Notes for a talk at Stone Creek Zen Center today: Two things I always wonder after I give a Zen talk are: was it too personal and therefore too narrow, and did I answer the question? To get the personal part over with, the life context for this talk is
This post is based on a talk first given at Hartford Street Zen Center on June 2 of this year and then revised for Stone Creek Zen Center on August 26. This is the first time I’ve given substantially the same talk twice. Usually I’d find it boring
“We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things…. Choose a place where you won’t do very much harm and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.” – E.M. Forster Bodhisattvas, or
In The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo, Sawaki Roshi describes riding down a mineshaft in an elevator: “For a while, I thought the elevator was going down very fast. Then I started to feel as if it were going up. I shone my headlight on the shaft and realized the
Recently I went to the hospital for a test that involved applying electrical current to my nerves and muscles to assess their function. I was double-booked for this appointment, so I had to wait a while for the technician. The assistant checked my vital signs, finding my blood pressure and
For Al Tribe A fundamental tenet of Buddhism (and science) is that nothing can be lost from the world: life and death are one continuous flow of form into other forms. In our blood are minerals that once were rock, observed poet Lorine Niedecker. Rock and water flow in our
“When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of
“Free your mind and your ass will follow.” — George Clinton I once lived with a husky puppy in a house with a picket fence. As he grew, he displayed the independence typical of his breed, and an impressive way of leaping vertically into the air before pouncing on things visible
One of the hardest things to do is believe in something all the way. This is true of reality, religion, life, relationships, and alternative medical treatments. Many things are partly true, with their opposites often equally true. Most human motivations are dazzlingly mixed. Choosing things and people to believe in
“The most solid comfort is the thought that the business of one’s life is to help in some small way to reduce the sum of…degradation and misery on the face of this beautiful earth.” — Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) The business of one’s life is a very
My teacher, Shohaku Okumura, was supporting his zazen and translation work with traditional Buddhist begging practice (takuhatsu) on the streets of Osaka when a boy, about 10 years old, came up to him as he stood in his robes, holding out his bowl, and said, “You want money, don’t
Toilet, Point Reyes I’ve been practicing zen for two decades now, and in honor of this anniversary, I wanted to write about how I got started. I used to do black-and-white photography and built a darkroom in my house. A photographer friend came over sometimes to use the darkroom,