Madame de Salzmann and Gurdjieff

Meryl Streep Sutra

On Saturday, I raced from a Buddhist monastery to see Meryl Streep in her landmark portrayal of the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. How could I have guessed that these wildly disparate activities would go so well together? I presented the scholar monk Bhikkhu Bodhi with copies of Parabola’s gorgeous new “Burning World” issue,Continue reading “Meryl Streep Sutra”

Jane Eyre Sutta #2

What does it take to fully awaken, to open up and receive life– to really see and hear and life beyond the usual limitations imposed by our fearful little “I”? What if all we want is to be able to concentrate a bit better on the task in front of us, to be able toContinue reading “Jane Eyre Sutta #2”

Make-believe Animal

“Man is a make-believe animal,” wrote William Hazlitt. “He is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.” I am looking out at a white world through window framed with the uneven spikes of ice cycles.”What are these daggers I see before me?” I’m moving from Hazlitt to Macbeth because of the daggersContinue reading “Make-believe Animal”

The Three Spirits

“We need to see that there is no ‘thinker,’ that this imagined ‘I’ which thinks ‘me’ and ‘mine’ is simply an illusion.” writes Jeanne de Salzmann in The Reality of Being. “In order for us to receive truth, this must be dispelled, as well as all the other illusions of the thinking, including those behindContinue reading “The Three Spirits”

Back to Lascaux

In the current “Love” issue of Parabola, I interview David Rome, a senior fellow at the Garrison Institute who served as the personal secretary of the great Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche for nine years. Rome even took down the poetry that Trungpa spontaneously dictated and worked with him to edit it. This provedContinue reading “Back to Lascaux”

Back to the Jungle

Much has been written about how the film Avatar was made–how it took five years and thousands of people and $300 million. Much has been written about how enchanting it looks. Vatican Radio said “really never before have such surprising images been seen.” L’Osservatore Romanos, the newspaper of the Holy See, commented: “So much stupefying,Continue reading “Back to the Jungle”