As I write this one of our cats, Finn, is sprawled across my lap. He is an all-white, American short hair with blue eyes and below average intelligence. I've watched him carefully plan his leap onto the bookshelf only to jump headfirst into the wall. And he regularly gets lost wandering through our house; meowing sadly until I or my partner go to find him. What Finn lacks in intelligence, however, he makes up for with love. He is one of the most affectionate cats I have ever known. He rubs his head against my legs when I walk through the house, he watches from the window when I work in the garden. And if I sit on the couch to write, read, or watch a movie, he magically appears in my lap. I like to think that I'm the strong, independent type. But the truth is that I'm not so different from Finn. When I kneel in front of my altar, I justify my actions with philosophical jargon. I can talk for hours about sacral realism and how my Butsudan is a physical representation of B
A student went to his Zen teacher and found him working in the garden. The teacher greeted his student and asked, "How is Buddhism in the south?" The student replied, "There is much discussion." The Zen teacher paused a moment, and then he said, "Come help me plant radishes in the garden." The student asked, "How will that help the world?" The Zen teacher replied, "What do you call the world?" When I was a young man, I didn't make time for what most people would call "domestic duties". Cooking, cleaning, making the bed; these tasks seemed like a waste of time at best, and they were beneath me at worst. I looked at all the suffering in the world, and my unmade bed seemed insignificant in comparison. I wanted to feed hungry children. I wanted pull plastic out of the ocean. I wanted to rescue the animals being tortured in factory farms. I imagine the student in the koan shared my concerns. "There is much di