Mark Twain got it right. He’d quit smoking hundreds of times. My teacher, Roshi Bernie Glassman, was channeling his inner Twain when he described Enlightenment, the realization and actualization of the oneness of life. Bernie talked about his cigar smoking. He knew all about the Surgeon General’s Warning. He realized that smoking was bad for his health, but he loved his cigars and kept on smoking. There was realization but no actualization. What did I think Bernie was point

What was Roshi Bernie saying when he said that? I hear many people – I think it may be mostly people who didn’t know Bernie – taking it as a license to treat their own opinions as gospel. Almost. What the teacher said is just an opinion, and what I think is just opinion; all opinions are equal; one opinion is as good as another. “Just My Opinion” is a koan which somehow I began working with years before I met Bernie. It was my “boss” koan when I’d first moved into middle ma

When we set out to make peace, we need to bring the other to the table. That’s the first challenge. And often the next question is, “What do I call the other?” It might help to know how the others refer to themselves. But words keep changing. Yesterday’s word may no longer be correct. When I was kid, it was politically correct to refer to “colored people.” The leading civil rights organization was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Then it becam