There is life, and there are thoughts about life. If we see our thoughts as thoughts, we don’t become our thoughts; we recognize that we are different from our thoughts. Thoughts just arise and disappear; we can’t even say they arise within us...
I want to talk about awakening. I want to talk about the kind of awakening that is all around us, that doesn’t require any special effort or activity, the kind of awakening that exists as the inner truth of all living things…of all...
What does it mean to be truly alive? Does it mean to be so busy, frantic, or worried that we cannot enter this moment deeply? Does it mean to be so full of yesterday’s knowledge or tomorrow’s hope that we cannot see the contours of today...
I was on the wrestling team in high school. I wrestled at 123 lbs. My best friend on the team, in fact my best friend throughout the final two years of high school, worked after school and on weekends in his father’s butcher shop. He got me a...
My father worked for a living; he didn’t play for a living. My father died at 53. He died of heart failure. The autopsy revealed that he also had pancreatic cancer, which would have killed him within months. For years, I had watched him...
A few years ago, I took an executive team to the Green Gulch Zen Center in Mill Valley, California for a three-day retreat. Our agenda was to review corporate goals, renew commitments, and strengthen relationships. Well after the first day’s...
When we are visited by an angelic presence, we become attentive for a long while after. Our attention turns towards that wonderment which opens before us in the wake of angels. A new strength and faith is ours. A softness comes into us, as when one...
Each of us, in our own way, is seeking liberation. We want to experience the rapture of reality. We have been taught to pursue this through addition. We want to add happiness, prosperity, love, success. Yet no matter how much we add to ourselves...
Imagine: every company hires a mystic to sit in the executive circle as an advocate of consciousness. His or her role is to enter meditative communion with the source of life, there to dwell and listen to the goings-on in the meetings. The mystic's...
On Christmas Eve, 1995. Susan asked, “A friend called me and said she was going to kill herself. Should I have interfered and tried to stop her, or let her be responsible for her own life? I tried to think about what was right for her.”...


