Author: Andrew Taggart
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There Is No Pain In Direct Experience
On the last home sesshin (Zen meditation intensive), I saw clearly that in direct experience physical pain does not exist. Before, I had followed a pretty standard line: physical pain exists and is a given whereas suffering is an unnecessary mental add-on. According to the standard line, that throbbing in the knee is pain, but…
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‘Don’t Turn Practice Into Anything Else’
“Don’t turn the practice into anything else,” my Zen teacher states in one of his Dharma talks. “See here, now that there’s no place to go,” I wrote after the last home sesshin, one that ended on Saturday. What are these statements pointing to? You turn the practice of zazen (seated meditation) into something else…
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Clearing And Wising
The question I ask in this long form essay is: “Why are people not kinder to one another and to all sentient beings? Why, indeed, is not kindness the default mode?” And the answer I come to is this one: we are not clear and we are not wise. I’d like to take you on the…
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Beauty Of Soul: A Conversation
This conversation between David E. Cooper, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Durham University, and me I’m pulling out of the vault. It took place in 2012. I’d forgotten about it until I was speaking with someone recently about beauty of soul. It’s a beautiful conversation, and I hope you find it to be so also.…
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Religion For The Religious
In the opening of Religion and Nothingness, Keiji Nishitani makes a stunning claim: [F]rom the standpoint of the essence of religion, it is a mistake to ask “What is the purpose of religion for us?” and one that clearly betrays an attitude of trying to understand religion apart from the religious quest. It is a…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 