Sublime

Norman Fischer, a former Abbott of the San Francisco Zen Center, has emphasized our resistance to leaving everything alone, and the temptation to turn zazen into a technique: “The problem is that we actually are incapable of seeing zazen as useless because our minds cannot accept the fundamental genuineness, the alrightness of our lives. We are act

Then she came to a retreat with the American spiritual teacher Ram Dass, whose books (starting with Be Here Now) and lectures have inspired a generation of meditators. After more than thirty years of teaching and service to the poor, Ram Dass had had a major stroke. He too was in a wheelchair, his speech was impaired, and yet he was bright and joyf

prided himself on not having many ups and downs and for never losing his temper.

The image of a seventy-nine-year-old ex–background player named Della Kress hanging on to the side of a clawfoot bathtub, legs dangling from the now exposed eighth floor of the Montecito Apartments, would be all over YouTube by the morning.