I'm not going to lie -- 2016 has been pretty stressful so far. The day job has been demanding and constantly shifting; racial and identity politics have been as contentious as ever; and the rise of Trump signalling the fall of the GOP has been one of the most depressing stories to follow. Meanwhile, there … Continue reading (Buddhism) Taking Refuge
Tag: buddhism
(Writing) New Year’s Resolutions, 2016
It feels like I swing back and forth with resolutions from year to year. One year, I'm all business with concrete resolutions that have a pass/fail success condition. Write 6 short stories. Read 10 novels. That sort of thing. The next year, having been beaten down by life and the unexpected, I ease back to … Continue reading (Writing) New Year’s Resolutions, 2016
(Personal) Three Pounds of Flax
A monk asked Tozan when he was weighing some flax: "What is Buddha?" Tozan said: "This flax weighs three pounds." It is so impossibly hard to do one thing at a time in this day and age. As I sit to write this, I'm thinking about a number of other things -- the 500 words … Continue reading (Personal) Three Pounds of Flax
(Personal) The Wolf We Feed
I’m sure you know this story. One evening, an elder sits down with his son. The son had been getting into trouble because he had problems with anger and lashing out, so the elder tells him a quick fable. “There are two wolves fighting inside of each and every one of us,” he says. “One … Continue reading (Personal) The Wolf We Feed
Spillage
There's a Zen story that goes something like this: a Buddhist scholar comes to a Zen master and asks him for teaching. The scholar then proceeds to establish his credentials, talking about how long he's studied, the doctorate he's received, the professors he's associated with, the whole thing. The master listens while pouring the scholar … Continue reading Spillage
Notes From the Zendo: A Softening
Last Wednesday I went to the Kannon Do Zen Centre up in Mountain View to hear Natalie Goldberg speak. A friend had invited me to see her, and when do you get a chance to actually meet the writer of Writing Down The Bones? Of course, I had to go. It was a bit of … Continue reading Notes From the Zendo: A Softening
What I Believe
Over the long weekend I watched two very different movies that touched on the same theme. One of them was a religious drama written and directed by Robert Duvall, a true passion project if ever I saw one. It was called The Apostle. The other was very much a product of its time -- a … Continue reading What I Believe
Combatting Mindlessness with Personal Myth
When I'm not pretending to be a giant rabbit who writes fiction on the Internet, I work at a services company where I deal with customers all day. The nature of our business is such that people often mistakenly believe we're responsible for things that we aren't, so it's not uncommon for me to get … Continue reading Combatting Mindlessness with Personal Myth
Meditating Everywhere
It's taken me a very long time to understand what meditation is for. When I first started to practice, I assumed that the time I'd spend on the bench was in preparation for something else. By sitting down and counting my breath (one-in-out-two-in-out) my brain was being molded in a way that would manifest elsewhere. … Continue reading Meditating Everywhere
A Life of Intention
My post about why we should think about including furries in our fiction drew a lot of comments after it went up. I got a *lot* of people Twitter-bombing me about why I was wrong! A lot of the feedback was useful, and I'm grateful for it. It offered up a new perspective on the … Continue reading A Life of Intention
From the Desk of Jakebe T. Rabbit 