A new friend and reader of my blog, The Buddha Diaries, challenged me -- whether consciously or not--to offer my own thoughts on the brouhaha around that "mosque" planned for a location two blocks for the site of the World Trade Center. My friend...

I don't suppose I would have come across this book, had it not been for my son, who sent it to me as a birthday gift. It's called Driftless (the name derives from a peculiar geological area in southwestern Wisconsin which, eons ago, was spared the "drift" of the receding...

In the men's work in which I engaged for many years, we called them "king-killers." These are men--or women, why not?--so consumed by greed or envy, ambition, insecurity or fear of weakness, that they are driven to bring down the one whom they have chosen, or the one who stands...

I don't know about you, but I find that when I make some harsh judgment about another person, I find it useful to remind myself that my judgment usually has more to say about me than about its recipient. If I look at my friend, for example, and judge him...

I wish I felt more inclined to celebrate what all the pundits were noting yesterday: the success of women in Tuesday's political primaries. And I would be celebrating, heartily, if I felt that this success were a harbinger of greater feminine energy in our political life. To judge, at least...

It's no coincidence, surely, given my current activities around the web, that this book should have come into my hands. It's called The Culture of Excess, by the clinical psychologist J. R. Slosar. His subtitle is "How America Lost Self-Control and Why We Need to Redefine Success." Readers of The...

It's a rare pleasure to have a fully satisfying theater experience, and worth celebrating when it happens. Last night, Ellie and I went to see Ed Harris in Wrecks in the Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater at the Geffen Playhouse--a short, 80-minute, one-person performance written and directed by Neil LaBute,...

I've been thinking about greatness. My eye was caught by a headline in Saturday's NY Times Arts section, "Their Goal: To Regain Oscar's Old Luster." And I wondered if that would ever be really possible again. Is it just me, or are even the movie stars smaller than they used...

I obviously did not want to read this book. It first arrived in the mail, as an advance review copy, several months ago, and I...

This might be a good time for those who have not already done so to consider Buddhism. I am no proselytizer of religion, but there is a great deal to be learned from the teachings.

If, as I do, you look around in dismay at the hierarchies that seem to...

I'm reading two books--both advance copies--which are providing some insight into our current situation. The first, The Compassionate Instinct, edited by Dacher Keltner, Jason Marsh and Jeremy Adam Smith, is subtitled "The Science of Human Goodness."

The collection of essays by various scientists includes not only a great deal...

The Novice: Why I Became a Buddhist Monk, Why I Quit, & What I Learned, by Stephen Schettini, Greenleaf Book Group Press

If "The Novice" were fiction, it would be called a Bildungsroman--a novel of education. It's not...

I'm rediscovering the pleasure of holding a nicely-made book in my hands. Most books these days, even the hardcover ones, have a mass-produced feel to them. No matter how well designed they are, how good the "look" of them, the paper feels toothless and the pages are hard to turn,...