Never Something Else: Poems from the Eye of Zen

by Sensei Gregory Hosho Abels

In Zen, we begin where we are. The short poems in this collection encourage us to be at ease with what is before our eyes. To let go of notions such as large, small, human, non-human. To pay attention with gentle persistence over and over again.

The collection contains photographs that illustrate how we can connect to nature. The poems are easily accessible for people with little experience in Zen.

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“Not only is each poem a sparkling gem, but the act of reading them one at a time is a great teaching.”
-Roshi Nancy Mujo Baker,
Zen Master, Professor of Philosophy at Sarah Lawrence College

“A wonderful, life-enhancing experience. These poems help me in my personal effort to live in the present moment. A blessing. I read them over and over.”
-Diane Kagan,
Actress/Playwright

“Reading the poems, one concentrates on the reality of the moment and is freed from imagining a past or future time. The verses celebrate the mystery of the passing moment, which, like rain falling drop by drop, will be repeated ‘never, never, never.”
-Roshi Robert Jinsen Kennedy, S.J.
Zen master, Professor of Theology, Psychologist, Author.

“Wonderful insights and meditations. A collection for both the initiated and uninitiated- with lots to ponder. To turn each page is to open a small jewel box. The collection should create gentle ripples.”
-Laurence Carr,
Playwright, Poet, Teacher at SUNY New Paltz.

Gregory Hosho Abels is a Zen Teacher (Sensei) in the Soto White Plum Lineage of Taizan Maizumi Roshi, a Dharma Heir of Roshi Robert Jinsen Kennedy and Co-resident Teacher of Still Mind Zendo in Manhattan with his wife, Sensei Janet Jiryu Abels. He has studied poetry with Jean Valentine, J. D. McClatchy, Stuart Friebert and Debra Weinstein. For 50 years, he has enjoyed a career as an actor, stage director and master teacher of acting. His dharma name, Hosho, loosely translated means, ‘Voice of the Dharma’. He lives in Greenwich Village and Seven Meadows Farm in the Hudson Valley, where the photographs you see in this book were taken and where many of these poems were written.