The biopsy is today. My anxiety has been hitting pre-dawn. I’ve learned to breathe through it, just focusing on my breath, inhaling, deep breaths, shallow breaths. Mostly, I’m amazed, I fall back to sleep.   Two weeks ago, I hadn’t expected this anxiety. Then I stopped joking about my two new specialists, my urologist and my neurologist. I got past my neurology scare, made it through two PET scans, came out clean, exhaled, and slept well one night. Then I began worrying about

For a while, I thought it was a joke, my new specialists. I’ve been telling people for years that I began this period in my life when I acquired my cardiologist. It’s more than 15 years now. I picked up Dr. Gala at the time that I had my carotid artery rotorootered. That surgery was fortuitous, the result of an incidental finding. If I hadn’t had the surgery then, I would have stroked within six months, maybe died. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster since – four stents and on

“Doing good for Others” was always my strong suit. It was my birthright.  I was a social activist, diving into Zen in search of inner peace. I was relieved when Bernie said I didn’t have to put my activism on hold while I worked toward enlightenment. “In some traditions, one goes up the mountain (to enlightenment) before starting down the mountain (to do good for others). In our way, we go up and down the mountain at the same time.” It was one of Bernie’s most important teach

Things don’t always work out the way we’d hoped. It’s part of life. We’re all dealing with disappointments. If we do creative work, disappointment comes with the turf. Early in my professional career, I learned one way to deal this. I was intent on getting articles into professional journals – social work and mental health – when one was rejected by Hospital & Community Psychiatry . This wasn’t an everyday, polite rejection. It came with blind-reviewer comments, one of whom a

I still have a problem. How do I go beyond the first-do-no-harm practice of the Day of Reflection ? What about the other sources of suffering in our lives? What about the trauma in our lives? There can be no end to our suffering without becoming one with these as well.   In our revised version of the Gatha of Atonement , I am vowing to be one with all the ingredients of my life, not just the jagged karma I’ve created. And yet the Day of Reflection  practices work only with th

A winter storm is coming. Heavy snow. Cold, cold for New York. The city is sending out warnings. Be prepared. Especially old people. You didn’t need to remind me. I can feel it. We live in an old house, have lived here over thirty years. Old pipes. Once, years ago, the pipes in the kitchen froze, burst. What a mess. We had an electric heater installed and haven’t had a problem since, but still we worry. They’re predicting a foot of snow – a lot for New York – and anticipatin

Want to put an end to the suffering in your life? The Buddha pointed to a path. He had an idea on how to get there. Coming back to the Day of Reflection liturgy, reading it as if for the first time, I am startled. The Precepts are guideposts on the path to peace. Not just the Grave Prohibitory Precepts: there were also the Three Pure Precepts.   The first Pure Precept is traditionally translated, “Cease from Evil.” I prefer the Hippocratic formula, “First, do no harm.” I rec

Between a rock and a hard place? We’ve all been there. What do you do? There’s a Zen koan which really ups the ante:   You’re a Zen teacher and you’re up in a tree, hanging from a branch with your teeth. You can’t reach a branch with your hands or feet. A student appears below and asks, “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the West?”  Scary situation? Some koans are even scarier. Sometimes there are lions or wolves at the bottom of the tree waiting to devour me i

Bernie taught me to use all the ingredients of my life to prepare what he called the “supreme meal.” We don’t use every ingredient in every recipe – we’re not emptying the spice shelf into every pot – but all the ingredients have value. Each one is there to be appreciated and used. This teaching came up for me as I looked at the first words of the Gatha of Atonement , “All evil karma.” Why just the evil karma? Why not all the ingredients of my life?   “Evil” was never the rig

I have been listening to Bruce Springsteen’s song , feeling the anger. I’m grateful that he’s putting it out there. I can see it in his face, hear it in his voice. Should I be out there on the streets? I’d heard the call for clergy to come Minnesota to bear witness. I’m still a Zen Buddhist priest although rarely play the role. It’s been years since I’ve donned my robes. I tell myself I’m too old for the streets. Should I have gone? Cancelled my doctors’ appointments? Can I s

One of my great joys in growing older has been the joy of rediscovery. Sometimes it’s the joy of a song I haven’t heard in years, singing forgotten words with Dee on a road trip. Sometimes, it’s coming back to novel I haven’t opened in years and finding that I don’t remember it at all. I’m reading it for the first time. Sometimes, it’s studying some piece of Zen with students and realizing how much I’d missed on previous visits.   The rediscovery of the Gatha of Atonement  ha

