Where Does the Fire Go?

Where Does the Fire Go? A cold night. A cozy room. A fire lit in the fireplace. You fall asleep by the fire. When you wake, the fire has gone out? But where did it go? You set the table for dinner. The candles are lit. Conversation ensues. The candles finally go out. But where […]

Enter Slowly

At our local Zen Center, we don’t just enter the room. We stop, bow, and then enter. In some traditions, it’s a little bow. In others, it’s three bows going to the floor and back. Other spiritual traditions have similar practices. You don’t just enter the room. You don’t just do the next thing. There’s […]

A Full Measure of Kindness

George Saunders is an American writer and winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction for his novel Lincoln in the Bardo. His commencement speech to the 2013 graduates at Syracuse University is an ode to kindness. It’s one of the finest pieces of elocution I’ve come across in many years.  The weight of this marvelous […]