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The Guru

Excerpted From Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

People always come to the study of spirituality with some ideas already fixed in their minds of what it is they are going to get and how to deal with the person from whom they think they will get it. The very notion that we will get something from a guru — happiness, peace of mind, wisdom, whatever it is we seek — is one of the most difficult preconceptions of all.

The Turquoise Dragon

Remembering Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (1940-1987)

He was a short man with glasses and a penetrating smile, and a high, almost falsetto voice. He was enamored of Oxford English and taught elocution, after his own comical fashion. (Elocution lessons were given at one o’clock in the morning, before an audience of 400 laughing spectators.)

When Prayer Is Impossible

I show my mercy toward my screaming baby son by cuddling him; Mary shows hers by cuddling him at times, and poking him with that damned needle at other times. My mercy is made only of light; Mary’s is made of light and darkness and so it is larger and encloses mine.

Pacifism Versus Passivism

On Revolutionary Nonviolence

When the court translators working in the hire of King James chose to translate antistenai as “Resist not evil,” they were doing something more than rendering Greek into English. They were translating nonviolent resistance into docility. Jesus did not tell his oppressed hearers not to resist evil. That would have been absurd.

Family Portraits

I am mesmerized by the photograph of my father, staring at me from solemn dark eyes just like mine. He is dressed splendidly in a striped suit and white shoes; I cannot tell the colors of anything else because the faded sepia tones of the photograph reflect only subdued lights and darks. A dandy, my father was, with a handkerchief in his pocket and a flower in his lapel, his dark hair perfectly parted on the side. There is an anger in the way he stands, and a shyness; the look on his face is sullen and inviting.

A History Of The World

One of the fringe benefits of being an English or history teacher is receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. I have pasted together the following “history” of the world from certifiably genuine student bloopers collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eighth grade through college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot.

Our True Nature

On the wooden board outside of the meditation hall in Zen monasteries, there is a four-line inscription. The last line is, “Don’t waste your life.” Our lives are made of days and hours, and each hour is precious. Have we wasted our hours and our days? Are we wasting our lives? These are important questions. Practicing Buddhism is being alive in each moment. When we practice sitting or walking, we have the means to do it perfectly. During the rest of the day, we also practice. It is more difficult, but it is possible. The sitting and the walking must be extended to the non-walking, non-sitting moments of our day. That is the basic principle of meditation.

The Words Left Unsaid

Words alone had not knitted us together; neither could silence tear the fabric. I remember a crisp fall afternoon when I started to tell my mother that I loved her, that seeing her suffer was more pain than I could bear, that — she held out her arms to stop me. “Don’t speak,” she said, “or we’ll both cry.”

Money Versus People

The power that transforms our lives into money is lethal. The whales and redwoods, for example, were gone before the harpoon struck or the ax fell, from the moment they became money. . . . The same with ideas, memories, history, child care, healing, silence, and peace of mind. Capital looked their way; they became dollars and cents.

Bedtime Reading

Soon after I met the man who is now my husband — it was our second date, I think — Peter explained one of his chief requirements in a woman: “Let’s go to the library. We’ve got to be able to read in the same room together.”