I reached a crisis point in my life as I turned forty. Many problems, no solutions, and no clear way forward. I needed a path to peace — something steady, something real. With help, I found my way toward a spiritual solution, a way of living that offered clarity and calm.
And then I went to Hawaii.
Something opened in me there. My boyhood love of birding returned with full force, as if it had been waiting for me all along. I knew — without needing to think about it — that birding was where I could find peace of mind.
When I’m in the field, binoculars in hand, immersed in the outdoors and focused on what a bird is doing, my troubles disappear. They simply fall away. Back at home, I reflect on those moments and wonder how they fit into the rest of reality. Again, my troubles are nowhere to be found.
Birding and reflection have become my prayer and my meditation. This is where my contemplative path began.
I didn’t set out to become a student of Zen. I didn’t go looking for a philosophy or a system. What happened was simpler than that. As I tried to understand the peace I found in birding — the quieting of my mind, the way my troubles dissolved in the presence of a single bird — I needed words that matched the experience.
The language of Zen gave me those words.
Not the formal teachings, not the rituals, not the traditions. Just the vocabulary of attention, presence, and letting things be as they are. It was a way of describing what I already felt in the field: the stillness, the focus, the acceptance of whatever the day offered.
Zen didn’t change my birding. It helped me understand it.
It gave me a way to talk about the moments when a bird appears and everything else falls away — the moments when the world becomes simple, quiet, and whole.
Let me not beat around the bush. I am a trained professional scientist with advanced degrees and substantial publications in the open scientific literature. At one point in my career, I was also a university professor. At my core, I am both a student and a teacher.
I began an intensive study of Zen as a way of thinking more deeply about birding in my life. That study changed me. It gave me a new way to understand what was happening in the field — the quieting of the mind, the dissolving of troubles, the deep presence that arrives when a bird captures your full attention. Because Zen transformed my birding so profoundly, I feel a need to pass on what I have learned to others.
I have documented what I learned about Zen and how it improved my birding experience. That is what we are now calling Zen Birding. It is presented as a series of educational chapters — not as a religion, not as a way of life, but as a way of being present in the here and now with our feathered friends.
These chapters are simply the beginning — small openings into a way of seeing that has steadied me and deepened my connection to the birds I love. If you choose to walk this path with me, I hope it brings you the same clarity, presence, and quiet joy it has brought me.
