Vasavada taught breathing to me as prayer, as clearing, as vision. The popular tonglen practice aside for a moment, Vasavada AND Aunt Edna, both used to say in order to calm oneself: Breathe in blue, breathe out red. In our…

I prefer movies. I prefer cats. I prefer the oaks along the Warta River. I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky. I prefer myself liking people to myself loving mankind. I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.…

I know you’re going to your new love, I see your old white knapsack leaning at the door… your waiting lasso and your saddle outside, and I know, you’ve decided with finality, not to stay with me, not even one…

The Half-Finished Heaven Despondency breaks off its course. Anguish breaks off its course. The vulture breaks off its flight. . The eager light streams out, even the ghosts take a draught. . And our paintings see daylight, our red beasts…

The Answer Then what is the answer?- Not to be deluded by dreams. To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence, and their tyrants come, many times before. When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or…

I sense there is this mystery: All life is being lived. Who is living it, then? Is it the things themselves, or something waiting inside them, like an unplayed melody in a flute? Is it the winds blowing over the…

What if someone said to an embryo in the womb, ‘Outside of your world of black nothing is a miraculously ordered universe; a vast Earth covered with tasty food; mountains, oceans and plains, fragrant orchards and fields full of crops;…

your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is a light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the…

Song of the Builders On a summer morning I sat down on a hillside to think about God – a worthy pastime. Near me, I saw a single cricket; it was moving the grains of the hillside this way and…

“Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go…