I was walking down a dimly lit street one evening when I heard muffled screams coming from behind a clump of bushes. Alarmed, I slowed down to listen, and panicked when I realized that what I was hearing were the unmistakable sounds of a struggle: heavy grunting, frantic scuffling, and tearing of fabric. Only yards [...]
This is a true story. A while ago, when I was a young twenty five year old, I trekked across the United States via Greyhound bus on an uncharted photo journey. During this trip, I ended up in Seattle where I met Laddie McCrea. Laddie, you see, was a hobo. He was about 60 – [...]
There was a king who had a daughter who was very ill. The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with her. She just seemed miserable and cried often. One night the princess dreamed that if she ate a pair of very special pears she would get well. In order to learn what would make the pears [...]
A nurse took the tired, anxious serviceman to the bedside. “Your son is here,” she said to the old man. She had to repeat the words several times before the patient’s eyes opened. Heavily sedated because of the pain of his heart attack, he dimly saw the young uniformed Marine standing outside the oxygen tent. [...]
There recently was a death of a 98 year-old lady named Irena (1910-2008). During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a plumbing/sewer specialist. The truth is, she had an ‘ulterior motive’ as she knew the Nazi’s plans were for the Jews. As a German, Irena smuggled infants out in the [...]
Yamaoka Tesshu was a tutor of the emperor. He was also a master of fencing and a profound student of Zen. His home was the abode of vagabonds. He had but one suit of clothes, for they kept him always poor. The emperor, observing how worn his garments were, gave Yamaoka some money to buy [...]
One evening as Shichiri Kojun was reciting sutras a thief with a sharp sword entered, demanding wither his money or his life. Shichiri told him: “Do not disturb me. You can find the money in that drawer.” Then he resumed his recitation. A little while afterwards he stopped and called: “Don’t take it all. I [...]
Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing to steal. Ryokan returned and caught him. “You have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you [...]
One day, a poor boy, who was selling goods from door to door to pay his way through school, found he had only one thin dime left, and he was hungry. He decided he would ask for a meal at the next house. However, he lost his nerve when a lovely young woman opened the [...]
Of the many interactions I had with my mother those many years ago, one stands out with clarity. I remember the occasion when mother sent me to the main road, about twenty yards away from the homestead, to invite a passing group of seasonal work-seekers home for a meal. She instructed me to take a [...]