoever. This is the moment of dismemberment, of divestiture. It is symbolized in such mythological images as Jonah swallowed by the whale, the god Osiris torn to pieces, the crucifixion of Christ. The trip is going to take you, if it is really your trip, to the moment of decision: follow your way or follow the way of prudence. That is the breakthrough. And what follows are trials which become greater and greater and greater until you come down to an ultimate abyss, and the experience you were seeking.
By Joseph CampbellSeptember 1986June 1986The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
Richard Bach, Illusions
The artist speaks of the “muse” and the musician says “I was hot,” but in their hearts there is only mysterious joy: I was present at a beautiful event and yet it was not “I.”
By Adam FisherJune 1986We talk about the “new age,” but eighty percent of it is filled with atavisms, really archaic stuff that is not futuristic but just the dredging up of all the old knowledge, of dowsing and palmistry and reflexology and acupuncture.
By Jill Wolcott, Mary InglisMay 1986I love you. It really means something, but what it means cannot be said. It is, for those of us who practice Zen, a koan, an insoluble riddle. Perhaps a particularly tricky koan.
By Adam FisherFebruary 1986Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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