So we decided to go out for a birthday dinner for my wife and had chosen Campanile because it is on La Brea, not far from the gallery where we planned to end the festivities of the day. It had been quite some time since we had last eaten...

A post-Christmas drive took us down to San Diego to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art for an exhibition in the Pacific Standard Time series, "Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface" installed at both the downtown gallery and the original MCASD space in La Jolla. A big enthusiast for this...

I have just finished reading Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living, by Allan Lokos, the founder and guiding teacher of the Community Meditation Center in New York City. It's a timely read for a season in which the stresses seem to multiply in direct proportion to the peace and joy...

It's a hectic time for the art enthusiast in Los Angeles. Last weekend, on our return from our travels, we managed to make a jet-lagged visit to Art Platform, only one of the art fairs opening that weekend -- and one of the best such events in memory: a...

In the daily metta practice with which I start my meditation, I reiterate the wish to be free from animosity. It's easy enough when it comes to those I like, and with whom I generally agree; the hard part is with the people I dislike, and those with whom I...

I have been thinking about those dreadful events in Norway and following their aftermath with the same kind of horror I felt when the World Trade Center was attacked, now nearly ten years ago. When you think of it, proportionate to the population, the death toll was even greater for...

I arrived in Southern California in the summer of 1968, in time for the last year of the 1960s decade. A poet, newly appointed to teach Comparative Literature at USC, I'd had little contact with the world of contemporary art -- and therefore no idea at all that I had...

Followers of the contemporary art scene -- and indeed Chicano art enthusiasts everywhere -- will want to hear of this opportunity to come to the support of one of its most important pioneers and practitioners. Gilbert "Magu" Lujan is currently in a life-and-death battle with cancer, and is caught up...

I have been promising an antidote to the bleak view I have been taking of my adopted country in my past few political entries. Here it is, today, in the form of a book review.

The book is called Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost...

First, this is about the saddest must-read that I ever read. Thanks to my friend Michael for having brought it to my attention. Things have to change. We hear the voices of those clamoring for democracy on the streets of the Mideast and we admire their courage. We overlook...

Keith Richards's autobiography, Life, is quite a ride. I'm not, honestly, that familiar with the work of the Rolling Stones, nor with the rock 'n' roll scene in general. I enjoy hearing the band occasionally, when there's one of their more familiar tunes playing on the radio. But I am...

Here's the question: are we returning to the repressive days of Joe McCarthy? I read today in Nicholas D. Kristof's column in The New York Times of the Republican plan for a congressional committee to investigate American Muslims. Like the...

The cover images of Kirk Pedersen's new, handsomely-boxed two-volume photographic publication, Urban Asia and Tradeoffs, from his Urban Asian Series, offer a striking study in contrasts. It's a contrast that suggests the dominant theme of the entire collection: urban Asia as the meeting ground between our global past and...

A reader of The Buddha Diaries raised a provocative and troubling question yesterday in the context of my reluctance to condemn Obama's actions and decisions on the tax bill: "Do you have," he asked, "a line he mustn't cross?" Having given this challenging question a great deal of...