ZEN Meditation Class

08/01/2026

What can ten simple Zen drawings from 800 years ago teach us about living today?

More than you might imagine.

The Ten Oxherding Pictures are one of Zen Buddhism's most profound visual teachings—a timeless map of the human journey from distraction and searching to clarity, compassion, and returning to the world with purpose.

This isn't just a history of Zen. It's a personal reflection on how these ancient images shaped my own practice and continue to offer wisdom for navigating our increasingly complex world.

If you've ever felt that something essential was missing, this essay may resonate with you.

📖 Read the full story:
https://open.substack.com/pub/vazkenkalayjian/p/the-ten-oxherding-pictures-e351fff36188?r=1ow967&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

If it speaks to you, I'd love to hear which of the ten stages you're living today.

08/01/2026

At sixty-nine, I stopped asking who I might have been in another life.
I started asking a more difficult question:
What am I still repeating in this one?
My new story begins with Joan Pancoe, a modern mystic and psychic therapist who entered my life when I was twenty-six. It moves through past-life regression, a haunting memory from Arabia, the mechanics of karma, and the strange ways unfinished patterns continue beneath changing circumstances.
This is not an argument for reincarnation.
It is a story about responsibility, repetition, and what it may take to finally wake up inside our own lives.
Read Catching the Ox at Sixty-Nine:
https://open.substack.com/pub/vazkenkalayjian/p/catching-the-ox-at-sixty-nine?r=1ow967&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
If it speaks to you, please share it with someone who may be asking the same questions.

07/30/2026

INNER FREEDOM
Professional life asks us to build a recognizable identity. We develop expertise, authority, reputation, style, and a carefully managed public image. The real danger begins when the identity we created to serve our work starts controlling the person behind it.
I first met Bill Murray at NBC, when Saturday Night Live was one of the projects I helped promote. Years later, I encountered him in New York Gurdjieff Work circles. His unusual neutrality offered a compelling lesson in leadership and creative life: occupy the role completely, but do not become imprisoned by it.
My new essay connects Bill Murray, branding, Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way, Lost in Translation, and Groundhog Day to explore attention, non-identification, and the difficult work of remaining inwardly free while operating inside highly visible systems.
Read the full essay on Medium or Substack. Become a paid Substack subscriber to support independent long-form writing on consciousness, creativity, leadership, technology, and the Work.
Medium:
https://kalayjian.medium.com/bill-murray-gurdjieff-and-the-art-of-not-being-captured-a2318fba0ba2?sharedUserId=kalayjian

Substack:
https://open.substack.com/pub/vazkenkalayjian/p/bill-murray-gurdjieff-and-the-art?r=1ow967&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

05/08/2026

What if the most dangerous machine is not artificial intelligence?

What if it is the unconscious human being using it?

Gurdjieff’s phrase still cuts:

**“Man is a machine.”**

Not because human beings are worthless, but because we often live by reaction, habit, imitation, fear, vanity, and borrowed opinions while calling it freedom.

We say “I,” but many different selves speak through us.

In the age of AI, this becomes even more urgent. The outer machine now studies the inner machine: our clicks, fears, desires, outrage, and attention.

My new essay, **Part III. Man the Machine**, explores Gurdjieff’s diagnosis of mechanical man, waking sleep, inner fragmentation, buffers, and the possibility of conscious work.

👉 Friend link to the story on Medium:

[https://kalayjian.medium.com/man-the-machine-8435f9ad03d5?sk=428fadfffa88c5ceb6208c655382f15a](https://kalayjian.medium.com/man-the-machine-8435f9ad03d5?sk=428fadfffa88c5ceb6208c655382f15a)

05/06/2026

🔥 Some books comfort. Others transform.

I wrote about why popular spiritual classics like *Be Here Now* and *The Power of Now* can soothe the mind — but rarely build real consciousness.

This piece explores what Gurdjieff, Zen, and Dzogchen reveal about true inner work — the kind that requires effort, attention, and honesty, not just ideas.

If you’ve ever felt the difference between feeling better… and actually waking up, this is for you.

👉 Read the full essay on Medium:
[https://kalayjian.medium.com/the-spiritual-books-everyone-loves-and-why-i-had-to-burn-them-d544b79a2b3e?sk=49e41fcd992eb0ae4293740b826c61a0](https://kalayjian.medium.com/the-spiritual-books-everyone-loves-and-why-i-had-to-burn-them-d544b79a2b3e?sk=49e41fcd992eb0ae4293740b826c61a0)

04/17/2026

What does spiritual practice mean when death is no longer theoretical?
My new Medium story, “Tomorrow I Will Be Better,” begins in O-An, a small cabin in the woods at Dai Bosatsu Monastery. Years ago, I sat there on solo retreats, meditating, writing, tending the stove, and looking at a pencil drawing I had made in 1992 for Donge’s 49-day memorial ceremony after his death.
Donge was a Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk at the monastery where I studied. He built O-An, tended a beautiful garden, struggled with Zen’s Three Barriers, and faced illness with warmth, humor, and startling humanity.
Read the full story on Medium:
https://kalayjian.medium.com/tomorrow-i-will-be-better-1acc8c88366f?sk=22d6175319901ca63f9c0903ad6209c8

In O-An, the cabin built by a dying Zen monk, I sat beneath my old drawing of Donge and remembered the man who turned illness, gardening…

03/13/2026

03/06/2026

“You don’t have a soul yet.
But you can build one.”
A Persian poem.
55 years of meditation.
And a simple experiment that reveals who really runs your mind.
Read the full 🔗 Story:
https://medium.com//you-dont-have-a-soul-yet-00b01f672aab

If this sparks something in you, share it before the clay hardens.

02/17/2026

Zen koans aren’t riddles. They’re psychological instruments designed to collapse the thinking mind.
This piece explores Rinzai Zen, power, discipline, and where awakening must meet accountability.
Read the full story on Medium 👉 https://medium.com//my-zen-teacher-changed-my-life-then-i-had-to-walk-away-ce9fa857531a

Rinzai Zen, koans, power, and awakening — how spiritual authority shapes minds, breaks illusions, and demands ethical clarity.