USUALLY, WHEN SOMEONE SAYS, “YOU’RE SO THOUGHTLESS!” IT MEANS you’ve done something wrong, something about which you should feel shame; but it’s not always so. Recently, I’ve been re-reading Brian Walker’s rendition of the Hua Hu Ching (now spelled Huahujing), a Daoist text attributed to Laozi, which had been preserved only through oral tradition for …
Into the Cloud, Whereabouts Unknown
WHILE I AM NOT A MYSTIC, I HAVE SPENT MOST OF MY ADULT LIFE STUDYING (directly and indirectly) both religious experience in general and mysticism in particular. Right now, I’m re-reading, for at least the fourth time, The Cloud of Unknowing, a classic 14th century English manual of Christian contemplative prayer. This will be the …
Gone Beyond and Back – Perfect Wisdom
The Heart Sutra pushes wisdom into transcendence, but then brings it back into compassion. That's why it's the Perfection of Wisdom, the bodhisattva path.
Forgotten Among the Lilies
WHAT IF WE GOT IT WRONG and the “dark night of the soul” is actually about the end of suffering? It’s become commonplace to call a painful time in life a dark night of the soul. But what if the metaphor points to the moment of breakthrough rather than to the suffering? This metaphor comes …
Soul Spirit Wisdom 