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Selected Poems

Living With The Dying

An Interview With Frank Ostaseski

We try to curtail “helper’s disease” as best we can. It seems to be rampant in our society: there’s a problem out there, I must do something about it, I have to go help. We’re not necessarily motivated by the best intentions. Sometimes we act out of our fear or guilt instead of a real desire to serve.

Love Stories

A waterfall of words, an undergraduate literary magazine, untranslatable Olde English phrases

Man Made

Take note, Father, for I have sinned, for relentlessly thinking of his warm body while hers lies cold. For looking beyond this day and this tree-lined cemetery and expecting nothing. For feeling just the aching cold and ill-fitting shoes. For wanting to see his face and know the truth.

Sunbeams

For religion, the idea of God is at the beginning; for science, the idea of God is at the end. Only those who think by halves become atheists; those who go deep with their thoughts and see the marvelous relationships among universal laws recognize a creative power.

Max Planck

Celebrating The Charnel Ground

Notes On Death And Meditation

In Tibetan Buddhist liturgy, a reminder of death is chanted before each session of religious practice: “The whole world and its inhabitants are impermanent; in particular, the life of beings is like a bubble; death comes without warning; this body will be a corpse.”

Without Fear

Talks With American Students

It is important to be aware of what is, not what should be, because the “what should be” is a fiction, a myth, a romantic notion, which all religions and idealists throughout the ages have nurtured and exploited. What good is the ideal of nonviolence if I am full of violence?

Peak Experiences

Two blue herons, a red tail-feather, wild blueberries

Selected Poems

The Flag-Draped Coffin

Oron flanks left with the small platoon of formally dressed sailors, all in ceremonial blue wool, all armed with parade M-1 rifles. The overcast sky is ashen on this mid-November day, and the wind pulsates bleakly over this little land of the dead.