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Every Grain Of Sand

The real teaching of the mandala has turned out to be not in its execution but in its . . . execution, its demise, and in how its creators responded to its death.

Forever And A Day

This moment, I realize, with all its ludicrous and painful imperfection, is as perfect as any other. It doesn’t need to be improved; I don’t need to be better.

My Campaign Diary

I run for president the same way. Every few weeks, I go to St. Mark’s Church (a half block from my house), mimeograph leaflets, and stick some in my attache case. Whenever it comes up in a conversation that I’m running for president, I take one out.

An Unbelievable Illness

There’s a lot wrong with me. Researchers in Maryland have cultivated several viruses from my blood and spinal fluid, revealing that those viruses are rampant in my body. My body’s immune system flails away at them without success.

Hella Hammid

I’d asked Hella to send me more photographs. Months later she wrote back, apologizing for the delay. “I have looked death squarely in the face most of last year,” she said. “I have cancer but am fighting it with everything I’ve got. This is why I haven’t come up with new work, but I’ll begin again soon.”

The Door, The Road, And The Zen Teacher

I’m ordinarily unaware that a feeling hangs like a mist around what I see and makes it look the way it does. I’m rarely aware of this because it’s always happening; I’m always looking through filters of feeling just as I’m always looking through the air. Only on rare occasions, when by chance I experience the same object in two very different ways, do I become aware of what my mind is doing.

Fool’s Gold

Why should someone like me worry about the recession as much as I do? I didn’t have any money before it, and I won’t have any money after it. The housing it is now killing me to buy will cost less the next time I have to buy. I have more to gain than to lose.

Delicate Business

One of my patients recently informed me that she had decided to charge for sex. After many affairs with men who had proven untrustworthy, she was abandoning her search for a genuine relationship.

Poor And Poorer

Growing Up In The Projects

The endless rows of cramped units were designed to house the maximum number of people in the smallest, most underdeveloped side of town. Most families were black. There were only two categories — the poor but not yet without hope, and the poor without any hope.

Uncommon Prayer

Toward A New Liturgy

There is something that loves you in the world. The voice that speaks to you within, in the worst despair, is not different from the voice that called the world into being.