Listening to Baba Ram Dass on the radio is what got me interested in eastern mysticism and opened me up to all things spiritual.

His talks were always eye opening and that alone made him interesting and fueled my curiousity even more. Until then my interests were limited to playing and coaching sports and being a volunteer.

Before Ram Dass became a spiritual teacher he was known as Richard Alpert, a successful Harvard professor. His was the friend and colleague of Timothy Leary who professed that ‘acid (better known as LSD) is God’ for which he was fired.

During those Sunday night broadcasts he talked about the spiritual awakening he experienced while on a trip to India.

He described how he met Neem Korali Baba, who was a forest sadhu - a wandering holy man - and how Baba became his guru.

His tale was the tale of a man in search of the true meaning of life. It echoed the story of Sir Galahad and his search for the Holy Grail.

What kept me listening to those broadcasts is that they were talks and not preachy sermons or lectures. It was him talking informally to a group of people about his experiences and what he had learnt from his guru in India.

Although his stories were poignant and amusing, what I appreciated was that he explained words and terms that us westerners weren’t familiar with like charka, montra, or sadhana.

He introduced spiritual figures like Khrisna and Ram by telling stories about them.

Every week I was learning something new and that made me look forward to the next broadcast.

He introduced me to a whole new mystical world and a whole new way of looking at reality - a cosmic reality rather than a worldly one.

As a former professor, he used his experience to educate us so that we could better understand the message of the east.

Over the years, his books and tapes introduced millions of westerners to eastern mysticism and the way of compassion. For this we should be eternally grateful.

AXZ 08.23.26

Everytime the subject of Zen or Buddhism comes up, it’s only a question of time before I’m asked whether Buddha is God.

Because of their Judaeo-Christain background, people here in the west automatically assume that Buddha is the god that Buddhist worship. When I tell them that he is not, they don’t understand how a religion can call itself a religion without having a god to believe in.

In Buddhism there is no all powerful omnipresent creator deity like in there is in Christianity.

However, Buddhists do believe in divine beings like devas and even pray to them like Catholics pray to the saints for intercession.

But these devas are neither considered as omnipresent creators nor eternal.

The Buddha was a teacher. He never claimed that he was God. He always encouraged his followers to ask questions about his teachings, express their doubts and investigate the teachings for themselves.

He considered inquiry and self-inquiry an important part on the path to enlightenment.

He never encouraged his followers to worship him. Besides, only a human being can become a Buddha.

AXZ 08.09.26

Before I entered the Zendo (meditation hall), the Director of Meditation took me aside and told me that the formality of bowing to the statue of the Buddha on entering the Zendo has nothing to do ith worshiping Buddha.

He said, when bowing to the Buddha you are bowing to your true Buddha nature - the enlightened principle.

Buddha himself admitted that he was not a god and should not be treated as one.

Once I was seated on a round brown cushion in a half-lotus position facing the wall, I was told to focus my eyes looking down on an angle on a spot about a foot away from my nose, and then count my breaths from one to ten.

And when I lost track of the count, I was to go back to one and start all over again.

What sounded simple became quite daunting. I got to ten without interupption just once during that twenty minute session, and when I did, I felt a great sense of relief and accomplishment all at once.

After ten minutes the director broke the silence and began to speak slowly and said:

‘Thoughts are like birds’, he said, ‘the more you feed them the more will come. The less you feed them the fewer will come, and if you stop feeding them altogether, no birds will come. The same will happen to your thoughts. Once you stop feeding them by not giving them your attention they will disappear.’

That was my first day doing Zazen.

AXZ 07.26.26

There was a time when Zen and the Art of Archery was one of those books that had reached legendary status. Everyone was talking about it but no one I knew had read it. So I bought the book and I was surprised at just how thin it was. Maybe ninety pages long at most.

At that time I knew very little about Zen and how it related to archery. It all sounded very eastern and esoteric.

In that early edition, the book opens with an introduction by the author, Eugen Herrigel. He tells of an incident when he, as a visiting professor from Germany, was staying at a hotel in Tokyo.