Growing up, I resented my mother’s anxiety. I could feel it weighing on me, but I thought Aunt Tess’s story was funny. Aunt Tess – preparing to marry Uncle Nat, Mom’s adored, older brother – wanted Mom to feel she was gaining a sister. She invited Mom to lunch at Schrafft’s in Manhattan. That was a big deal, but Mom cancelled because it was raining. Mom didn’t like the rain. Aunt Tess thought it was hysterical and told the story many times. I’m still working on walking in the

I promised to try to say something about the Oneness of Life.   When asked what enlightenment was, my teacher, Bernie, always said it was “the realization and actualization of the Oneness of Life.” Realization was knowing that smoking was bad for your health; actualization was stopping smoking. Whenever he talked about the Oneness of Life, Bernie used the metaphor of the one body. We are all part of one body, like the right hand and the left hand. Intellectually, I understood

Remember, last time we were talking about worries and came up to the fears that lie beneath them. When we shed the stories which cloak our fears, we get behind the worries. We get to the bedrock. Sound easy? It takes practice. We are so addicted to our stories. We often have to keep asking, What am I really afraid of it? What’s really scaring me?   With practice, we get there. Fear. Now what? How do we work with the fear? A few years ago, I found a way. I picked up a Tibetan

I hate worrying. For years, many of my worries were work challenges, which always seemed to hang over me. One work life solution was, “Do it now.” Facing a crisis in our schools, my go-to was, “Let’s meet now.” To schedule the meeting for next week meant worry for a week. Meet now. Come up with a plan. Do it. Now. No worry. I had another work trick, for the worries that sat on my to-do list – the nagging worries that could sit there for weeks –poking at me as I tried to fall

Remember Achilles, the Greek hero who, according to Zeno, couldn’t pass a tortoise. Achilles was fast. He cut the tortoise’ lead in half and in half again and again, but he could never pass the tortoise. Zeno was showing me the “infinitesimally small.” It was a lesson I never forgot.   Zen teachers are more complicated than tortoises. On the one hand, you have to pass them, to go beyond. It is the fundamental challenge of teacher succession. As spiritual practice moves throug

Over the years, I came to see Bernie’s imperfections as his greatest gift. It was through accepting, coming to terms with, appreciating his imperfections that I was able to make some peace with my own. Where would I have been, where would I be now, if Bernie had been “perfect”? It wasn’t that Bernie was always acknowledging his imperfections, not really. But he wasn’t hiding them. That was gift enough. I could see them – maybe most of his students saw them – and they were par

When Jishu said, “There are no perfect teachers outside, I have a perfect teacher inside,” I was very happy for her. I felt that she was signaling the shift that had taken place in her relationship to Bernie as her teacher. She was telling me that Bernie wasn’t the perfect teacher. Intellectually, I understood Jishu’s point. I thought what she was saying was brilliant. I quoted Jishu and continued to quote her all these years since her passing.   But her point was lost on me.

What a gift, to be able to share some of what I’ve been given in my life with others. The Zen Peacemakers have been giving me a chance to share some of the gifts from my teachers. Next up, the Zen Precepts.   The Precepts, the Buddhist guides to ethical conduct, could easily have scared me off. I came to precepts with the Ten Commandments in my head. Although the Commandments were not part of my atheist family culture, they were there in the mid-20th century American air of m

Okay, so it’s difficult. I have a lot on my plate. Even retired, there’s family, and Zen students, and doctors’ appointments. I have my writing. How much time do I have for meditation or prayer or chanting?   I’ve been answering that question for a long time now, for myself, for others. A half hour a day is enough. For most of us. Most days. Not every day. There are days, I learned early in my practice, when I am just as agitated after a half hour on my cushion as I was when

It turned out that I was a late bloomer. That’s not the way I wanted it. I wanted to be a prodigy. My father was impressed with Mozart’s genius. There was a family story I grew up with. I was maybe two years old, and my grandpa, my father’s father, was dying. He was lying in a bed in my aunt’s living room, and I was playing with my baby puzzles – puzzles with only five or six pieces – on the floor. I dumped three puzzles out at once, mixed them around, and then assembled them

Do I sit enough? How much time do I spend meditating? How much time will I spend on my spiritual practice? I’m thinking “meditation,” but I could as well be thinking about prayer or chanting, any of the many ways of spiritual expression. It’s a complicated question for me with ragged roots stretching back to the Buddha’s day. The early accounts of the Buddha’s sermons always describe the audience, always make explicit the presence of monks and nuns, laymen and laywomen. The s

Someone told me that we’re dying from the moment we’re born. I understand what they’re saying, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. If you tell me though that we’re getting older, even aging, from day one, that I can accept.   I began to see the first signs of aging when I was in my twenties. I couldn’t drink the way I used to. I went to a tiny college in Minnesota where alcohol was still the only drug. We all drank. By clinical standards – I learned this soon after in social

