Zen Wisdom for Your Everyday Life

Send us Fan Mail Where is God when I need Him?? This cry is heard so loudly these days and during times of trouble. Let's explore the feelings of abandonment, loss and the confusion we experience as things seem to go out of control. There is a secret answer which is here right where we stand and live. Especially at the kitchen table.  The problem is not that God is absent, it is us. We are no...

Send us Fan Mail So many phrases we use are routine, casual, empty comments to daily questions. For example, how are you today? How's it going? Fine, fine. Really? How's what going? Nothing has really been asked, and no answer given. We hide behind words, slogans, easy responses, use them as a way to get by, to be accepted or admired. In this way we create our own confusion and rip the m...

Send us Fan Mail Everyone wonders where to go, how to get to our destination. We try to figure out all the twists and turns in the road. So often there's a fork in the road, or our journey is not what we expected. As we figure out what to do, we lose touch with the very step itself. We're not right here experiencing the step, or moment, fully. Instead most of us is engaged in figuring ou...

Send us Fan Mail In the midst of the chaos we are going through, it seems we've left sanity far behind and it will be so difficult to return to it.  Living in a world with mixed messages, confusion and emotions flaring high we wonder if we will ever find the road to clarity, and simple moments of joy. The truth is that sanity is right here, all the time, impossible to avoid. Unless we turn aw...

Send us Fan Mail In these enormously difficult time the first thing we ask is Where Has God Gone? Endless prayers are offered, vigils and all of us instinctively turn to the divine at a time like this. In fact, God has not gone anywhere. He/she is right here, always available and present. Right Where We Are. Actually it is said that "We Are the Temple of The Living God," and therefore wh...

Send us Fan Mail In order to break out of the spell of fear, it's necessary to learn more about fear, meet it face to face.  We are all senior to fear, there is no need to get caught in the great undertow it brings and lose our clarity and mobility. Fear never keeps us safe, it does just the opposite, creates confusion, obstruction and illusion. Divides friends and also leaves us helpless wit...

Send us Fan Mail The Journey to Safety begins with our ability to dismantle fear. This episode describes the nature of fear, and our ability to see through it, on our journey to the natural safety that we are. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail We love to make our lives more and more complicated, fill them with "problems and fears" and then spend the entire day trying to find solutions. At the end of the day, tied up in knots, we wonder what we've gained. Actually, we have not gained anything, but lost the strength, power and beauty  a simple, natural day can bring. We have grown out of touch with the natu...

Send us Fan Mail We spend so much time waiting for things to turn out as we want them to. There is a constant demand made upon life that it fulfill "my" wishes... And when it doesn't, when something unexpected or unwanted wanted happens, we start to fight it, try to change it, feel like failures.  Then we spend endless time trying to figure out what things turned out that way. Of co...

Send us Fan Mail Devotion is an odd word these days when change and variety have become something many strive for. But even when we go from one experience and project to another,  a deeper sense of satisfaction and fulfillment are often missing. The power of devotion is different. When devoted to a person, cause, vision or activity not only are we committed, but enjoy the love that devotion brings...

Send us Fan Mail The world seems upside down today. The lines between sanity and madness are blurry and many feel anxious and confused. And, all the while harmony, clarity and even joy are right here with us. It is not difficult to step out of the world of madness, can be done, breath by breath. The path to sanity is right where we are every single moment, and we can walk on it in ease. There&apos...

Send us Fan Mail Usually whatever happens we want to change it, fix it, do something about it. We want to control our experience, take charge and even dominate it. When we react in this manner, we are always looking for what's wrong. Our day becomes a battle between one problem and another. Rather than just "allowing" the day to appear as it does, for experiences to come and go, eve...

Send us Fan Mail So often we go searching wildly  for something we think we lack. Suddenly, we want it badly, and we'll do everything we can to find it, look everywhere. Hours can go by as we engage in the search,  even days.  Perhaps we are reading a book and an idea hits us. We feel we must know more, find another book with more information about it.  Swept away in the search it is easy to...

