First Known When Lost

When it comes to aging, we can learn a thing or two from the ancient Chinese poets.  Yes, their poems do occasionally evince a sense of regr...

I am always skeptical of people who display a high degree of certainty about how the World works.  Such certainty is often grounded in polit...

The fact that our life consists of a collection of moments, some more redolent than others, is not  an argument for hedonism.  Hedonism gets...

I am in the midst of one of my recurrent avoid-the-news-of-the-world periods.  To steel my resolve, I paid a visit to a favorite poem:    ...

A week or so ago, I read this haiku :      The blossoms have fallen: Our minds are now      Tranquil. Koyu-ni (18th century) (translat...

I can assure you that my fondness for April is not attributable to the fact that I was born in this month (an Aries born in the Year of the ...

I think of nursery rhymes as pleasant ditties that one recites to children in order to keep them entertained on an idle afternoon or to lull...

Yesterday, my afternoon walk began amid a sun shower.  As I walked along a row of trees (budding, but still bare), I was surrounded by veils...

During our all-too-brief sojourn on Earth, we owe it to ourselves to cultivate a state of repose and dreamy reverie.  Repose and reverie are...

I once visited a Buddhist temple in Thailand that had a carp pond on its grounds.  The temple's monks sold small paper bags containing p...