Yesterday afternoon, in the middle of one of my Framingham State classes, one of my students suddenly jolted upright in her seat. “There’s a bug,” she gasped, waving her hands before composing herself and giving me a look that said carry on, please.
I didn’t see the bug that caused the fuss, but it reminded me of the crane flies my students and I had seen this time last year. As I gleefully described the palm-sized bugs we’d seen in the classroom across the hall from the one where I teach this semester, my student shot me another look that said spare me the details.
Hoarded Ordinaries 
Apr 27, 2024 at 2:45 am
It was a book on Zen monastic life that I’d read years ago… I can’t even remember the title. It was from the perspective of an American monk who’d gone to Japan for further training in his order. He knew some Japanese, and in one passage, he recalled how the monks at the temple dealt with creepie-crawlies that invaded the temple’s always-open space: they’d pick the creature up, carry it to the front, and flick it in a gentle parabola onto the temple’s grass while shouting, “Be happy!”
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Apr 28, 2024 at 7:02 pm
Years ago while on retreat at the Diamond Hill Zen Monastery in Rhode Island, I found a gray tree frog on the altar in the main Dharma room, and I caught him in a yogurt container and liberated him outside. So yes, catch-and-release is a venerable spiritual practice. :-)
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