This collection of philosophical essays by a student of Zen Buddhism synthesizes aspects of Western culture and science with the author’s insights from his Zen practice, revealing understandings into both. The book discusses a wide and provocative range of topics including Zen and The Lord of the Rings trilogy; Zen and artificial intelligence; Zen and the Postmodern condition; Zen and Christian afterlife; Zen and the problematic questions of free will and morality; and Zen and the nature of consciousness, among others. This book is a stimulating and off-beat philosophical tour that will challenge how the reader looks at things.

This is a collection of short narratives of some of my life’s encounters with people, both socially and in sports events. Life cannot exist without food and drink and so naturally, a few stories on bread, cheese and the amber nectar get an airing as well as my favorite pub. Work and play feature greatly in our lives and I have included some of my contributions, hopefully positive ones, from my life’s travails. For most people their pets are very important to their well being so our now deceased, but amazing Silly Billy the cat, gets his own story. The reader can select a story in the order that catchers their interest. Enjoy.

Over the past too many decades I’ve been watching the world turn every which way it can and shaking my head in wonder. However, I didn’t just wonder, I wrote a lot of my thoughts down and they were published in a number of different newspapers. Those random thoughts ranged from family life to current affairs and that most easily teased slice of life called ‘work’. My musings are often humorous, it’s hard not to laugh at our neighbors, as Jane Austen remarked two hundred years ago, and progress does often make things worse, as Agatha Christie commented only a hundred years ago. Sometimes, however, my musings weren’t intended to be humorous but even then they were not meant to be unpleasant, there’s enough of that in all the other things you’ll watch and read out there. So, if you’re in the mood for whiling away a very short span of time reading how someone from a different planet (or so I’m often told) sees the world, this short book is where you need to be.