Send us Fan Mail We all believe we are outside, looking in.  There's a sense of separation from what  that which we want to belong to. We have to earn admittance, be approved of, or struggle hard to join in. But our Zen practice tells us that we are already part of life, on the inside. We all belong. Once this false sense of separation and  unworthiness dissolves we can live freely and be who...

Send us Fan Mail It's impossible for the Truth or Reality to be hidden or hide forever. For a certain period of time we can run from it, pretend things are different than they are. We can live in dreams or fantasies, or try to explain everything that goes on.  Sooner or later, though, the bare truth of our lives appears. For some this is shocking, hard to absorb. For others, it is a great rel...

Send us Fan Mail We usually think that life (and practice) must be filled with suffering, struggle and strain.  There is so much we must do, and so little time to do it. And, what if the opposite is true? There is so little to do and endless time to enjoy each moment, person and day.  What if all was already done and here for us to enjoy it?  When we enter the true spirit of Zen, and of the flowin...

Send us Fan Mail We all long to be unshakeable during a time of shaking and change. The search goes on endlessly for a place we can stand firmly, something we can trust and depend on to navigate through uncertain times.  It is natural to run here and there trying to find a safe and sturdy place. Where we belong. Yet, the unexpected truth is,  the more we search, the shakier we become. That is beca...

Send us Fan Mail So many of us feel stuck, unable to move on. We are clinging to the way things used to be or the way we feel we need things to be in order to move on. Somehow we have not realized that we are only clinging to a dream. Each moment must be different, life is a process of endless change. And that is beautiful, giving us room to to live anew, again and again.  Rather than fear change,...

Send us Fan Mail On Independence Day, a celebration of freedom, it is crucial to see that we are all intrinsically free. We are alive, awake, breathing.  We come to this life with all we need to sing,  love, give, thrive in everyway. And yet we suffer greatly, ruled by the idea that we are bound, enslaved, harmed and victimized wherever we go. We believe that we must go through life suffering, rej...

Send us Fan Mail We often long for wisdom to get through our lives. It seems as if there is something missing in ourselves and we must find the answer somehow. This feeling drives us to search all over, in books, people, news. We constantly compare ourselves to others, and find outselves lacking. Or we idealize others, and feel deeply hurt and betrayed when they do not live up to our images of who...

Send us Fan Mail We all believe that we are bound by external forces, relationships, circumstances and situations of all kinds.  However, the truth is that we are only in bondage to our confusion, our lack of understanding of the simple laws of love. Once we discover the difference between real and counterfeit love, we can easily see that all our pain comes from living in Counterfeit Love. Living...

Send us Fan Mail We're all so busy trying to accomplish this and that, and figure out what must be done next. Seems it's never enough.  Swept up in the rush of activities and and demands of our conditioned mind, it's rare to pause and notice what's the most important thing. where are we headed.  We rarely wonder why the rush, or why we must listen to the mad mind within that en...

Send us Fan Mail So many of us become distraught, thinking that life is brief and that we must hold onto what we have strongly. The fear of loss and change, along with a sense of failure can haunt our entire lives. It seems as if we've missed the mark, as life keeps turning around and aruond and we cannot control any of it. What we do not realize is that everything is already here. Everything...

Send us Fan Mail Our lives are often a frantic search to find and reach our destination. We take one road after another in search of where we want to go and where we think we belong. We also demand that our relationships lead to our destination, to what we want to receive and to be. When one road or relationship fails us, we quickly search for the next.  And then the next. It is often impossible t...

Send us Fan Mail An epidemic of isolation and loneliness is sprouting up all over the world. A sense of separation, along with division and fear has taken hold. It certainly seems as if this is understandable. And yet what is not so obvious, is that fundamentally, it is impossible to be truly alone. We are all incredible united, connected and living in one another's hearts. And what is crucia...