This Is It
and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience

To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening". Recognizing that the experience of presence is the only experience, is also a reminder that our “I” doesn’t exist beyond this present moment - a Paradox. There is n......more

Alan Watts is a cool-down jog for a mind that spends all day racing. Alan Watts is a relaxing soak for a brain that's feeling strained. Alan Watts is a soothing balm for an ego running hot. 3 stars. Some essays here are good, most just fair-to-middling, but all are worth the little bit of time they tak......more

I discovered the book casually placed on a bookshelf in a Hrishikesh cafe and considered it as just-another-rhetoric on living in the present moment. Still I decided to give it a go: the book was thin and I had nothing to do but watch the Ganges flow while sipping my lemon ginger tea. And boy, was I......more

I wasn't raised within a religious tradition. Mother was a member of the Lutheran Church by birth as are all Norwegians unless they sign out of the state religion. Dad, although Norwegian by ancestry, had never had any affiliation with a religious confession, nor had his parents. My brother Fin and......more

I'm so pleased I finally read this pseudo-intro to Zen. It's not comprehensive or a how-to or anything like that. It's more like happening to sit next to someone at a bar who has traveled somewhere you'd like to go. It's casual and approachable, but still serious. It gives you a sense of things and w......more