While I had cancer, I wrote these twenty-two personal essays about how I lived my life backed by Zen and writing.

Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond.

Tulips come up in spring for no reason. Of course, you planted bulbs and now in April the earth warms up. But why? For no reason except gravity. Why gravity? For no reason. And why did you plant red tulip bulbs to begin with? For beauty, which is itself and has no reason. So the world is empty. Things rise and fall for no reason. And what a great opportunity that is! You can start writing again at any minute. Let go of all your failures and sit down and write something great. Or write something terrible and feel great about it.

If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.

Anything we fully do is an alone journey.

Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth.

I still write with pen and paper and have someone type it on a computer. But rewriting I do by hand.