Posts by johneinarsen
Haiku: Birth & Death of Each Moment
Haiku brings us the birth and death of each moment. Everything is stripped away to its naked state.
Read MoreWhen the Envoys Returned
After thirty years of cresting mountain-high surges, the envoys brought back eagle-wood, ambergris, and an essence distilled from rose petals.
Read MoreExiled – A Tibetan’s Tale
“I was concerned about the many differences between India and China — the ways of thinking, for one — and India was not really up to confronting China. If I stayed in India, maybe I wouldn’t be able to do the kind of things I really wanted to do to help Tibet.” He eventually set his sights on Japan, with its own brand of Buddhism and spirituality, as his next home in exile.
Read MoreRocking to the Flow
The 7th generation Ogawa Jihei (1860-1933), better known as “Ueji,” was a magician with water and stone and a pioneer of modern Japanese garden design.
Read MoreKyoto in the Mid-sixties
Waiting in the snow at the Ryoan-ji bus stop on a Kyoto winter morning in 1964, I was interrupted by a woman who came out of a nearby house and, seeing me standing there, went back inside and returned with an overcoat which she helped me into. It was a three-quarter-length brown coat, and warm…That was my introduction to Kyoto.
Read MoreBaisao, The Old Tea Seller: Life and Zen Poetry in 18th-century Kyoto
“I’ve got the whole universe in this tea caddy of mine.”
Read MoreLadies’ Night: Circling the Bases on Okinawa
In Okinawa, I met a lot of people — locals and retired American service members and their families — whose worlds, whose lives, had always been this mishmash of Okinawa, the U.S., and Japan…
Read MoreKurahashi Yoshio: Shakuhachi Master
As with other arts, shakuhachi’s “traditional” characteristics are constantly evolving. Hesitating to call himself traditional, sensei’s eyes light up when discussing how the music is changing.
Read MoreBuddhism Engaged
BUDDHISM
BY DAVID COZY
Buddhist teachings, Loy believes, can help us to understand the true nature of lack and the havoc it causes, and because they can perform this necessary function, he feels it is important that Buddhism remain vital in the twenty-first century.
Read MoreIn the Realm of the Bicycle
I first noticed them, the fact of their everywhereness, during my daily commute to and from work, as they stood and leaned and laid and zipped around in all the conditions of life itself…
Read MoreRediscovering Kyoto
I work as a guide for foreign tourists and though I mean to introduce them to the charms of Japan, instead it is often they who remind me of my country’s beauty.
Read MoreTurtles All the Way Down
To add credence to our myths, we enmesh them in Big Stories, such as the Bible and Buddhist sutras. These Stories try to explain it all, but inevitably fall far short. Their promise of absolute truths is empty since these Big Stories too were (and forever are) constructed.
Read MoreThe Dazzling Night
A Noh Play in English about Katherine Mansfield.
Read MoreNama Chocolat Organic Teahouse
Nakanishi Hirofumi’s signature Sweet, Bitter and Matcha nama chocolates reflect modern tastes while paying tribute to Kyoto and its centuries-old artisan heritage.
Read MoreUnbridled Perception
The founders of the Miksang Institute for Contemplative Photography bring their practice to Asia with a pioneering workshop in Japan.
Read MoreThe Garden View
“My idea was to create photographs that explore this undefined border between private and public space by photographing the garden from deep inside the temple, balancing the areas of the tatami/ meditation space and the garden space equally in the image.”
Read MoreHolding the Ashen Bark: Voices from Hiroshima on the Historic Visit by President Obama
“Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima?” President Obama asked himself and the world in his historic speech on May 27th, 2016. I too, ask myself why I’ve been to Hiroshima over and over, and why I took the chance to witness this historic visit by the then-sitting US president.
Read MoreBoundaries
I look outside again and something happens, at once strange and wonderful. I breathe, deeply, and the universe inhales with me. Suddenly, and with great force, the air expands…
Read MoreThe Things We’ve Gone Through Together: Children orphaned by AIDS build a loving family in rural Cambodia
I have come as a volunteer from the United States, to live with children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic that has raged in Cambodia since the 1990s…
Read MoreKyoto Waters
Kyoto exists in layers of wildness and control; something built juxtaposed with something natural: one against the other, layered, intertwined, spiraled infinitely around the plain, a kind of DNA of place.
Read MoreFacing Self, Reality
Naikan, which means “introspection” in Japanese, implores us to look not merely within but beyond ourselves by routinely asking a set of three questions…
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