A month has gone by since my last post titled Gaza Catastrophe. During that time the situation there has become unimaginably worse. I have felt compelled to write further. We take refuge in love and clear seeingWe live courageously in this world of birthing/dyingOur hearts embrace all companions on this path of lucidity and freedom … Continue reading Gaza Catastrophe – Human Catastrophe
Category: Short Pieces
What To Do When It All Seems Too Much
Please click here to download or read a fully formatted PDF version. It's been raining all week. A weather system of blocking highs and small intense lows is funnelling hot humid equatorial air down to Aotearoa, and so we sit on our damp, misty deck, having breakfast, listening to a morning chorus of invisible birds, … Continue reading What To Do When It All Seems Too Much
Fire and Living Dharma
This post is dedicated to the Australian fire fighters, medical responders, comforters, supporters and helpers – bodhisattvas of all kinds – who are courageously rising to the occasion, regardless of risk, to help and succour beings in need. I realise that many of you are far too engaged with immediate necessities to find these mere … Continue reading Fire and Living Dharma
We Are In This Together
Every human choice bows like a slave in submission to the absolute's creative will, yet this does not deprive us of freedom, or of taking responsibility for what we choose. ~ Rumi ~ (Translated by Coleman Barks in, "The Soul of Rumi.") Hearing the news of the Christchurch mosque shootings, I sit stunned with sadness … Continue reading We Are In This Together
Edges, Membranes and Mystery
A philosophy of contemplative science can easily become a dense entanglement of language and concepts whereas a poetry of contemplative science can invite fresh ways of seeing. In this prose/verse I try to illumine some of my thinking about cognition and knowing. May the timbre of these thoughts quicken the edges and membranes we share. … Continue reading Edges, Membranes and Mystery
Dancing Stillness and The Poetry of Science
Science developed from the human compulsion to explain things, either to another or to oneself. Perhaps this could be seen as the early stirrings of wisdom, prājña – an inherent inquisitiveness and curiosity of one's own mind (one's own field of knowing) that is both precise and playful at the same time. The compulsion to … Continue reading Dancing Stillness and The Poetry of Science
Translating Suchness
In the immeasurable expanse of nature in process, In faith and trust and wonderment we give ourselves to this suchness, This seamless mystery of birthing and dying. A few months back, I received an e-mail from people in Brazil who are translating some of my writings into Portuguese. They were having difficulty with the word … Continue reading Translating Suchness
Naming the Unnameable
Click here to view the fully formatted article in PDF An object can always have a name. This designated thing sits in its space; sometimes a geographic space of physical linkage and relationship, sometimes an emotional or conceptual space; and we, from the perspective of our own place, can then name it. But what if … Continue reading Naming the Unnameable
Body/Brain/Mind/Community
Changing the way we speak can encourage new dimensions of understanding. In the light of this, I'd like to invite some fresh thinking about what we mean when we use the words 'body' and 'mind'. Instead of treating them as nouns that describe seemingly familiar pre-existing objects, one being physical and the other non-physical, we … Continue reading Body/Brain/Mind/Community
New Look for Green Dharma Treasury
Hovering, on the cusp of a new year, or should I say wobbling; It feels a bit yin-yang-ish, a bit black and whitish, though both black and white mutually embrace – a radically inclusive, utterly seamless whole. On one side, a card game where some bad dudes seem to hold all the trumps, – ecosystems … Continue reading New Look for Green Dharma Treasury