I’m not sure if and when I should come to sanzen. What’s OK to ask and what isn’t? Sometimes I feel like I need more help in practice, that I don’t know what I’m doing, but it’s hard to figure out how to put it into words. I remember my first long retreat. On the …
(transcribed from the first day’s talk at the 2016 Face to Face January retreat where we were studying Dogen’s chapter “Kajo” or “Everyday Activity”) Homage to the Buddha, our original cook, Shakyamuni Homage to the Dharma, everyday rice and tea Homage to the Sangha, those awakened to rice and tea How fitting that our founder’s …
In the blue sky a winter goose cries. The mountains are bare; nothing but falling leaves. Twilight: returning along the lonely village path Alone, carrying an empty bowl. Foolish and stubborn – what day can I rest? Lonely and poor, this life. Twilight: I return from the village Again carrying an empty bowl. …
Birth is the right-now-ness of undivided activity. Undivided activity is birth in its immediacy. ~ Eihei Dogen in Zenki Our sitting group recently moved to a new yoga studio in the heart of the city. A constant stream of cars, buses, and trucks rumble along Oak Street, a stone’s throw from our cushions. Meanwhile, bands …
The following is excerpted from recent talks in Eugene & Corvallis Neither Here nor There An airport is nowhere which is not something generally noticed by those inside it yet some unnamed person in the past deliberately planned it to be there and now you are spending time there unknown time again because of something …
Death is a time of reflection like no other. On March 15, at what I imagine to have been some overwhelming moment of despair when being in this world seemed too much for him, our dharma friend Ross Gensei Morris took his own life. He was 37. We had lost touch these last few years, but in the early days of practice, he was a dear brother.
In Zen, there is only one way to truly awaken and that is to awaken in the context of relationship. Despite all the Buddhist iconography of a singular individual sitting in meditation, there is no enlightened being whose enlightenment ends at the boundary of their own skin. We awaken through relationship, within relationship, because of …
When water solidifies, it is harder than a diamond. Who can crack it? When water melts, it is gentler than milk. Who can destroy it? Do not doubt that these are the characteristics water manifests. You should reflect on the moment when you see the water of the ten directions as the water of the …
The Ninth Grave Precept Do not indulge anger, cultivate equanimity. In the realm of the selfless Dharma, not contriving reality for the self is the precept of not indulging anger. Not advancing, not retreating, not real, not empty. There is a brilliant sea of clouds. There is a dignified sea of clouds. Last week at …
How amazing is this simple practice of Zen retreat we call sesshin — to slow way way down, to calmly see our shadows and our brightness, to experience a range from grief to harmony — all gifts of sitting still and mindful activity. My teacher, Kyogen, joined us at the end of this last retreat. …
