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 …
Imagine that you were on the Tropic of Capricorn where it passes through Kruger National Park in South Africa at 12:02 PM South Africa time (2:02 AM PST) on 21 December 2020. Besides the amazing animals, you would see the sun reach its southernmost point and for a brief second it stops directly overhead and …
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 …
Shu-jō mu-hen sei-gan-dō Bon-nō mu-jin sei-gan-dan Ho-mon mu-ryō sei-gan-gaku Butsu-do mu-jō sei-gan-jō Beings are numberless; I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them. Buddha’s way is unsurpassable; I vow to become it. The first time I chanted these lines 12 years …
Continue reading "Beings are numberless, I vow to save them: The 4 Boddhisattva Vows"
https://youtu.be/SvxwTCGBB34 My first Moth Storytelling night in Berkeley on June 6. 2018 on the theme "endings." Stepping up to speak after my name was called, all I knew was my first line. For the Moth you cannot read anything prepared. Your name is picked out of a hat and you come on stage. As I …
Continue reading "Endings: Storytelling at the Berkeley Moth"
Who could imagine that radical behavioral changes required due to the coronavirus would make kissing dangerous and caressing forbidden? Sadly, health professionals have ignored sex and intimacy as they outline the dos and don’ts of our current lives. The implicit message is that we shouldn’t be talking about sex when people are dying. However, that …
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"
It's 3:10 am and I wake by the bell loudly clanging in the hallway. The light switch is flipped on and the room full of men becomes alive. By the time I have rubbed my eyes, stretched on my futon and manage to get up, a full minute has passed. When I finally pull myself …
