The roots of all living things are tied together. Deep in the ground of being, they tangle and embrace. This understanding is expressed in the term nonduality. If we look deeply, we find that we do not have a separate self-identity, a self that does not include sun and wind, earth and water, creatures and plants, and one another.

Catastrophe is the essence of the spiritual path, a series of breakdowns allowing us to discover the threads that weave all of life into a whole cloth.

Kaz came to Switzerland where I was teaching to share with me [Heart Sutra] wondrous insight. There he and I worked on this new translation - with my part being to help render it into a verse form that would be good to chant. Since I have worked with many dying people over the years and often share the Heart Sutra with them, I found this new version that we created together to be so much more accessible to those who were facing death.

Compassion has enemies, and those enemies are things like pity, moral outrage, fear.

To work with Kaz on this kind of project is a fascinating process...He seems to be Dogen himself when offering the translations that we Western collaborators then refine with him.

I remember having a discussion with [Kaz] about his translation of the word shunyata as "boundlessness," instead of the more traditional "emptiness." I said: "Kaz, everyone is used to the word emptiness for shunyata. This might not sit well with people. He said: "Translator's prerogative!" Then he added, "One cannot assume we know what they meant...." I agreed.

When we have disorderly lives, it makes it difficult for our minds to be orderly and for us to be at ease with disorder.