 Writings by Natalie Goldberg from the pages of the Shambhala Sun
Our January 2011 issue includes "Another New Year," a new piece from Natalie Goldberg, bestselling author of Writing Down the Bones; here you'll find all of her previous writing that has appeared in the magazine.
Just click any article's title to start reading. To view the contents of our January 2011 issue, click here.
Sitting still in the dark zendo at Upaya Zen Center and breathing with others is exactly what Natalie Goldberg needs. On this last night of the year, she wonders what this human life is all about.
Effort and longing, frailties and
aspirations—we're in this together says Natalie Goldberg, and it is so
much bigger than we are.
A season devoted to the koans of the
ancient Chinese Masters gave Natalie Goldberg a taste for the
stripped-down, naked truth of things. As she searched Minnesota for an
elusive rhinoceros, a simple truth revealed itself: I’m broken and I’m
free.
Natalie Goldberg recalls a time when the
bottom fell out of her life, when her place, purpose, and even her Zen
practice seemed groundless. Was that a problem or the very point?
“Dogen?” her Japanese friend said, “no one
understands him.” “Zen training?” she is warned, “too hard for a human
being.” Natalie Goldberg goes to Japan in search of real Zen, and finds
it on the shores of Lake Biwa. Her days at the monastery are just about
as tough as advertised, but at the end she reaches Almond Joy.
Natalie Goldberg moves
to Minnesota in winter to search for her late teacher, Dainin Katagiri
Roshi. Will she find him at the first sign of spring?
Natalie Goldberg’s classic Writing Down the Bones introduced
writing as a spiritual practice. She discusses Zen and the writer's
practice with author and Buddhist teacher Steve Hagen.
Natalie Goldberg remembers down-home days bringing Zen to the Plains.
"Pushing the dripping hair from my face,
the rain running down my cheeks, I speak to my old teacher. ‘I’m here.
It took me a while, but I made it.’ Natalie Goldberg visits the tomb of
her teacher Katagiri Roshi in Japan.
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