or "Why You Don’t Need a Zen Master to Whack You with a Bamboo Stick!"

 It’s true! Some Zen Masters sneak up behind their quietly meditating students and whack them across the shoulders with bamboo sticks! Why?

The purpose of this seeming bizarre procedure is to give students practice in meeting the unwelcome and unexpected in life without getting hooked by pain and surprise into automatic reactivity - which, as we all know only too well, usually makes matters worse!

Perhaps life in monasteries is sufficiently trigger-free to require this - though my conversations with a number of former monastics strongly suggests otherwise - but the rest of us definitely don't. Life provides “bamboo sticks” aplenty!

A new way of seeing...

The Path of Joy is a way of orienting to life which recognizes that and gives us a way of living - a perspective and a set of practices to bring our lives back into balance, serenity and, yes - joy!