Rev. Danny Fisher

I was just checking my spam filter and noticed an email from a fellow named Richard, who was inquiring about Zen centers in the New Haven area. I then inadvertently selected “delete forever,” losing Richard’s message and with it his email address.

Richard, if you’re reading, there is one Zen center in New Haven: the Zen Center of New Haven, which is in the Kwan Um tradition of Master Seung Sahn. Good luck!

Via theworsthorse.net: horsefeed:

Stephen Hadley currently serves as the Bush Administration’s National Security Advisor. I might forgive one slip, but that he repeatedly says “Nepal” instead of “Tibet” in this television appearance seems to me cause for concern. (And where was host George Stephanopoulos with a correction?!)

Thanks to Sujatin for this:

“When people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they’re going to improve, which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are. It’s a bit like saying, ‘If I jog, I’ll be a much better person.’ ‘If I could only get a nicer house, I’d be a better person.’ ‘If I could meditate and calm down, I’d be a better person’… But loving-kindness–maitri–toward ourselves doesn’t mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change ourselves. Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s the ground, that’s what we study, that’s what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.”
- from The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Lovingkindness by Acharya Ani Pema Chödrön