Calculus, Arithmetic, and Other Poems on Mindfulness

What if the area under a curve could teach you how to love, and counting your breath could move your whole world?

In Calculus, Arithmetic, and Other Poems on Mindfulness, Mark Zilkoski does something rare: he turns the language of mathematics into a spiritual practice. Across these poems, an asymptote becomes a meditation on intimacy, imaginary numbers open a door that changes everything, and Newton's third law reveals itself as karma in action.

Rooted in years of Zen practice and contemplative medicine, and shaped by the honest work of recovery, this collection moves between the meditation cushion and the Montana big sky, between the Bodhi tree and the Book of Job. Zilkoski writes about impermanence and aging, gratitude and grief, self-compassion, and the courage to stop arguing with reality with a clarity that resonates whether you come to it through Buddhism, Christianity, mindfulness, or simply a love of the elegant proof.

For readers of Mary Oliver, David Whyte, and Jane Hirshfield who also happen to love a good equation here is a book that finds the infinite in the ordinary, and the ordinary in the infinite.