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,...

In the context of the current health care debate, I note with pleasure that my friend Knute Keeling has written a splendid and timely book. It's called Family Fun and Fitness: Getting Healthy and Staying Healthy -- Together, and its sub-subtitle is Eat Your Best, Be Your Fittest: How...

When Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined this richly associative phrase nearly two centuries ago he was talking, of course, about literature. Specifically, he wanted to justify his love of fantasy, arguing that "human interest and a semblance of truth" would serve to seduce the reader into an imaginative compact with the...

Some good folks have only half-way understood my PO/PO initiative (see prior entry) to be a letter-writing campaign. That's only a part of it. (Do these senators read letters anyway, I wonder?) The more important part, as I envisioned it, was about community action, demonstration, solidarity... Remember "Solidarity"--the movement...

JOIN ME! You've been following the news, as I have. NOW WE MUST DO SOMETHING. Here's my personal intention and commitment. It's quick easy, clean.... YOU CAN DO IT, TOO!

It is now clear that we stand on the brink, ready to shred the last tatters of the great American experiment in democracy. We know from the polls that a huge majority favors serious health care reform, at least one poll suggesting as many as 85 percent. And yet a...

This past Monday was the 30th anniversary of Jimmy Carter's malaise speech. It was this speech in which he -- modestly, but unwisely, as it turned out -- itemized a long list of complaints about his presidency from Americans of all walks of life, who had been invited to...

It occurs to me that our culture doesn't do much to encourage us to respect discipline, much less practice it. We grow up believing it to be the enemy of creativity and an obstruction to our imagined freedoms; and while we grudgingly acknowledge its value -- for others, chiefly! --...

This is the sad--and sadly serious--question I'm asking myself today. Is it time to give up on a political system that is now so irremediably broken that it has become impervious to our needs and irrelevant to our lives? Do we just leave those we elected as our representatives to...

Perhaps I shouldn't have been, but I was frankly surprised by the response to the piece I cross-posted last week from my daily blog, The Buddha Diaries. It was called, if you remember, "When Do We All Grow Up?" and its subject was the kind of foot-stamping impatience with...

(An invitation: in a moment of sudden and inexplicable insanity, I signed up yesterday to Twitter. Let me know if you Twitter too. We could "follow" each other...!)

Okay, I do understand where they're coming from, this growing chorus of liberal critics of Obama. Like them, I'd wish for...

In one corner of my mind, I have been watching the threat of the imminent meltdown of the California economy. What was once amongst the most thriving of states with an enviable infrastructure and an education system to rival any other is now approaching bankruptcy. Our once-vaunted system of schools,...

Those who have taken any interest in Buddhist teachings will already know that there are many different approaches to the dharma. For those who also enjoy the listening experience there is a pleasure in store in the form of a new release from Sounds True, a double CD offering...

Readers of my travelog, England/France, might recall that I had the good fortune to have dinner one evening with the science writer Piers Bizony and his family. After dinner, in his recently-built study behind the house, I was awed by some of the books Bizony has produced about...

I'm flattered that people want to send me their books for the kind of brief, informal comment/response I give to those I like, or those that interest me particularly. I'm especially thrilled when I hear back from an author I have written about. I have been doing this for many...

Thanks to all the galleries mentioned here for the images borrowed from their websites.

It was past time, last weekend, for me to catch up with some of the art galleries in Los Angeles. In addition to my curiosity about the current exhibitions, I had my Art of...

The current spectacle of outrage, skepticism and mistrust amongst Americans is a reminder of a theory I have shared, I know with many others, for quite some time: that we live in an increasingly ungovernable country and an increasingly ungovernable world. We face a frightening prognosis for our future.

It...

I have just returned from a men's training weekend. Okay, I think it's true to say that these weekends have come in for a lot of misinformed rumors and a good bit of nervous mockery in recent years -- particularly amongst those who might have reason to fear them the...

It's becoming increasingly clear from the news of the past week or so that the Republican Party is now the party of Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber (!) and the radical right. It's frightening to see them cling to the old ideas that led them to so clear...