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    Alan Watts Reconsidered Paid Member

    By David Guy
    At the meditation center where I used to practice, my teacher told a story about a time when he had lived in Korea and studied with a Zen monk. One of the nuns in the community had died, and at her funeral the monk wept uncontrollably and hysterically, in a way that was almost embarrassing. My teacher, relatively new to the practice, was surprised that the man hadn't shown more equanimity, and brought the matter up at an interview. The monk burst into laughter. That nun had been a dear friend of his, he said. They had joined the community at the same time, and he was sad she was gone. He had expressed his grief when he felt it, and now could go on. Liberation wasn't a matter of acting some particular way, but feeling how you felt, whatever the situation. More »
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    Still Speaking Paid Member

    By Robert Aitken
    Students of Zen Buddhism come to me with a variety of "first books" in their past and among them, with some frequency, is Dwight Goddard's durable anthology of translations, A Buddhist Bible, originally published in 1932 and then republished in its present, enlarged form in 1938. More »
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    The Religion of Science: Paul Carus and the "Gospel of Buddha" Paid Member

    By Robert Sharf
    The“Gospel of Buddha”is a relatively small volume of passages culled from the Buddhist canon and arranged, like the biblical gospels, into “chapter and verse.” First published in English in 1894, by the turn of the century this collection was probably the single most popular Buddhist catechism in the world. By 1915 it was in its thirteenth English edition, with versions having appeared in Japanese, Chinese, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Urdu. More »
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    Alexandra David-Niel Paid Member

    Alexandra David-Niel lived 100 years. She was born in France in 1868, the period of la belle epoque, and died there in 1969, soon after the student riots in Paris. In between she spent fourteen years studying Buddhism in Asia and, at the age of 55, became the first Western woman to enter the Tibetan city of Lhasa. It is tempting to think that she was born too soon, but so free and bold a…Alexandra David-N�el lived 100 years. She was born in France in 1868, the period of la belle epoque, and died there in 1969, soon after the student riots in Paris. More »
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    The Sensualist Paid Member

    By Mira Tweti
    While the usually sleepy English village of Chislehurst was being bombarded by German aircraft in the early morning of January 6, 1915, Alan Watts—who was to become one of the foremost interpreters of ancient Eastern wisdom for the modern West—was born to Laurence Wilson Watts and Emily Mary Buchan. The elder Watts was an executive with the Michelin tire company in London, and his wife taught at a local school for daughters of missionaries to China. It was because of his mother that Alan had early exposure to Asian culture, via art and other gifts brought by parents returning from China. A Sinophile all his life, Alan attributed the start of his interest in the writings of Chinese poets and sages to his mother’s gift of a Chinese translation of the New Testament. More »
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    The Bodhisattva of Rock Creek Cemetery Paid Member

    By Henry Whitfield
    But we, who cannot fly the world, must seekTo live two separate lives: one, in the worldWhich we must ever seem to treat as real;The other in ourselves, behind a veilNot to be raised without disturbing both. —Henry Adams, 1891 In the northeastern quadrant of Washington, DC, there is an old cemetery named Rock Creek. The area surrounding it was once an affluent leafy suburb overlooking the often sweltering city, but the neighborhood that now presses at the cemetery’s iron fence is working-class. Behind that fence, for whatever it may be worth to the tenants, a genteel atmosphere endures. Rock Creek’s hundred rolling acres are covered with traditional burial works from the last three centuries - an impressive landscape of obelisks and angels, twining laurel, and weeping willow. More »