Crossing Nebraska

It is dangerous to engage in mystical practice before having attained adequate ego strength to safely do so. This is an important idea that I attribute to C.G. Jung, although I can’t offer any more detailed attribution at the present time. If we scratch just below the surface of such a statement, it appears to contain a contradiction: Since mystical practice involves dismantling or casting aside our egoic constructs and defenses, it would seem that not having fully formed ego strength would just put us that much further along! Is that dangerous, or is it advantageous? Digging further, however, we can see that, since mystical practice can involve the dismantling of everything the practitioner might have assumed about the world and him or herself, there is the distinct danger of a precipitous descent into nihilism – the darkness of utter meaninglessness. Thus, I must begin this post with a warning: If you are young and without a solid sense of how you fit into this world, if you are str...

I’ve been working on my house of late – replacing the siding, gutters, soffit & fascia, and so forth. It’s a big enough job that I dedicated a whole week of vacation just to getting it underway. Much still remains for me to do, but I’ve made fairly decent progress so far. And along the way I’ve had plenty of time to reflect upon what I’m doing, and why. Don’t I have enough to keep me busy without taking on such time-consuming and expensive chores? Of course, there are many ways I could answer that question: I’m increasing the resale value of my home. I’m staving off having to make more costly repairs in the future. I’m making my home as pleasing a place for me to live in as I can. I’m being a good neighbor by making my property as appealing to live next to as I can. I’m keeping my house from becoming one of those that just gets torn down upon resale so that another can be built in its place. Certainly everyone can relate to such motivations. We all understand the concept of be...

Wow, it’s hard to believe that almost a year has passed since I first started this blog! It has me feeling just a little bit reflective. Perhaps I should begin by letting you all know what an incredible experience this has been for me. The opportunity to touch people on a deep level all over the world, from perhaps fifty countries or more, (I haven’t actually counted them all) is one for which I am very grateful and humbled. I’d also like to thank you all for following, reading, commenting on, pondering, and sharing these posts. I really, really, deeply appreciate it. When I first began contemplating the writing of this blog I was just beginning to feel once again the lightness of being that is so easily taken for granted when our lives are proceeding in so-called ‘normal’ fashion. Up until then I’d been navigating a “Bardo realm” of grief after the dissolution of my marriage. You know, really deep grief is something I would not wish on my worst enemy (not that I have any) and...

Zen student to teacher: "I come seeking liberation." Zen teacher to student: "Who has enslaved you? Show me your chains!" + I’d departed from Shoshoni that morning with 100 miles of ‘rattlesnake country’ to ride through before arriving in Casper, Wyoming – my evening destination. I pedaled slowly, knowing full well that the afternoon would bring the hottest weather that I’d ridden in all year, and my longest ride in many, many a year. And on top of all of that I was tired. I was tired before I’d even begun, still recovering as I was from the sinus infection that had laid me low back in the Tetons, and the long ride from Cody to Thermopolis and then up through the Wind River Canyon – back in time and smack dab into the center of a raging thunderstorm. (See  Desire, Aspiration, and Doing What We Can .) But none of that was of any consequence anymore, for there was nothing left to do but ride. Now, it might seem as though having nothing left to do would epit...

The seasons can change quickly here in Missouri – at times seeming to go from the chill of winter straight into the sweltering heat of summer with hardly a trace of spring, or from summer to autumn over the course of an afternoon! It felt a little bit like the latter this year as we transitioned from a summer drought that seemed to never want to end into the chilly nights of fall over the course of just a scant few days. Of course, I’m speaking very subjectively right now. I don’t have any temperature charts in front of me showing the highs and lows of recent days in order to compare them to the averages of seasons past. I only have my experience of the passing days to go on right now, and my memories of seasons past to compare them to. (By the way, as I edit this we’re enjoying once again the warmth of summer. Such is the nature of St. Louis weather!) Taking stock of where we’re at with respect to our spiritual journey is a similarly subjective exercise. As the years go by and...

I feel compelled to interrupt the flow of my Alpine Stream of Consciousness series in order to pay homage to a woman whose Dharma teaching has had a profound impact on me for over four years now. I just learned that Ginny Morgan passed away on Tuesday, August 30 th after living with cancer for longer than I have known her. Readers of this blog will know that, despite my being a Soto Zen practitioner, I’ve tried to recognize wisdom wherever it is to be found – be it amongst the various branches of Buddhism, the Abrahamic religions, Native American Spirituality, Yoga, Tai Chi, etc. In that regard, Ginny and I are kindred spirits. Ginny was a teacher in the Insight Meditation tradition. She lived a couple of hours away in Columbia , Missouri , and so I only ever saw her when I was attending one of the meditation retreats that she was leading. During those retreats her Dharma talks often took on a free form sort of character – not without structure, mind you, but nevertheless ...

The teaching of no self is one of the most difficult Buddhist teachings to comprehend; not because it is such an intellectually taxing one, but because it cuts right to the core of how we view reality. And even after we do “get it” we’re still subject to the relentless tug of karma pulling us back into our old way of looking at self and other and the world. Unfortunately, as well, is the fact that somewhere along the road to our “getting it” lurks the nihilistic view that everything is merely an illusion, a phantasm – self, other, everything. It is not difficult to understand how Buddhist teachings related to no self , in particular, and emptiness, in general, might be misconstrued as nihilistic. After all, the word emptiness – when used as a description of ultimate reality – almost invites it. And if you think that the word emptiness invites nihilistic ponderings, imagine what the word voidness might inspire. In fact, early scholars of Eastern texts often translated the Sans...