Anne Cushman on tracking as a kind of meditation. "Merely the gesture of paying attention in this way is a revelation," she says. I’ve started going on monthly hikes with the Point Reyes Tracking Club out at Abbott’s Lagoon, a beautiful seashore sanctuary north of San Francisco. In just a couple of guided outings, I’ve realized that tracking is a kind of meditation. Our [...]
A Brief Moment in Deep Time
. In the Mojave Desert, J. Jason Graff reflects on silence, time, and slowing down in our modern age through mindfulness. . While walking slowly through the Mojave desert I found what looked like part of an old desert tortoise's shell, sun bleached and chalky, broken into pieces that fit together like a puzzle in large geometric shapes to form what might have been the bottom [...]
David Rynick — “Spiraling Toward God”
David Rynick, abbot of the Boundless Way Zen Temple in Worcester, Massachusetts, has written a book, This Truth Never Fails: A Zen Memoir in Four Seasons, which is available from Wisdom Publications. We're happy to share some excerpts with our readers — you can read another one, "Familiar Suspicion," here. "Spiraling Toward God — A Story in Two Parts" Yesterday I made my [...]
Diane Ackerman on getting back to nature
In a new editorial on the New York Times' website, Diane Ackerman — poet, essayist, naturalist and Shambhala Sun friend and contributor — suggests we take a few minutes a day to focus on something in nature, away from the myriad digital distractions of the modern world. "The new technology, for all its boons, also bedevils us with alluring distractors, cyberbullies, [...]
David Rynick’s “Familiar Suspicion”
David Rynick, abbot of the Boundless Way Zen Temple in Worcester, Massachusetts, has written a new book called This Truth Never Fails: A Zen Memoir in Four Seasons, available from Wisdom Publications. We're happy to share some excerpts with our readers — you can read another one, "Spiraling Toward God," here. "Familiar Suspicion" It’s a little cool to be out on the back [...]
Gretel Ehrlich: Struck by Nature
“Cover yourself with the living world. It becomes part of your love life.” Gretel Ehrlich writes about nature with passion and awareness, but twice her love affair with nature turned deadly. Stephen Foehr talks to the author of A Match to the Heart. The afternoon thunderstorm that tumbled over the Bighorn Mountains looked harmless to Gretel Ehrlich's practiced eye. Eight years [...]
Earth Dharma: Turtle Liberation!
In some Buddhist traditions, liberating captive animals is an act of compassion, a way to “make merit” for long life. Releasing turtles, in particular—symbols of patience and resilience—is considered an auspicious act. This morning I woke up and let our household dog Molly outside in the backyard. She ran down the path towards the pond and stopped abruptly to sniff at [...]
Writers and the War Against Nature
Buddhism, art, and environmentalism—all honor the beauty and magic of the natural world. In a powerful autobiographical essay, the poet, sage, and Zen practitioner Gary Snyder traces his lifelong commitment to the environment and calls on all creative people to rise in its defense. I grew up in the maritime Pacific Northwest, on a farm north of Seattle where we kept a hen [...]
Crucial Instructions
The late Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, one of the great Buddhist teachers of the twentieth century, offers four sets of pithy teachings on bringing the absolute nature into our path. Teachings by Dilgo Khyentse on Zurchung Sherap Trakpa’s1 Eighty Chapters of Personal Advice, based on Shechen Gyaltsap’s2 commentary. The lines from Zurchungpa’s root text appear in bold and [...]
What is the Worth of the Wind River Mountains?
“The beauty of the natural world is given to us,” says Gretel Ehrlich, “but we abuse the gift by not looking, by using it for profit, by not recognizing its intrinsic value. The concept of beauty itself, and its necessary place in human society, is no longer recognized.” An almost full moon sweeps light across shadowed and white-spiked peaks, bringing into view an unbroken [...]