My posts are personal reflections on being mindful, inspired and curious.
Letters swallow themselves in seconds. Notes friends tied to the doorknob, transparent scarlet paper sizzle like moth wings, marry the air. So much of any year is flammable, lists of vegetables, partial poems. Orange swirling flame of days, so little is a stone. Where there was something and suddenly isn’t, an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a
“Sometimes you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy. Your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill, utterly out of control and hopeless.” Bhante Gunaratana. Journal from Provence – Most of the past 4 days have been exhausting. I’ve been
“I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine.” Caskie Stinnett For some inexplicable reason I have always been fascinated by the curious relationship between Eleanor of Aquitaine and one of her five sons, Richard the Lionheart. So when the opportunity arose to write an article for France Today magazine on the
Pont au Change “It is not everyday the world arranges itself into a poem.” Wallace Stevens The comedian George Carlin said, “Kilometers are shorter than miles, so to save gas, take your next trip in kilometers.” This is exactly what my friend Barbara and I did. We are both curious by nature and were looking for an
A human being is part of the whole called by us, Universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience our self, our thoughts, and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison restricting us to our personal desires and affection
“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” Susan Sontag On an unseasonably warm Sunday morning I took a drive through the southwestern French countryside around my home in the Gers, départment 32, the heart of Gascony where all roads feel like back roads. At this early hour they were virtually empty. In this
“The deep and active care for the planet comes through experiences of beauty.” Charles Eisenstein My excitement is always palpable as I drive along the remote, untraveled roads of the southwestern French countryside into the heart of Gascony, down narrow, tree-lined lanes, through villages shrouded in mystery. Over many years I have followed a sentimental
Each of us arrives on the doorstep of spiritual practice from different paths. When I first encountered Buddhism in the 1970s, I was particularly drawn to the the idea of finding my self. Both Eastern and Western traditions offered prayer, meditation, mantras, service, devotion to guru or god that shifted the attention to the universal in
“Happiness is one of the only things we can give without having.” A Basque Proverb “My world, my Earth is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and gobbled and fought until there was nothing left, and then we died. We controlled neither appetite nor violence; we did not adapt. We
