I recently returned from my annual silent retreat in Colorado. I continue to be fascinated by what happens when my mouth is shut. I have an active mind prone to playful ideas and deep inquiry, and when they surface, like many I am inclined to... Continue

I didn’t sleep well the other night and woke up at 2:30 feeling hungry. Making my way to the kitchen, I prepared a small bowl of cereal, and sitting at the table clicked on the tiny kitchen TV. Trader Horn, a 1931 black and white... Continue

Love: a deceptively simple word we use to describe a stunningly complex phenomenon. Compassion, caring, comfort, support, desire, attachment, attraction, and appeal - empathy, affection, tenderness, infatuation, intimacy and ardor; these feelings and more are at work within love’s bind.  Humanity as we know it... Continue

We tend to prefer points of view that reinforce our own. This is curious, of course, because we develop our own cherished points of view through our exposure to the points of views of others, such as our parents. In short, no points of view... Continue

The world as we know it will end in 2012, or so says the Mayan calendar. Personally, I’ve not used the Mayan calendar for years; it’s too much trouble hauling around those massive stone structures aligned with cardinal points and keeping track of the shadows... Continue

And so it was in 2009 that a brief hiatus, or rather a stalemate, befell the opposing sides. Despite the cascading billions of spam mail flooding the internet and swallowing vast terabytes of bandwidth - armies of drone zombie computers silently doing the bidding of... Continue

I recently went shopping with my friend, Mr. Peach. Peach is not his real name, of course, it was bestowed upon him by a confused foreign government which upon welcoming him to an international event left him an envelope addressed to “His Divine Excellency, Mr.... Continue

The wisest among us have always known of hate’s power to consume decency, and they have counseled us accordingly. “Love thine enemies,” Jesus is quoted in the Bible. The Buddha advises that one moment of hate destroys eons of accumulated merit. Mohammed teaches forgiveness above... Continue

I am walking downtown in a pleasant cosmopolitan city, perhaps Portland or some other northwestern community. I notice that a light-rail transportation system is in full operation, and crowds of people are hustling and bustling, as they tend to do in active metropolitan spaces. Moving... Continue