For my seventieth birthday, a dear member of our sangha handed me a book called This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom by Martin Hägglund. It’s a dense read — more philosophy than bedtime comfort. And it’s had me thinking deeply about what we’re really doing when we take our seats on the cushion. Hägglund…
In the present moment we discover a spontaneity beyond time, where there is no aging, no measuring, no comparing to what was, and no worry about what will be. Perhaps I get a little carried away with Buddhist contemplation? I mean, just the other day I felt compelled to pull over while driving to ponder…
A New Yorker magazine cartoon depicts a couple strolling down the street, one saying to the other: These are the ‘good old days’ that someday we won’t be able to remember. I think a lot about when the kids were little, and how great it felt to be a new dad, and now that both…
In her most recent book, Alive Until You’re Dead: Notes on the Home Stretch, the 81-year-old Zen teacher, editor and writer Susan Moon relates an ordeal she went through while riding on public transit from Berkeley to the San Francisco airport. When she got to the airport, she realized that her carry-on bag, which had…
If I’m going to explore aging and humility I need to remember we older ones are no longer as energetic, or slim, or good looking. The other day I received an interesting catalog in the mail. My wife thought it was a medical scrubs catalog, but when I looked closer the company’s about us page…
As we approach the last pages of our human story, in Buddhism aging as a spiritual practice encourages us to be softer, more vulnerable, more caring and loving. The other day at the hospital, I ran into a nurse I haven’t seen in a while. She looked at me and asked “You’re still working?” I…
The other night my wife and kids threw me a 60th birthday party where, after the usual social stuff, folks started dancing to 60’s music. Great songs from the Beatle’s White Album segued into the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Starship, and Van Morrison, for a deliciously long time, with Jose Feliciano’s Light My Fire…