Hermit Scriptures is a personal site about Buddhism, meditation, and the contemplative life. It is written by one person, from practice rather than from scholarship, and it is meant for anyone who wants to actually sit down and do this.
How I got here
I found Buddhism more than twenty years ago and felt connected to it immediately. Something in it was recognizable straight away, and the two decades since have mostly been a matter of catching up with that first recognition.
I practice in the Theravada tradition. I am a lay practitioner, not a monk and not a teacher, and nothing here is written from any authority beyond having done the practice for a long time and paid attention while doing it.
Thailand and the Forest Tradition
I have lived in Thailand for more than ten years, and have kept myself close to the Forest Tradition throughout — the lineage of Ajahn Chah and the monasteries that continue it.
Beyond that I am simply an enthusiast of learning, contemplation and meditation, in roughly that order on a good day.
What this site is
Hermit Scriptures is the English edition of Escrituras Eremitas, which I have been writing in Spanish since 2014.
It is not a mirror of it. It is a curated selection — the pieces that carry over well, rewritten in English rather than translated word for word, with new titles and in some cases restructured. Some of the Spanish material is deliberately not here: back-translations of other teachers’ English work, and quote compilations that were never mine to reproduce.
New writing now happens in both languages. Where an article exists in both, you will find a link to its counterpart at the foot of the page.
What you will find
Practical meditation instruction, mostly — how to begin, how to sit without wrecking your knees, and how long to do it for. Alongside that, some Buddhist fundamentals, and essays that are closer to thinking out loud than to teaching.
What you will not find is anyone promising that this will fix your life in eight weeks. The practice is slower and more ordinary than that, and considerably more worthwhile.
The name
Ryokan is a pen name. I would rather the writing be read on its own terms than attached to a biography, and the practice does not become more or less useful depending on whose name is at the top. Everything here about my own experience is accurate; only the name is withheld.
Getting in touch
Corrections, questions, and disagreements are all welcome at [email protected].
Comments are closed across the site. That is a decision about signal, not about conversation — email reaches me and gets a reply.