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At 9:30pm on any given Tuesday night, what I’d really like to do most in the world is watch just one more episode of House or Six Feet Under. However, lately I’ve been trying my very best to restrain myself. While the idea of Hugh Laurie in all his sexy scruffy limping genius being the…

One of my favorite ideas from Buddhist psychology has always been the “near-enemy.” The idea of the “near-enemy” is that for every beneficial habit or more enlightened quality that we might develop in our mind, there is a devious, and highly intelligent version of confusion which tries to masquerade very closely as the positive trait.

Image by Artist/Musician Kevin Bewersdorf. (click for a larger version).  He is also is a contributor to the Spirit Surfers, a group blog that is a collection of abstract digital collages which use the internet as source material.  I’m a fan.

A guest post by Damaris Williams. On February 6, IDP premiered its first Salon night, featuring a showing of the Dhamma Brothers film. I quickly asked Ethan if I could write something about it. I hadn’t seen the movie, but I knew I could easily relate to those men in prison. I had grown up…

I am interested in how emptiness shows up in Western culture, particularly in poetry, philosophy and music.  Today I wanted to take a close look at a poem by Wallace Stevens, “The Snow Man,” and discuss to what degree what he is talking about in this poem is akin to Buddhist emptiness.  Also, I would…

Just in case these hard times made you forget what joy looks like.

The other night, while discussing directing theater, my friend Peter asked about my directing process:  “so is that how you tend to work?” and I thought about it and said “you know honestly, I’m only twenty seven years old and although that may seem of the age that some folks have a sense of agency about their…

Last week’s New Yorker had a great profile of novelist Ian McEwan, the guy who wrote Atonement, among other things (sorry, it’s not available for free online. Abstract here). Nestled at the very end of the piece was a quote from McEwan’s novel Saturday describing a surgeon’s experience in the operating theater. It is the most resonant description…

Photo taken at the Canal Plastics window display.

I’ve had many wonderful conversations over the past few years about the role of anarchism in western society (not the Anarchist Cookbook blow stuff up and call it anarchism juvenile version, I’m talking real deal anarchy that involves re-thinking the way the society is structured.) The more I sit, and take my practice into daily…
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