Karen Maezen Miller's Blog
December 23, 2009
In a mind clear as still water
even the waves, breaking,
are reflecting its light.
– Dogen Zenji
Merry California Christmas from my shore to your door.
December 22, 2009
"If you don't see the Way you don't see it even as you walk on it." – The Identity of Relative and AbsoluteIn this week of returns and revelations, I'm leaving sand on your doorstep with a few repeat posts. Enjoy your time!
At the risk of shattering all illusions you might have about how a Buddhist priest is supposed to live, I will tell you that I am vacationing with my extended family on a remote, but not too remote, Pacific island. It is not too remote, considering it is the number one...
December 21, 2009
"If you don't see the Way you don't see it even as you walk on it." – The Identity of Relative and AbsoluteIn this week of returns and revelations, I'm leaving sand on your doorstep with a few repeat posts. Enjoy your time!
The sandwiches are packed; the watermelon sliced. Today I take the kids to the beach. It is the one day every summer every year that we do this: at season's end, the four of us, giddy to go, spit-roasted on return. With me: the two teenagers who were once my babysitter's ba...
December 20, 2009
"If you don't see the Way you don't see it even as you walk on it." – The Identity of Relative and Absolute
In this week of returns and revelations, I'm leaving sand on your doorstep with a few repeat posts. Enjoy your time!
We are weekending at a shimmery stretch of coastline known as Crystal Cove. It is one of my husband's most sentimentally favorite places. We spent his 40th birthday here ___ years ago. It was the site of our first family vacation, when Georgia was nine months old, the disb...
December 16, 2009
Christine Mason Miller (Swirly Girl) sent me a surprise package with this deck of inspiration cards. They are exactly what I needed, and I put them in a bowl on the kitchen table where I will choose one each day to forgive myself for the day before.
Last night at my library talk, a woman came in smiling and sat down in the front row. "I am a fan," she said, and my heart unfurled like a welcome mat. Everything went okay after that.
My friend Jim in Mongolia (really, how many people can say that)...
December 14, 2009
I started at 8 a.m. this morning and finished the last load at 5 p.m. Today was laundry day; everyday could be laundry day. And at this dark hour, on this late day of this long year, some things are done but other things are not.The holiday greetings did not get out. This will have to do.
In a few days we leave for a foggy stay at a nearby beach before coming home for Christmas and a breakfast of – naturally – banana pancakes. With that in mind, with you in mind, with everything done and undo...
December 13, 2009
Purchased the Wii she put #1 on her wish list for the last three years now that it has fallen to #2 behind hamster, the kind of retro hamster that – like the two fish, turtle and dog – requires someone's mother to clean and feed it.Encouraged her good dad to buy a little Christmas tree and found out three days later it cost $100.
Coerced my daughter into having a cup of hot cocoa with me at Starbucks despite her protests that, in 70-degree sunshine, she wasn't very cold right now.
Raided her pi...
December 9, 2009
When you're as easily teased by Buddhist discourse as I am, you can see the same arguments over and over. Among the refrains I keep hearing are the ones I call The Biggest Lies in Buddhism.
I'm not a Buddha. You most certainly are; you may not yet realize it. "Buddha" does not equate to an imaginary celestial being but to an awakened one. When human beings live in their natural awakened state, undisturbed by delusive thoughts and emotions, they live as buddhas. Buddhahood is your birthright. Y...
December 8, 2009
I sped read a short story collection last week, Ishiguro's Nocturnes, which I cannot recommend. Despite that, one story in the book stuck. It was about the relationship between a cellist and his musical mentor, a woman who described herself as a virtuoso. The woman gives her protégé weeks of technical and inspirational corrections before revealing that she cannot play a cello herself. "We are both virtuosos," she explained in pitch-perfect logic, "but my virtuosity is unwrapped."An unwrapped ...
December 6, 2009
It was the first time we'd ever ended up at a restaurant solely on the basis of a Google search, and we were the only diners on a Saturday night.Nirvana, the sign outside said.
Customers! the woman in the sari called to her staff as we stepped inside. This was no wannabe in a sari. This woman really belonged in a sari, the lonely hostess in a narrow room of empty tables and chairs. Our hearts were instantly broken, and we bored deep into the menu of unpronounceable names and inscrutable descri...