My 83 rd birthday was approaching when I noticed that I wasn’t smiling. At least not as much. I was surprised at first. Smiling’s the practice I resisted. Hokey. Bogus. Smiling was Thich Nhat Hanh’s idea. Reminded me of the elementary school cliches. “Smile and the world smiles with you.”  “Let a smile be your umbrella.” “When you walk through a storm.” Thay said, “Smile,” and I said, “Bullshit.” No way I was going to sit on my cushion smiling. I was intense about righting s

You’re telling me you have no time for spiritual practice. Otherwise, you’d give Zen a try. No time for prayer. Not even thirty minutes a day. Sit with that awareness. How unimportant you make yourself. It’s time for a change.   I don’t remember now who turned me on to Cardinal Bernardin’s Gift of Peace , but it must have been shortly after its publication in 1997. For me, his most powerful teaching was the observation that, when you really need it, it’s too late to develop a

It’s only now – in my second “retirement” – that I am actually stepping back, and that is taking much more getting used to than I’d expected. This is a real shift.   My old sociology teacher, Alan Blum, wrote an article years ago about social problems. I was a social worker getting a doctorate in sociology, so this was a paper that spoke to me. “What is a social problem?” Alan asked. He answered that a social problem was something that somebody had better do something about.

I was always connected to my father. Maybe it was the magic of birthdays on adjacent days. When I was little, the connection was tactile. My favorite game was, “Wonder what I am.” I would crawl under his pillow while he was lying on his back in bed and pretend I was an animal. Maybe a hippopotamus. “Wonder what I am.” Daddy would have to guess. Daddy would tell me stories. When I was really little, his stories were about a Christopher Robin-like kid named Kenneth. My favorite

What does it mean to retire? For a long time, it meant collecting a pension.   I was introduced to retirement by New York State. I was only 57, but the State was into cutting costs, and offering early retirement to senior staff could save money. The offer came at a fortuitous time for me. Morri was only a year and half then, and I figured I had another twenty years to work before she graduated from college. The State mental health system wasn’t the same place it had been when

Last week when I was working on my Thanksgiving blog, I was reminded of how wonderful thank-you practice can be. It brought me back to my grand jury experience, my first and probably my last time on a grand jury: I think I’ve aged out of jury duty. I picked up this thank-you practice from my fellow jurors. We were on duty, as I recall, three days a week for a month. Although there was also a lot of downtime between cases for charter school paperwork, we heard case after case,

What’s my problem with Thanksgiving? It’s not that I’m cynical although I smile when I think about Macy’s inventing the holiday to kick off the Christmas shopping season. And it’s not that I’m against saying thanks. I always loved the idea of the Pilgrims thanking the indigenous folks for helping them through their first winter at Plymouth. As far as I’m concerned, Thanksgiving would have been a better choice for Indigenous People’s Day. “Thank you” can be a great practice, a

We put a name on something, and we imagine that we know what we’re talking about. “What’s the Label?” was Bernie ’s Ox Curriculum probe as Jishu led us into the fourth skandha. The skandhas, you’ll recall, are the stuff – sometimes translated as “aggregates” or “conditions” – from which, according to Buddhist psychology, we construct our experience. In the Heart Sutra , the fourth skandha is “reaction.” What’s the label that we put on the moment? What do I call this? “Writin

Do we all need companions to share our journey? I certainly do. My writing life is lonely. I don’t have many friends with whom to talk about my writing practice.. Mostly Morri, but she’s busy, and this year she’s at Boston University in their creative writing masters. She has plenty of sangha there.   I find my sangha, my companions on the way, in books. These days it’s Rick Rubin . My friend Ed Wiseman, a wonderful filmmaker, gave me the book. I’m on my third read-through. S

As a Zen teacher, I have little tolerance for student philosophizing. Perhaps it’s because I’m a recovering wannabe philosopher. My dad looked up to intellectuals and was an intellectual himself, the real McCoy, the working-class intellectual. Philosophers were the crème de la crème of intellectuals. In college, I minored in philosophy. I might have majored in philosophy if it wasn’t for my meeting with department chair, Martin Eshelman.   Eshelman was excited that I was cons

As a Zen teacher, I have little tolerance for student philosophizing. I tell them, “It’s not that I have anything against philosophy, it’s just a different practice than Zen.” To study with me is to study Zen, and as Dogen said – not his exact words – to study Zen is to study the self.   I have a warm spot in my heart for Diane Shainberg. She died much too early. It was Diane who sent me to Bernie . I met her when she spoke about spirituality and psychotherapy to our Staten I

