From the archives Vol 7, Issue 2, 127-130, Fall 2008. Angels-on-a-Pinhead: History of the Order of Perpetual Indulgence Sr. Soami On Holy Saturday, 1979 I donned a nun’s habit for the first time. With two other ‘gay male nuns’ I sashayed out among the faithfully queer on the Castro and then trekked to the nude beach at […]
Editors
A Member of the Ashé Family
I am saddened to learn of the passing of a member of the Ashé extended family a few weeks ago. Gail Gutradt devoted the past decade of her life working with the orphans at Wat Opot, a refuge for those infected with or orphaned by HIV/AIDS in Cambodia. She wrote of her experience working the […]
Eat Sleep Sit by Kaoru Nonomura
Eat Sleep Sit: My Year at Japan’s Most Rigorous Zen Temple Kaoru Nonomura, Juliet Winters Carpenter (translator) Published in English by Kodansha, 2015 At the beginning of a successful career, the author decided to enter a Buddhist monastery. Putting everything else on hold, he entered the priestly training program of Eihei-ji, Japan’s most famous Soto […]
NOLA Zazen
by Sven Davisson The Zendo near our house in Maine the sound of the han echoes off trees and hill and large rock where Gato-Roshi’s ashes lie. The songs of birds chattering and trilling to each other the mournful coo-ah coo of a pair of doves and the cutting craw of a crow the lone […]
Remind Me
by Sven Davisson Visiting Allen Ginsberg’s Beat snapshots at the National Gallery of Art an unanticipated sadness black crows circle out of mind grainy blackandwhite ghosts of my own childhood the skeleton of time reminds me hours spent discussing Shelley’s ‘Ode to the Westwind’ as breath machine Ozymandias and impermanence Remind me when we meet […]