Month: August 2020
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Stop Confessing Your Vulnerabilities
Over the years, and most especially during the coronavirus pandemic, I’ve noticed an unsettling trend: people I barely know or do not know at all will send me letters written in the mode of a confession. Completely out of the blue. The writer will not ask after me or mine, nor will he or she…
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Monsoon Season In The American Southwest
I wonder what strange beast, growing and purpling, will grope beyond the mountains, tumble down, and spill forth its contents? Or will it? Peoples living well before us must have tasted the air and looked up at the darkening sky and hoped or prayed or sang or danced. Or all. Will it come this time?,…
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Meditation IS An Impossible Situation
Listen to Gaofeng Yuanmiao, a Chan [Zen] master who lived from 1238-1295 AD, from Chan Whip: Breaking Through the Barrier: This matter [i.e., the Great Matter of Birth and Death, also known as the Great Matter of Life and Death–AT] demands that the practitioners have urgency. Only if you have urgency will the real Doubt…
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‘I’ve Stopped–Now You Stop’
The Story In Middle Discourse 86, “With Aṅgulimāla,” the Buddha says, “I’ve stopped, Aṅgulimāla—now you stop.” What is the Buddha talking about? The story goes that Angulimala was once the favorite student of his teacher, but his jealous peers found a way to set his teacher against him. “In an attempt to get rid of…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 