“We’re growing old together.” Dee prefers her parents’ happy line, “We’re buckaroos.” I like that too, but I marvel at how long we’ve been together. And still there is the surprise of novelty. One of us is sharing a childhood memory and the other is awed. “I can’t believe I’ve never heard that story before.”   Time has slowed. Each day is precious. “How long will it last?” We worry about each other’s health, take care of each other, get each other out for walks and doctors’ a

In my days of formal koan study, when I was traveling early mornings before work to meet with Roshi Bob  in Jersey City, koan study followed a prescribed order. We began with The Gateless Gate  and worked our way from first koan to last, one after the other. We did the next three koan books in the same way, very orderly, very systematically, from first koan to last. It never occurred to question the order of things. It was just the way it was done. “Hyakujo and the Fox” was t

We’ve arrived. Tomorrow is Bernie ’s memorial day, and we’ve been remembering some of his social entrepreneurship teachings. We built an amazing network of schools inspired by Bernie’s Greyston practice, although our school network didn’t outwardly look like Bernie’s Greyston. They had different motive energies – Bernie’s was homelessness; mine was the stigma and discrimination faced by people living with mental illnesses – and they took different organizational forms.   My l

Remembering Bernie , I’m remembering the learning that he inspired. This is the third in this year’s memorial reflections.   Maybe the big step is from a single bottom line to the “double bottom line.” It loosens us up to realize that there’s more than one way to measure success, more than one measure to take into account. Bernie loosened me. Having opened to the importance of profit, opening to the third bottom line was undoubtedly easier. Still, it was hard. As we wrote our

This is the second installment in this year’s Bernie memorial series. Remembering Bernie, the lessons of social entrepreneurship are so fresh. Approaching “the double bottom line,” profit and social benefit, most business people struggle with “doing good for others.” My journey took me in the opposite direction. Profit, the traditional first bottom line of business, was hardly on my radar until we were about to open our first school. That was the moment when a friendly autho

We are less than two weeks from Bernie ’s memorial. It will be seven years that he’s gone, a long time and no time at all. Planning for this year’s remembering, we’ve been talking about Bernie the Social Entrepreneur and looking at some of the old videos. Old lessons have come back to me.   By the time, I met him, Bernie was already quite the social entrepreneur, embracing business as a vehicle for doing good for others. The Greyston Bakery was a flourishing enterprise – they

It’s my Hamlet koan, found of all places, in two books resting on my shelf. We find our koans, those apparent paradoxes to which we return again and again as we work to free ourselves from our conditioning, in the strangest places. I found many of my koans, plowing through the 300-odd in four hallowed collections with Roshi Bob . I found some in lines of liturgy which is not surprising. Others I found in unexpected places. Here’s one I found by putting together two book title

We talked last time about the practice of creating art. Today, we get to the related but distinct practice of putting it out there, offering it to the world, letting the world reject it. Getting into the world of fiction last year, I discovered how impersonal the world had become since I was in high school. I think it was poetry that I was sending out in those days, not sure about that, but I do remember my rejection slips, frequently personal, often handwritten. They may st

One practice is creating art. Another practice is putting it out there. They’re both hard for me. Let’s talk about creating art first....

Earlier this week, I made a case for a 6 th  Buddha family. Remember? Bernie and Jishu showed me a way of using the Buddha families as a mirror, increasing my awareness of where my time and energy were going. To the five families as Bernie picked them up from the Vajrayana tradition, Buddha – spirituality, Vajra – study, Ratna – livelihood, Padma – community, and Karma – social action, I proposed adding Wellness. For me and for the people in my life, it’s important to make

The Five Buddha Families were one of Bernie ’s touchstones, one of the Vajrayana teachings he was happy to incorporate into his Zen. He used the five families as a framework for organizational structure in the Greyston mandala and in the Zen Peacemakers. He used them as a framework for presentation in Instructions to the Cook . Jishu showed me how to  use them as a framework for looking at the aspects of my life: Buddha – spirituality, Vajra – study, Ratna – livelihood, Padm

Bernie , who was then living in California, sent me to Bob  to do Koan study when our attempt via email failed. Koan study was a...

At our recent lunch, Bob  shared a memory from one of Bernie’s Year-Beginning Zen gatherings, a sesshin at Litchfield. I was there, I...

This is the fourth in our series of meanderings from space through place to legacy. It has been thirty years since Bernie gave me my...

This is the third part of our meandering from space through place to legacy. Last time, we played with the demon of place. Today we have...

This is the second of a four-part meandering from space through place to legacy. Michel was right. Part of what we do as Zen teachers is...