I went and got hugged by Amma, India’s world-famous hugging saint, when she was in Los Angeles last month. She shoved my head into her fluffy right boob...

The answer to the question "who would Buddha fuck?" is that he wouldn’t. He left his wife to pursue the deeper Truth of the Universe. Later on...

As you read this I will be winding up the first part of an extensive international tour to promote my latest book Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate.

A guy I know wrote me the following question: Zazen is the type of meditation I teach. I use the word meditation here a bit loosely since zazen differs...

I was very pleasantly surprised to see R. Elisabeth Cornwell’s articles The Evolution of Religion and Why Women Are Bound to Religion: An Evolutionary...

My new book, Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate is out now. The nice folks at Borders put an excerpt from the book on-line and you can read it by...

On November 28th, His Holiness the Dalai Lama* made news by saying celibacy is good. Must’ve been a slow news day. What he actually said -- in English...

In his recent Suicide Girls column Richard Patrick talked about religious authority. He said, “Many years ago, peasants were stealing from each other and...

This will be my last Suicide Girls posting before Americans will make their choice between shining, purest good and foulest, most vile evil. Will we choose...

Back in March I wrote an article for this website in which I criticized one of the many scams out there masquerading as Buddhist practice. Last week my...

I got an e-mail recently and it said: I get a lot of variations on this question of how to cultivate “non-attachment.” But I’m not really sure why.

Often in my writing for SuicideGirls I’ve talked about girls, but I haven’t talked a lot about suicide. Last week a friend of mine attempted it, unsuccessfully,...

So I’m sitting cross-legged in the meditation hall at the San Francisco Zen Center a couple days ago. Incense wafts through the air, bells are rung, ancient...

Here’s an e-mail I got recently: Elizabeth, I’ve received a lot of e-mails along these lines. But as for my writing giving people “new to Zen the idea...

I just spent two weeks in a meditation center up in the mountains. Everywhere you went there were wooden boards that said: Listen up! Great is the matter...

I’d like to offer something to help you But in the Zen school we don't have a single thing. - Zen Master Ikkyu (1394 – 1481) Ikkyu is one of my favorite...

I met a stripper with a Three Stooges tattoo the other night at a bar called Tigress. She bitch slapped one of my companions hard while she gave her a ferocious...

Merry Christmas Eve from your local Buddhist columnist! I’m down in Knoxville, Tennessee with my sister and her family. This week I appeared on my niece,...

Did I tell you I got a MySpace page? Well I do. I resisted it for a long time. But it’s actually kind of fun. Anyway, here’s a question I got from one...

Just over seven years ago I started writing about Buddhism on a website I called Sit Down and Shut Up. I’d been writing since high school and studying...

Over the time I’ve been writing here on this page a few of the women who pose naked for your pleasure on Suicide Girls have written me asking my opinion...

Some idea of perfection, or some perfect way which is set up by someone else is not the true way for us. Each one of us must make his or her own true way,...

While I was in Phoenix, a couple months ago Barry Graham, a Zen teacher in the Rinzai lineage out there turned me on to an article called “Spaces in the...

“I’m stoned. Did that just happen?” she said. “She” being Melinda, a large breasted hanger-on backstage at Ozzfest 2007 in San Bernardino County Califoria.

I originally wanted to write another article about my movie CLEVELAND'S SCREAMING! which will premier next Wednesday July 25th at 7:30 at the Egyptian...

Lately a lot of people have been asking my opinion about The Secret. In case you’ve been buried in an eight foot deep hole with just a straw sticking out...

I’m back from Japan now. While I was over there I got to meet three Godzillas at the same time. Here’s how. OK. My friend Norman England, an ex-pat who’s...

Before I forget, for those of you who’ve bought my new book, Sit Down and Shut Up!, I found a mistake. Turn to page 74 and look at the bottom of the second...

Before I start, I just wanted to let everyone know my new book, Sit Down and Shut Up! has begun shipping! You can already get it on-line and it should be...

In his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki says that in most religions practitioners become like a sharp angle pointing away from...

Before I begin I want to do a brief eulogy for Kurt Vonnegut Jr. I was gonna do a long one, but there have been too many already. So I’ll just say that...

Before I begin today’s thing I wanted to let everybody know that my new book, Sit Down and Shut Up! comes out in just a few weeks from New World Library.

This is a true story. The other day, Wednesday I think it was, I got an e-mail from a guy at another company with whom I’ve been working on a project for...

When I am elected President of the World my first act will be to criminalize the song Careless Whisper. Playing it on any instrument will be punishable...

As most of you know, my mom died a couple months ago. This has made me reconfirm something I committed to a long time ago, but which I still forget from...

According to this story in the Mainichi Daily News, an English language paper in Japan, there's a punk rock Buddhist priestess stirring things up in...

I got tons and tons of responses to that last post I put up here and the related ones on my blog. So I take it that I may have stumbled upon a subject that...

Although there are scam artists out there calling themselves Buddhist teachers, they are the exception, not the rule. Most people who put out their shingle...

I got the Definitive Edition 2 DVD set of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ from Satya last week. I was living in Japan when it came out in theaters...