We have not seen each other in forty years, but when the package arrived from my childhood friend, Maki, who had found me on Facebook, I had a sense of what it might be: salty, briny, pickled, wrinkled, fragrant Japanese plums, called umeboshi, which her family in...

On the mountain where I live, the weather can be incredibly bipolar, which is great fun. In the winter we get snowed in and in the summer the sun burns us all to hell. A big fan of the “middle way,” though, my favorite time of year is… today, as it turns out: Spring...

‘True generosity arises from the recognition that when we give, we are not losing something, but participating in a flow of generosity that benefits both the giver and the receiver.’ Everyday Buddhism

‘To grasp the significance of pure lands is not to imagine them as distant or fantastical places, but to recognise that they symbolise states of awareness that are available to us here and now.’ Everyday Buddhism

‘When you turn within and drop off everything completely, realisation occurs.’ Hongzhi Zhengjue

‘Enlightenment, as described in the Diamond Sutra, is not a goal to be attained, nor a treasure to be claimed. It is the dropping away of delusion, the recognition of what has always been.’ Everyday Buddhism