This is the second segment of a four-part, prize-winning, semi-autobiographical story. If you haven’t done so, you’ll want to read Part One first. The next day, we followed the hearse in my Uncle Hisao’s minivan. He was always ‚ÄúUncle‚Äù to me, although he never married my Aunt Kazumi. When I was nine and living with [...]

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I’ve always wanted to be an author–not just a blogger, but a bona fide, writing-is-my-day-job and at the local Barnes and Noble there’s a few colorful books with my name on the spine. I haven’t blogged much about my fiction. In fact, writing for Mind on Fire often leaches what little time and compulsion I [...]

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Which may mean something else to the Mormons & exMormons among you, but that’s what the Grand Master of our new Tai Chi dojo calls the first Tuesday of the month. Once a month, apparently, the whole dojo gets together for philosophical discussion & Tibetean chant. The philosophical discussion could be better, but is a [...]

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In something I wrote recently (though I can’t quite remember where), I said that “Steve Jobs is the anti-Buddha,” lamenting his company’s ability to keep me quite attached to certain delectable material goodies in this world. Apparently I’m not the only one that reached this conclusion–the following quote is from a article on Ars Technica [...]

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I’m terrible at meditation. If we were in some kind of Buddhist junior high school, I’d always get picked last for those competitive meditating teams. Jana suspects that I suffer from some kind of attention deficit disorder, but I’ve made my peace with that–add my name to the long line of troubled geniuses afflicted with [...]

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I rarely watch movies, but this week’s pick is Dirty Pretty Things. I checked it out from the library because I’m a fan of Audrey Tautou’s (Am?©lie!), but so far I’m impressed with the entire cast. They play various members of the (illegal) immigrant underbelly of London–they come from Nigeria, Turkey, Somalia, Eastern Europe, China, [...]

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One of these days I’ll complete my Cathedral pilgrimage post. I promise! The next week and a half is going to be crazy, as I prep responses to papers for the upcoming Sunstone West Symposium, gear up for a work project deadline, and try to catch up on my papers and readings for my grad [...]

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I’m not doing very well on religious posts this week. I have at least two fun pilgrimage sites (in LA, not OC) to write about–hopefully in the next few days. In the meantime, I’ll leave you all with one of my favorite Buddhist prayers: May I become at all times, both now and forever A [...]

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Growing up in Japan, I had many encounters with the Bodhisattva Jiz?¥. Almost every day I passed little stone statues of Jiz?¥ next to flooded rice paddies, in cemeteries, off mountain paths, at crossroads. His bald head was often covered with moss or snow, but his serene smile always shone through his weather-beaten features. Sometimes [...]

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I accumulate journals and notebooks. I have at least four journals and two electronic journals that are active at the moment: – a large clothbound artist’s sketchbook: I use this for my art and graphic design sketching, planning, scheming and brainstorming. – my daily all-purpose journal: My current one is a birthday gift from Jana–the [...]

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