He was sitting in a dinning, which was full of dinners, when suddenly everything began to shake violently. Tables began to rattle and dishes came crashing down unto the floor and panic ensued.

As the people began to scramble toward the exits, the author noticed a man sitting a couple of tables over. Amidst the chaos of the earthquake, the man sat there absolutely still with his eyes closed, completely calm and unaffected.

Inspired by what he had witnessed, the author decided to take up Zen in the form of archery and I forever wanted to become a comic-book hero with the superpower to stay calm in the midst of chaos.

AXZ 07.19.26

A woman posted on a online platform that she had been recently diagnosed with cancer and asked how to best cope with an illness that has become a constant source of fear, anxiety, and worry.

I gave her the following advice:

I’m a Zen practitioner, so what I’m going to recommend is something simple but effective.

First - limit your intake of television and the internet. This will quieten the mind more than you believe.

Second - focus you attention on mundane tasks like preparing food, cleaning the house, making you bed or washing the dishes etc …

The idea is to shift your attention from the interior to the exterior or or outside your mind.

If you find that you are still thinking about your situation, than that means you are not giving your tasks ALL your attention.

So you have to exert yourself and that’s a lot less painful than what you are going through right now. Good Luck!

The woman thanked me for my advice and told me that she had found some relief by practicing gratitude.

AXZ 07.05.26

Dear Q,

There was a time when books on Buddhism, Hinduism, or anything to do with Eastern Mysticism were difficult to come by.

And if you did find one at the University Library, it would be old and have musty smell as if it had not been opened since the last Ice Age.

So words like Dharma back then appeared not merely as foreign but alien and exotic.

I mean the word was way out there in the cosmos hanging out with the stars.

I first heard of the word Dharma when I began practicing Zazen which is a strict form of Buddhist meditation.

At that time I was told that Dharma referred to the teachings of the Buddha.

It was only latter that I learned that Dharma is an ancient Sanskrit word with roots in Hinduism which goes way back before the Buddha appeared on the scene.

In both the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, when people talk about the Dharma they usually are referring to the teachings like the Vedas, the Gita, the Sutras and other sacred teachings that have been handed down through the ages.

The Dharma is the key to living a life that leads to spiritual growth, inner peace, and liberation from the cycle of suffering.

Without the Dharma it’s like taking a journey through the wilderness without a compass.

Today when I use the word Dharma I do so in a much more inclusive way. It has come to include any teachings that help us along the spiritual path either towards salvation or enlightenment.

The Dharma is important because it not only provides a compass, but also the necessary fuel to reach our final destination, and that can come in the form of inspiration, guidance, or insight.

AXZ 06.29.26

Dear Q,

I think it’s important to start at the beginning and tell you why and how my spiritual journey began.

There is something important about beginnings but I’m not quite sure what it is.

Perhaps, it’s because beginnings set the trajectory which tells us something about the destination..

It’s at the beginning that we find out why someone took the journey in the first place.

The reason I wanted to become enlightened was anything but a romantic notion.

It had nothing to with lessening the suffering in the world.

It was fear.

It was about saving myself from going to hell. In those days, hell was a place that was a lot worse than prison.

But aside from trying to escape the clutches of the devil - what sparked my desire to become enlightened was ‘Demain’, a coming-of-age novel by Herman Hesse.

The book parelled my own life at that time. It’s about a young man from the middle class who struggles towards self-awareness.

In his journey of self-discovery the young man departs from social conventions in search of spiritual fulfillment, which mirrored what I did - eventually.

Over the years I have read many books but Demain is the only one in which I experienced an epiphany while reading it.

The experience was frightening and yet exhilarating - like suddenly finding myself stand on the edge of a precipice.

What made the novel easy to relate to was that it was autobiographical - not something made out thin air.

I believe that in today’s world, if someone were to have the same desire I had then, instead of reading a book they probably would buy a pair of Lululem yoga pants and do whatever two hundred dollar yoga pants make you do.

I know it sounds cynical but that’s the kind of world we live today. We have become more cynical since the pandemic and I’m afraid it seems to be getting only worse.

AXZ 06.21.26