Hermit’s mortality

In one of her colorful travelogues of early twentieth-century Tibet, Alexandra David-Neel tells of a hermit lama who received a bag of money from a benefactor t...

Koans

Whatever we may think of various ways of reflecting on the future — turning up a card, consulting a celestial chart, or lighting a candle with a prayer &#...

Bears again!

A sure sign of spring around the “Hermitary” is the reemergence of bears, in this case, an adult female and her three cubs. Perhaps this is the same...

Burrough’s chatter

Beat generation writer William Burroughs broke with his compatriots in not being enamored with Buddhism. Burroughs was once persuaded — in 1975 — to...

Silence

The wind blows through the trees from one end of hearing to the other. As suddenly as it blew, the wind abates, and a palpable silence emerges, as if always the...

Illness II

When we are ill, we feel trapped by our body in a rigid zone of pain and malaise. The body which we so carefully cultivate for others and for our vanity betrays...