Novelist and Storyteller
There is a Chinese Zen kōan, a teaching story about a pilgrimage that I won’t share with you today. If Zen teachers were lawyers, Zen practitioners would be required to sign a release which states that whenever a teacher says they will not do something, it means the opposite, especially if they use words that …
Recently, I rediscovered posts on Facebook about my travels seven months after my partner René Valdes died in February 2012. While I have preserved much of the immediacy of the record, I have used them to explore the universality of grief. desire and wonder that we feel daily in the pandemic. Oh, and that includes …
The title of this essay uses a phrase from Hunter S. Thompson, the self pro-claimed gonzo journalist from the 1960’s and 70’s who wrote about the 1972 Nixon campaign in his book entitled Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. On the day before election day 2020, we have our own version of fear and …
Welcome as we are in another day of our collective sesshin in Northern California. It’s a very special time because we have never tried to have a sesshin with all of the population of Northern California. But with all of us sheltering-in-place in response to the corona virus, here we are. Sesshin is a Zen …
Continue reading "Welcome to Our Collective Retreat (Sesshin)"
Recently, I have been anxious, fearful and angry. How about you? While Covid-19 brought these feelings to the forefront, I realized the cause was something else, old traumas being re-triggered, the trauma of the pandemic—HIV/AIDS—that killed virtually every person affected in its early years. The deaths and illnesses affecting family members and beloved friends. The …
Continue reading "Corona Anxiety, Fear & Anger–How to Calm the Trauma"
Alan Lessik 