On my way to China, I stopped over in Spain for some meetings. Having a few extra days, I went to Manresa, Spain where we Dominicans have a monastery of nuns. What an incredible experience!

In the archives of a medieval monastery.

This monastery has been open since the 13th century. It is just above the cave where Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, wrote his famous “Spiritual Exercises.” Ignatius used to sit outside the door of this monastery and listen to the prayers of the nuns as they sang their evening office. Their prayers are still quite inspiring, as I can attest.

On the right is a photo of some books in the monastery archives. Top left is a bundle of contracts the monastery entered into in the year 1344. Every contract they have ever signed is still preserved on these shelves. The sense of history is deep, as is…

Sixteen Webster University students and staff, part of the Webster Works Worldwide team, arrived at the Missouri Zen Center early Wednesday morning to sit zazen (seated meditation), transplant trees and flowers in our garden, and make repairs to our building. After a few hours they and our staff enjoyed lunch with bon appétit under the warm sun surrounded by trees and flowers, with baby mice and a big snake they found rounding out our garden’s abundant biodiversity.

Before starting zazen, I talked about the global problématique (all ecological, economic, and ethical crises intertwined) and the sixth mass extinction – the first to be caused by humans – that threatens to destroy the whole global life system. Then, I talked about how we can avoid our catastrophic demise by sitting calm and clear, stopping our karma (cognate of ceremony, repeated action resulting in habit), and becoming truthful and peaceful, like a tree…

One of the members of the Ethical Society of St. Louis who has a background in Buddhism has been teaching a class in “Ethical Mindfulness,” in which he’s trying to blend the mindfulness meditation practice of Thich Nhat Hanh with the philosophy and social activism of Ethical Humanism. I have been getting great benefit from these classes. Humanism has many positive ideals, but we humanists are still working to create or find common practices that help people develop their ethical ideals and the habits to act on them. This seems to be where we can learn a lot from classical Buddhism, which is generally non-theistic and which focuses on practices that help us become more aware of ourselves and our actions, and therefore more able to choose “right action” rather than to react out of anger or fear.

Developing the habit of following my breath and observing my thoughts and feelings…