I have been sitting with suffering — mine, my family's, the ambient kind you pick up from the news — from three different chairs.
From the Stoic chair, suffering is a category error. The thing happened. The thing is now...
I've been asked this three times in the last month — by a Jesuit I respect, a Zen teacher I respect, and my own wife.
All three answered differently. All three were kind about it.
I can't tell whether that's comforting...
My spiritual director gave me When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön fifteen years ago, when I was forty.
I was appalled. I'd been reading the Desert Fathers since college. I did not need, I thought, the Buddhist versio...
