A friend tells a story about people cleaning the kitchen in a monastery. One admonishes the dishwashers, "Remember, these are the Buddha's bowls!" The sensei, walking by at that moment retorts, "They are not the Buddha's bowls! They are the Buddha's flesh!" This speaks volumes about our relationship to what we consider to be "objects" and to the ( Read more... )

Nature/Religion (part 3 ( Read more... )

Nature/Religion (part 2)

[Again, this was written while in Tasmania, so my thoughts reflect my experiences there.]

Our lack of intimacy with each other is in direct proportion to our lack of intimacy with the land…the land is love. Love is what we fear.- Terry Tempest Williams, from The Forests by Matthew Newton and Pete Hay ( Read more... )

Nature/Religion (part 1 ( Read more... )

One More Post ( Read more... )

Tuesday’s Parliament was fantastic ( Read more... )

Encounters with Pagans, Encounters with Self

After being almost overwhelmed at the end of the first day, unable to believe that it had been just one day, there are now only two days left of the Parliament of the World’s Religions ( Read more... )

There is a lot of commentary flying about the internet, and here locally in Australia, on the topic of "why these Pagans?" My first blog post addressed this, but I will briefly speak to it again. If you are not on the scale of someone like the Dalai Lama, you are not "invited" to the Parliament. Everyone else submits program proposals that are ( Read more... )

Hope at the Parliament of the World Religions ( Read more... )

Parliament Day Three, Impressions so far ( Read more... )