Jo Chern

Category: Buddha

  • NaPoWriMo Day 3: A Descent Into Silly

    Back to my original plan of dabbling in forms, rhymes, rhythms, poetics. While an appreciator of limericks, I–quite simply–suck at them. I can never get the saucy air, the lilt that carries the reader along line to line hanging off the side of the horse, as it were. But I need to write one so…

  • To My Hospice Cat

            All hip bones and sagging skin Hollow eyes, naked ears. Still chasing leaves As if running down prey; But time to go, time to go Listen to the Buddha: Everything changes.

  • Kuan Yin: Beyond Human

    He’s lying in the sun, breath heavy and fast, sides shrunken, bones of the chest and neck showing through the skin, backs of the ears and the toes almost hairless now. Just an old cat suffering from age and pain and a host of ailments. “Just put him down,” people tell me especially after they…

  • “Nothing Special”

    “I have been there and come back. It was nothing special: The river at high tide, The mountain veiled by misty rain”                                                                         Zen Buddhist saying Beauty…

  • So, A Buddhist and A Taoist Walk Into A Bar…

    I often write about Buddhist ideas and refer to authors and Buddhist scholars like Jack Kornfield but I have to admit I’m just not a nice enough person to be a Buddhist. Really. Quietly and patiently putting up with jive? I think not. Sitting quietly under the bodhi tree awaiting enlightenment like the bodhidarma? Ain’t…

  • More Qi for the Cheese State!

    I’m raising money through Indiegogo for the formation of The Qi Gong Center of South Central Wisconsin. It’s a very small campaign and donations of even $1.00 make me not only happy but positively delirious. I’d love to spread the health and meditative benefits of Qi Gong throughout the area (and beyond, if possible). You…

  • When The Cushion Doesn’t Call

    When the zabuton is stretched out on the floor, the zafu cushion sitting atop, Mario comes in and takes his place, closing his eyes and breathing deeply. At times, he will stay for an hour or more seeming barely to move, content as a cat. Of course, Mario has an advantage in this: Mario is…