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...

A buncha stuff has happened since I wrote my last Suicide Girls article two weeks ago. When I wrote that piece I was in Ohio, which is where I was born...

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,...

I’m writing you this missive from a wooden bench in Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park. Today they’re running both a big Indian festival and a big vegetarian festival...

Last week I was in Boulder, Colorado where people have long discussions with their sushi chef about whether or not the mackerel and squid they serve is...

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...

As you read this I will be just finishing up a seven day Zen retreat. That means I’ve just spent seven days straight doing pretty much nothing except sitting...

It has recently been brought to my attention that I am now apparently known in Buddhist circles as the “Porno Buddhist.” This, it seems, is a source of...

“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.

Lately I’ve been coming under fire for my supposed controversial views from a certain Buddhist Master guy who up till now liked to present himself as my...

Last week Roethke made a comment here about my sprinkling asides about my other projects in the context of these columns. I had to think about that because...

On Monday I saw a very interesting film called Join Us at the LA Film Festival. It's a documentary by Ondi Timoner (pronounced tih-MOE-ner as Jonesy...

So I’m back from San Francisco now. While I was up there I got a chance to go with Greg Fain of the San Francisco Zen Center on one of his weekly visits...