Jun Po Denis Kelly Roshi sits across from me on a rainy morning in Massachusetts in 2009, a black hood draped over his head. We are on the porch of an old lake home, overlooking a small stand of trees and then, through an opening in the underbrush, water. We are both holding steaming cups [...]

The little boy’s hands were splayed out in front of him, gripping the floor. Overhead the springs of a bed touched the top of his head. He peered past his own chubby fingers, looking through the gap of the bed and the hardwood floor, his instincts having taken him to a place where he might [...]

Denis Kelly was about to commit ritual suicide. He was sitting on the spotless hardwood floor of a friend’s beach house, his feet tucked onto the top thigh of the opposite leg in full lotus position.

The two old German gurus had a tearful and beautiful reunion. They utterly forgot about Marlowe and Kelly, who spent a few days meditating and enjoying the scenery, while avoiding snakes and swatting mosquitoes. Kelly and Marlowe were walking one night after sunset. “It’s time for me to go, Marlowe,” Kelly said quietly. “The driver [...]

In the mid 1990s, Kelly and another dozen American Buddhist teachers were invited to visit the Dalai Lama in India. “You’re going to India?” Sandra asked him, amazed. “To meet the Dalai Lama, personally?” Kelly looked at the invitation in his hands. “Well, guess it’s time to go and see dad,” he said with a [...]

In the winter of 2007–2008, I was involved in a very intense and challenging relationship. Although we cared deeply for each other, we also fought harder and more frequently than in any relationship I’d had before (or since), which was greatly confusing to me. When Kelly was back in Boulder not long after the New [...]

When I was in my mid-twenties, I suddenly and inexplicably began to go blind in my right eye. A battery of tests conferred a likely diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, and at twenty-six I was looking at the possibility of blindness, incontinence, impotence, disability, and death. My world came into sharp focus, and through intensive changes [...]