I’ve been working with a nifty little Zen Buddhist practice called “Don’t-Know-Mind.” The idea behind it is this: We constantly, and without even realizing it, invent stories in our minds to explain things we experience. So, for example, in my rear view mirror I see some guy in a BMW who is zipping through traffic; tailgating, changing lanes, trying to get ahead, fast approaching. I think to myself “What a jerk,” assured that the driver is some rich yuppie who... Read more

  The classic tale of Doctor Faustus has been told and retold in many forms. It is one of those universal cautionary tropes which, when you think about it, appears all over the place in literature, movies and song (such as The Police’s 1983 hit Wrapped Around Your Finger). The Faustus tale centers on an ambitious man who is dissatisfied with his place in life. He believes he deserves more: more respect, more power, more influence. Spotting that the man... Read more

I was in my thirties when my father died. He was fifty-nine; just four years older than I am now. His death was sudden and unexpected. My father was a passionate, active, vivacious man.  He was an athlete who climbed mountains, ran marathons and–not long before his passing–rode his recumbent bicycle across the state of Iowa. He worked the night shift as a printer at the city newspaper, a trade he had learned from his father. He came home from... Read more

There were two other mass shootings in the U.S. today in addition to the “GOP baseball” shooting.  There have been 154 mass shootings (4 or more victims) in the U.S. in the last 165 days.  This is in addition to our regular epidemic of tens of thousands of run-of-the-mill “non-mass” shootings in the U.S. each year. The problem is guns and the solution is strict gun regulation. It really is that simple. One only needs to compare gun crime in... Read more

                        Am I a Christian?  The short answer is yes.  In 1984, when I was in my early-twenties, I prayed the “sinner’s prayer” and became a “born again” Christian.  I then participated in charismatic fundamentalist evangelical churches for twenty years and after that was an evangelical Quaker for ten years.  In those 30+ years I have heard thousands of sermons, participated in and led countless Bible studies, been an... Read more

With his kind permission, today I’m featuring a guest post by Bhante Suddhāso, a Buddhist monk living in New York City. He is the co-founder of Buddhist Insights, a new platform using technology to build community and facilitate access to reliable monastic teachings–where this post originally appeared.  Bhante Suddhāso’s work aims to convey Buddhist concepts and their practical applicability to everyday life.  Although his belief system differs in certain ways from mine (primarily in that I am a theist and... Read more

  I’ve been doing a lot of pondering and reading lately about the basis of morality in various ideologies.  As a fundamentalist evangelical Christian I was taught, for example, that atheists are intrinsically immoral due to the fact that they are spiritually unregenerate and do not adhere to any transcendent divine moral code.  In reality I’ve found atheists to be no less moral than Christians or anyone else. I’ve long noticed that an externally imposed morality–whether the source is religious... Read more

Back in mid-April I was driving in the car and flipped the radio to the local AM Christian station, as I occasionally do.  Generally their programming ranges from prerecorded sermons to shows about parenting and marriage advice to “current events” programs which tend to mirror whatever the latest point of outrage on conservative talk radio is (Liberals! Gays! Intellectuals!).  On this particular afternoon the topic of the show in progress was ISIS (or ISIL or the so-called Islamic State or... Read more

In Asian mythology there are malevolent beings called “hungry ghosts.” Hungry ghosts have huge stomachs, but tiny mouths and throats. As a result, they can never satisfy their immense cravings, and live in continuous torment and rage. Monsters and ghosts, of course, are metaphors for aspects of the human condition. The lesson of the hungry ghosts is that constant craving for more and more and more only leads to one’s own suffering, as the appetites become insatiable. We see this... Read more