WHEN I ARRIVED at Buddhadharma eight years ago, I was stepping between two worlds. For twelve years, I had been living in Japan, where I trained as a Soto Zen monk. Not all those years were in the monastery, but I was rarely far from it.
So when I first sat down at my desk as deputy editor, I was steeped in a very particular dharma, one that smelled like incense and had the black sheen of wood floors that had, like my forehead on the ground as I bowed, like robes wrapped around me.
