Freedom – Tracy Cochran

Angry Ghosts

Image from a Japanese scroll which describes the realm of the hungry ghosts and how to placate them. Currently housed at the Kyoto National Museum, artist unknown.

One night when my mother was a little girl growing up in the panhandle of western Nebraska, she was driving with her father when she saw, far off in the plains, a cross burning in the middle of a circle of Klu Klux Klansmen. The sight filled her with terror. Her parents came from DenmarkContinue reading “Angry Ghosts”

Getting Unstuck

In Dante’s Inferno, Satan, denizen of the deepest hell, is found frozen in a block of ice, utterly unable to move. The baddest being ever ends up being the most stuck. It seems like such a paradox. The beautiful angel Lucifer, son of the Morning Star, who led a revolt against God and fell fromContinue reading “Getting Unstuck”

A New Old Flame

I’ve heard Buddhist teachers explain rebirth by asking them to picture a candle being lit from a dying flame. Something carries on, but what? It isn’t one small flame hopping from one wick to the next. Trungpa told people it was their neurosis, their unwholesome tendencies that carried on. Doesn’t that send a shiver? Continue reading “A New Old Flame”