A Buddhist Appreciation of St Francis of Assisi

October 4, 2024 By James Ford

Many years ago I ran across a book describing a visit to Japan sometime before the second world war. I don’t recall a lot about it. Except, that is, for one thing. The writer described encountering a small Buddhist society whose members were following an adaptation of the rule of St Francis. I’ve long since lost the book and have never been able to find anything else about this little band, almost certainly consumed in the fires of that second... Read more

A Buddhist Reflection on the Great Soul Mohandas Gandhi

October 2, 2024 By James Ford

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The 2nd of October is Bandhi Jayanti in India. It is one of three national holidays in the country. The United Nations has also marked out today as an International Day of Non-Violence. For me an important world spiritual holy day. I try to take time to reflect on Gandhi, the paths of nonviolence, and what it means for me on this day as it rolls around. Sometimes I also recall to share a thought or two here at the... Read more

Of Angels & Devas: Messengers between the worlds

September 29, 2024 By James Ford

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I’m much taken with the feast of Michaelmas, sometimes also called the feasts of the saints Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael. Or, in short the feast of the Archangels. It’s an important holy day in my personal if wildly eclectic spiritual calendar. This festival touches on the liminal. The dream. The miraculous. I don’t note it here on this blog every year as it rolls around, but I do revisit it every few years. An archangel is a chief or principal... Read more

Amazing Grace: A Zen meditation on the Vermillion thread

September 25, 2024 By James Ford

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“Why are perfectly accomplished saints and bodhisattvas still attached to the vermillion thread?” Harada Yasutani Zen tradition, Miscellaneous koans Songyuan Chongyue, who lived through much of the twelfth century and almost a decade into the thirteenth, liked to rub our noses in things. He posits this question about the vermillion thread, the red thread, and it has been gathered as an important early koan in my Zen school. It’s wrapped up with a couple of other questions, one of which... Read more

A Small Zen Appreciation of Hildegard of Bingen

September 17, 2024 By James Ford

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Hildegard of Bingen died on the 17th of September in 1179. Today this day is observed as a feats for one of most interesting and complex individuals in the annals of Christian mysticism. Itself a complex subject. The mystical life is often mixed up. In any number of ways. Hildegard was born in the vicinity of 1098 within our common era to a family of “lower nobility,” within the confines of the Holy Roman Empire in what is today Germany.... Read more

Rings of Fire: A Zen Meditation

September 10, 2024 By James Ford

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Burning burning burning burning O Lord Thou Pluckest me out O Lord thou pluckest T. S. Eliot, the Waste Land Jan and I live in the land of smog and dreams, also known as the Los Angles basin. After a quarter of a century out of state, mostly living in New England, our retirement plan gradually became returning home to California. Specifically to be near Jan’s mom, who lives in Tujunga at the far north eastern edge of the... Read more

Zen’s Precepts and the Dance of an Authentic Life

September 10, 2024 By James Ford

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Among the problems in transmitting Zen along with other Buddhist meditation schools to the west has been frequently the fact it is part of something larger is too often forgotten. Zen, for instance, has three aspects: First, Zazen and koan introspection, the particular kinds of meditation unique to the Zen schools. Along with that there’s also a teaching about awakening, our true home. These two things are attended to, to greater or lesser degree. But then there’s that third thing,... Read more

Wandering Close to Home: Reviewing a new Zen book

September 6, 2024 By James Ford

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I recall the late 1960s when I found my heart calling me to Zen, that there weren’t a lot of books available. Basically there were the works of the scholar D. T Suzuki, important, in many ways, if in some others a bit misleading. He had an Introduction to Zen Buddhism which was translated into English in 1949. Alan Watts wrote a summary appreciation of Suzuki’s contributions, the Way of Zen in 1957. He in fact exaggerated the shortcomings of... Read more

Shinran Sings a Great Mystery

September 3, 2024 By James Ford

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I’ve been thinking a lot about Shinran Shonin of late He was one of those signal figures in the development of Japanese Buddhism. He has been compared to Martin Luther on occasion. Without the bad parts. Shinran was born into Feudal Japanese nobility in 1173. However, like many spiritual figures throughout history he was visited with suffering early in his life. First his father died when he was four, then his mother when he was nine. Driven by grief and... Read more

A small meditation on not knowing as a spiritual discipline

August 25, 2024 By James Ford

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It was on the 25th of August in 1609 that Galileo Galilei revealed his telescope to the leaders of Venice. Much would follow. Among these things a terrible conclusion. In 1633 that Vincenzo Maculani da Firenzuola representing the Holy Office of the Inquisition, declared: “We pronounce, judge, and declare, that you, the said Galileo… have rendered yourself vehemently suspected by this Holy Office of heresy, that is, of having believed and held the doctrine (which is false and contrary to... Read more