Jisetsu

Saying Goodbye To 12 South Dharma Center

the zendo (meditation hall) at 12 South Dharma Center, Nashville

After 8 years, Nashville’s unique and only ecumenical Buddhist center is closing its doors.

This weekend the three local Buddhist meditation groups who share 12 South Dharma Center are moving out of the second floor suite of rooms on hip & trendy 12 South Avenue they have occupied since June 2008. Nashville will no longer have a dedicated space where those interested in Buddhism and meditation can choose from several groups to sit with or experienced practitioners to receive instruction from 6 days a week.

It’s been great while it lasted.
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June 22, 2024

12 South Dharma Center, buddha, buddhism, meditation, mindfulness, Nashville, Nashville Zen Center, spirituality, Zen
Peaking at Totality

Total Solar Eclipse, August 21, 2016, Nashville, Tennessee ~ photo by Isabel Bitner (click photos to enlarge)

It’s a once in a lifetime event. A total solar eclipse passed over Nashville today, and the city’s population reportedly doubled briefly as approximately a million people arrived in the area from out of town to witness it. Parties were scheduled all over town, with commercial opportunities galore as eager consumers snapped up eclipse glasses, eclipse t-shirts, beer brewed especially for the eclipse, cocktails crafted for the eclipse, eclipse mugs and growlers and tote bags and ball caps and smart phone apps. Experts across the country shared astronomic data and compiled essential playlists. The Atlantic reprinted Annie Dillard’s superlative 1982 essay Total Eclipse.
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June 21, 2024

astronomy, Cheekwood, Christopher Columbus, eclipse, fiction, H. Warner Munn, Mark Twain, Nashville, Solar Eclipse, sun
Dreaming of Middle Earth

my original boxed set fell apart decades ago, but this is what my first copies of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings looked like

When I was a child growing up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, there was a boxed set of books on a shelf in my parents’ study. The cardboard box contained four paperbacks and was decorated with strange symbols and the word TOLKIEN on a field of gold. The entire package was shrink-wrapped and had never been opened, and it sat there there for a long time – weeks or months, I guess, maybe even a year or two – sitting on the shelf with the other books next to it, quietly minding its own business and waiting for me. Sometimes I would pass by it and notice it, read the titles and wonder what it was, what was TOLKIEN, and what was a hobbit, anyway?
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June 20, 2024

authors, books, children, fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien, lord-of-the-rings, Middle Earth, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The SIlmarillion, Tolkien
Unsolicited Advice

Photo by SHTTEFAN on Unsplash

This time of year I find myself attending many public events to mark and celebrate student accomplishments and transitions: award ceremonies, banquets, graduations. Due to my position, experience, reputation, (age? time of life?) – for whatever reason, I am increasingly being asked to speak at some of these events.

I always wonder what I should say. What do people want to hear? Why would anyone take my word for it?

At a ceremony I attended this week, several teachers – who were giving out awards to graduating seniors – gave what they described as unsolicited advice to those assembled, and I thought about what I believe it would be important to tell others about how to live their lives, if I were the sort of person who felt the impulse to do this.

This is what I came up with, on short notice.
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June 19, 2024

advice, books, cooking, death, depth, life, love, multi-cultural, nature, presence, regret, walking
Flying

I am sitting in Seat 14D, a window seat on a medium size passenger airplane. In the economy class section of the plane where I am seated there are four seats across the width of the giant metal tube – two seats on each side with an aisle down the middle between them. Other passengers are filing down the aisle as I sit here typing on my laptop and the plane’s public address system is playing country music songs. I’ve been sitting here for about five minutes as the rest of the passengers board the plane.
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June 18, 2024

airplane, Essays, flying, travel, writing
Meditation 101

Meditation has been a big part of my life for my entire adulthood, like a personal mountain I have been climbing a step at a time, nearly every day, for forty years.
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June 17, 2024

buddhism, meditation, mindfulness, spirituality, Zen

Saying Goodbye To 12 South Dharma Center

Peaking at Totality

Dreaming of Middle Earth

Unsolicited Advice

Flying

Meditation 101