A few days into a stretch of walking alone on the Annapurna Circuit, I came around a bend in the trail.A huge cat cleared the trees and landed on the path bounding in my direction. It halted about…
After a year as a monk in Burma, I walked the Annapurna Circuit. Weeks of walking through Nepal — valleys, thin air, stone walls older than I can imagine, rivers that knew where they were going…
I did not plan to become a Buddhist monk in Burma. I did not plan to walk into a year of monastic life. I did not plan to receive what I received there.I followed a sequence of small signs over a…
A forest path in Burma, climbing toward the Pagoda on the Rock. Night had fallen. I sat on a fallen branch to wait for my companions. A short distance up the trail, a group of pilgrims from the Karen…
Thirty years ago, I stood on a wooden bridge outside a monastery in Rangoon. I had just finished evening meditation. The ancient chants in Pali were still resonating in my body. And drifting up…
Here are the show notes for Episode 24: Episode 24: The Renaissance Begins Here Place a canoe on the river of your life and do nothing. The current will carry you. Smoothly. Without effort. You will…
Episode 23: Bridge or Trap Thirty years ago I was an ordained Buddhist monk in Myanmar during a period of military rule. When soldiers came to the monastery gate demanding I be handed over, my teacher…
Episode 22: The Three Futures Two places. Two total structures. Two completely different relationships to the same question. The first: San Quentin Prison, where I volunteered for years working with…
Episode 21: The System of Us There is a moment I have witnessed dozens of times and never tired of. Twenty people standing in a circle. Each sounding their own note. The room hunting for something —…
Episode 20: The Hum Beauty doesn't begin in the output. It begins in the person doing the work. In this episode Patrick Ryan goes somewhere quieter and more demanding than the previous two — into the…
