Jo Chern

Category: Meditation

  • Born Sad

      “She was always making jokes in class, kept us laughing all the time.” “I don’t know that I ever see her without a big smile.” “Some people are just born funny.” They’re not talking about me. Not that I don’t have a sense of humor that can range from silly to sarcastic to full-on…

  • Snippet 2 of Taoist Mystery: Being With Nothingness

    Obviously, the only reason I’m putting a few of these very first draft, rather random sections of my work ‘in progress,’ I’ll call it loosely, is to find out whether any readers out there would be the slightest bit interested in continuing if they stumbled across this: would you want to know any who, what,…

  • Snippet from early stages of my Taoist mystery

    The ditch didn’t exist yesterday. Then again, I didn’t exist yesterday, at least not the “I” that was standing at the edge of a ragged ditch stretching from three feet to my left up the dunes into the trees. Right. Everything Changes. I knew that part. But a ditch doesn’t just become a ditch overnight.…

  • Sit, Black Dog, Sit

    My, I have been silent a long time, haven’t I? The image of depression as a black dog is usually that of a Baskerville-like hound, running at the heels, biting and snapping. And yet that seems terribly active for the depressed state, one where the sufferer is more likely to simply wait to be devoured…

  • Re-Versing Time

    We did a lot of “Om”-ing back in the ’70s. Meditation was practically a competitive sport. We’d sit Lotus position, eyes only half closed so we could sneak looks at those around us. “How does she get her foot that high on her damn thigh?” “Oh, c’mon, look at the math geek–half lotus, how sad.”…

  • Zen Koan

    Zen Koan. via Zen Koan.

  • The Parable Series: Where Are My Damn Keys?

    And so the parable goes: There was a very wealthy man who kept all his money, jewels and gold locked inside a box inside his mansion. One late night, he wanted to go count his loot but couldn’t remember where he left the keys. “I know I had them in my house last I looked…

  • Age and Ache

      When I was young, if I was young, I believed the lies about how age creeps up on you, setting in like a fog, oozing into your pores a bit at a time. I also believed Sandburg when he said that the fog comes in quietly “on little cat’s feet.” Well, neither the fog…

  • “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…

  • The Hubris of The Lone Wolf

    “Chutzpah. Nothing but ego-driven chutzpah” That has been my brain for the last few days as I try to keep going with setting up The Qi Gong Center. Not that my brain has been alone in this derision. I’ve also been asked why I don’t just go join the local Tai Chi center. “But Tai…