Press & Blog

The Atlantic's viral feature on meditation's "dark side" documents real harm — psychosis, dissociation, careers derailed by intensive practice. The reporting deserves to be taken seriously, but its framing doesn't. Drawing on the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures, the Yoga Sutras, and the Eightfold Path, this response argues meditation was never sold as relaxation, was never meant for solo practice without a qualified guide, and was never meant to be separated from the ethical traditio

Not a canonical list. Seven Zen books that have actually done work in Andrew H. Housley's practice over the years — Taisen Deshimaru's Ring of the Way, Kosho Uchiyama on Dogen, the plainspoken teachings of Kodo Sawaki, Peter Matthiessen's grief-soaked Himalayan travelogue The Snow Leopard, Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Camus's The Stranger, and John Fante's Ask the Dust. Some from squarely inside the tradition. Two by writers who never sat. All of them, over tim

Take what you need. Andrew H. Housley on the slow, surprisingly difficult Zen practice of taking only what is required — and noticing how much is already here. Five practices for daily life: embracing the present moment, simplifying material possessions, silencing the mind's noise, non-attachment, and finding beauty in the ordinary. With wisdom from Shunryu Suzuki, Dogen, Ikkyu, and Basho. A reflection on abundance, appreciation, and what becomes shareable once you discover y

Our culture hides the dying from the living and calls death a failure. Ram Dass called it the culminating adventure. On the spiritual work of making peace with what we can't control.