The master held up a glass and said: Someone gave me this glass. It holds my water admirably and it glistens in the sunlight. I touch it and it rings! One day the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. I know this glass is already broken so I enjoy it…incredibly. — Ajahn Chah Subato This collection of songs has taken shape in my mind over the last eight or ten years. They contain vivid, sometimes stark lyrics about the way our lives unfold, marked by impermanence, love and loss, fragility and toughness, joy and depression, friendship, attention, and — of course — the blues. Because impermanence, the actual and inherent brokenness of all things, of all of us, is a central teaching of Buddhism, which I have been practicing for thirty years, I have been thinking this is a “buddhistic” album. Not as an explicitly religious expression — though several songs touch on this — but in the sense of our common human experience of suffering and of freedom. That’s as close as I can get to the message here. As has been the case for fifty years, I am blessed with musical friends of astonishing skill and depth. We have shared so many songs, tunes, talk, meals, and miles that when it comes to making music it really is play, not work. The stellar cast of musicians includes: Jon Sholle, Chad Manning, Eric & Suzy Thompson, Sandy Rothman, Kate Brislin, Bill Evans, Yassir Chadly, and Charlie Wilson.