About

Call this blog an exercise in experimental metaphysics, a particle collider for our ideas about the world and final reality. This is my place for writing about philosophy, religion and the lived experience that breathes fire into them.

I am a Zen Buddhist strongly influenced by Catholic Christianity (as I put it, I can say the creed with a straight face, if with some eccentric ways of mapping between Buddhism and Christianity). I am interested how direct experience/mysticism converge from both these sides.

I will spend some time writing about Matter, Mind and Mystery. How we construct our world, and how to escape our constructed traps by never leaving them.

Buddhist, Christian and Human demand compassion and social justice. I am queer. Pronouns he/him. Black lives matter. Fight oppression. Raise up the poor and downtrodden. Heal the sick. Welcome the stranger into your midst. Always be on the lookout for ways in which we fall short in our service to others.

Expect and delight in many references to film, music and literature in inappropriately appropriate places. Think I Heart Huckabees, The Fountain, The Hours and more.

I am not a teacher by any means. Please don’t take any of my writings as “gospel”, they are merely the offerings of a fellow traveller (cheese probably, I hope you like it). Think of me as another goofy monk in the monastery, dreaming together about when we too will be enlightened.

And now, life goals:

Bare-chested and bare-footed, he comes out into the market-place;
Daubed with mud and ashes, how broadly he smiles!
There is no need for the miraculous power of the gods,
For he touches, and lo! the dead trees are in full bloom.

– Ten ox-herding pictures, #10, Kaku-an Shi-en