Zen Moments

“Everything comes down to you and one moment and one action…”

From www.soulbiographies.com featuring Morgan Fisher
(duration 8 minutes. try full screen. scaling on or off. use headphones)
There is something so simple yet so profound that it’s quite possible we find ourselves missing it completely. Morgan spent many successful and raucous years playing in major [...]

“…the answer is staring you in the face – if only you can see it”

Depression can appear to be without antidote. For years I struggled with it, even though I made a good living from my paintings and to the observer, my life typified the creative dream.
Horses had always been my passion and the accuracy [...]

“Mooring on Chien-Te River”

The boat rocks at anchor by the misty island
Sunset, my loneliness comes again.
In these vast wilds the sky arches down to the trees.
In the clear river water, the moon draws near.
Meng Hao-Jen
Translation from the Chinese by Gary Snyder
Photograph kindly contributed to Zen Moments by Sam Cicero
“Meng Hao-jan (689–740 C.E.) is generally [...]

“A tree, would be enough
Or even a rock…”

…A tree, would be enough
Or even a rock, a small creek,
A bark shred in a pool.
Hill beyond hill, folded and twisted
Tough trees crammed
In thin stone fractures
A huge moon on it all, is too much.
The mind wanders…
Excerpt from Piute Creek by Gary Snyder
The Path to Peace Runs through the [...]

“It was palpable… I could feel his words…”

I had an amazing thing happen last week. It all started with an innocent email from an old friend sharing a highly “web-circulated” story of miraculous magnitude. I may have seen this story before, seemed familiar, but this time “The Cab Ride I’ll Never Forget” hit me like [...]

“More than anything else, attention is the act of connection.”

The reward for attention is always healing. It may begin as the healing of a particular pain – the lost lover, the sickly child, the shattered dream. But what is healed, finally, is the pain that underlies all pain: the pain that we are all, as [...]

“Hand in Hand – Beautiful Ballet Dancers”

Li Ma was a beautiful promising professional ballerina when she lost her right arm in a car accident in 1996. She was only 19. Her handsome boy friend walked away from her.
She tried to kill herself, only to be saved by her parents. Her love for her parents gave [...]

“The music takes me away…”

As with many of us, music provides a wonderful means of escape for me. No matter what mood I’m in, I can always find a song that helps “accentuate the positive” or “eliminate the negative.”  I can sing golden oldies, gospel songs, show tunes, pop hits or something I just [...]

“I need a hundred years between each utterance… “

Deep in the mountains.
I brought no camera, no sketchbook.
Like this Buddha rupa beside its mossy stream,
it is sufficient just to be here.

I need a hundred years
between each utterance-
to clarify and settle thought-
to make the plain poetic,
and the poetic plain.

Breathing in: open-hearted.
Breathing out: open-minded.

Just keep asking yourself, “What [...]

“she could feel the path… under her feet and wasn’t afraid…”

A Zen Moments reader sent us the picture below and told us its inspiring story:

“Colored Path” was a gift to my sister, symbolizing her new beginning after 11 years of domestic violence.
My “Zen moment” was when she told me that she now felt [...]