Earth Dreams: Zen Buddhism and the Soul of the World

Greetings Friends, I have been reflecting on the art of living a life of attention and intention. This is an art form I have dedicated much of my life to, and one that continues to bear fruit as I continue to practice it. What is the art of living? How is attention an art? Last night I was walking home with my partner from meditation, it was dusk. The fire flies had just started to flutter about,...

Greetings Friends, Happy Solstice! Here in the northern hemisphere it is the longest day of the year, one of two days of the year where the sun appears to stand still on the horizon. I feel interested in that teaching, here in what sometimes feels like the most active or busiest of seasons—what is stillness? where is stillness? What does it look like to let your inner sun rest, or to recognize tha...

Greetings Friends, Happy New Moon! This past week we explored the Hidden Lamp Case 21: Linji Meets the Old Woman Driving the Ox. Linji Meets the Old Woman Driving the Ox China, ninth century Master Linji Yixuan went to see Master Bingdian An. On the way he met an old woman driving an ox in a field. Linji asked her, “Which way is the road to Bingdian?” The woman hit the ox with her stick and said,...

Greetings Friends, We are moving through this wonderful collection of encounters with Buddhist Women found in the book The Hidden Lamp for our Summer Read . This week we met Keizan Zenji and Mokufu Sonin engaged in the dialogue below: Hidden Lamp Case 20: Sonin’s Shadeless Tree Master Keizan Jokin asked the nun Mokufu Sonin, “The winter is coming to an end and the springtime is arriving. There is...

Greetings and Happy Early Summer! We are continuing our Summer Read of the Hidden Lamp again this year. Every week we will explore a different koan story from the collection. If you would like to follow along, check out the calendar page for up to date information on the koan selections. On Monday night during the live online meditation event, I will give a dharma talk themed around the reading fo...

Greetings Friends, I am returning from the Light of the Ancestors Sesshin at Great Vow Zen Monastery and feeling deep gratitude for this path of practice and all the people who have walked this path— discovering freedom and love in their own lives. Over the past few months the Monday night online Sangha through ZCO has been exploring The Mountains and Rivers Sutra by Dogen Zenji . In wrapping up o...

Greetings Friends, I’m a lover of poetry. A sometimes writer of poems. A sometimes reader. Poetry for me is more of a way of being, a willingness to be carried across by metaphor, to be turned inside out by image, to sit in the silence, to not know and to be transformed through the art of attention. The best poetry is wordless attention. And, also. Some poems really act as an arrow, straight to th...

One of the figures that we encounter in the Zen literature is the stone woman. In the Precious Mirror Samadhi we find her dancing, in another story she calls us back from our dream of the world. In the study of the Mountains and Rivers Sutra, she shows up early on when Dogen quotes Furong Daokai. “The green mountains are always moving, a stone woman gives birth to a child at night.” He then commen...

Greetings Friends, Happy April Fool’s Day! Last week I had the opportunity to co-facilitate a Zen sesshin in the mountains of West Virginia at Saranam Retreat Center . Sesshin, a zen-style silent meditation retreat which translates as touching the heart-mind, has been a huge part of my adult life. While living at Great Vow Zen Monastery , I practiced sesshin together in sangha for a week every mon...

I will be joining the Mud Lotus Sangha in West Virginia for our first sesshin of the year. Sesshin is now often translated as a Zen-style meditation retreat. But the words meditation and retreat are mis-leading. It is in its truest sense a practice of recognizing our true nature, of touching, encountering the heart-mind that abides everywhere. We are going to the mountains of West Virginia to prac...

Greetings Friends, This past weekend I had the opportunity to join the Pause Meditation community for a deep dive into practice around the theme of the beginner’s mind. In the Zen tradition we celebrate the beginner’s mind. For it is both the unborn buddha mind— our original mind which is always right here and our curious, open mind that is constantly being born anew. So very much like the energy...

I wanted to share with you a profound, beautiful and somewhat unsettling teaching from the Diamond Sutra. I would say its unsettling precisely because it is so radical, it touches something true that we know at the core of who we are, and it also reminds us that everything we think we are or think the world is —is not the whole story, our thinking inevitably misses something. we are inconceivable...

dust returns to dust earth to earth mind always at home in itself where does it return? This past week I was reflecting on the 6th Chan Ancestor, Huineng and his encounter with a verse from the diamond sutra. Huineng lost his father early in life, and supported himself and his mother by selling firewood. On one occasion, he was selling firewood to a customer, and someone passed by chanting the wor...

A lotus blooming in the fire is an image that comes from the Zen tradition. And before I write further on the symbolism of the image or the dharma teachings it evokes—I would like to invite us to just sit with the image of a lotus blooming in the fire. For a moment, let yourself sense, imagine or feel into this image. Notice what you see, feel, hear, experience as you attempt to connect with the i...

Greetings Friends, I have been reflecting on one of the simplest and perhaps most profound teachings in the Buddhist tradition— the teaching of our extra-ordinary heart. Our extra-ordinary heart is the aspect of our being that doesn’t die, and isn’t born. That isn’t dependent on us but is a deep refuge and resource—one that we know and rely on all the time. One that we also see demonstrated and em...

Greetings Friends, In the heartbreak, pain, confusion of this moment. I wish to remember together the Way of the Bodhisattva. The image or archetype of the Bodhisattva resonates deep in the hearts of those oriented towards love for this beautiful and broken world. For a Bodhisattva is motivated to relieve suffering and pain, as they work towards a liberation for all beings. This is the spiritual w...

New Years Blessings! And wow, it feels like its off to a chaotic start. In times like these, I find it vital to ground myself in this bodhisattva vow. To remember what is always reliable, no matter what circumstance or situation I find myself in. I would like to share a koan that has been close to my heart as we began 2026. Mumonkan Case 46: Stepping from the Top of the Pole Sekiso asked: How do y...

When faith and mind are not separate. And not separate are mind and faith, this is beyond all words, all thoughts. If you have been reading these posts this season, you may have noticed I have been writing about Faith. Writing, reflecting, wondering, wandering through the many expressions of Faith as I returned again and again to this practice poem, Affirming Faith in Mind . There is something bot...

Tis’ the season for story-telling. I don’t know about you, but there are certain stories I can hear over and over again. These stories often have mythic and archetypal elements, that seem to resonate with the poetics of the soul. In the Zen Buddhist tradition the first week of December is the week we commemorate/remember/celebrate the Buddha’s awakening. We do this with our bodies. Sitting retreat...

I want to return to this profound poem we are studying for the autumn practice period—Affirming Faith in Mind. If mind does not discriminate, all things are as they are as one. To go to this mysterious source—frees us from all entanglements. When all is seen with equal mind, to our self-nature we return. This single mind goes right beyond all reasons and comparison. This poem is about Trust in Min...

One stanza from the Trust in Heart poem says: Cut off all useless thoughts and words and there’s nowhere you cannot go. Returning to the root itself, you’ll find the meaning of all things. If you pursue appearances you overlook the primal source. Awakening is to go beyond both emptiness as well as form. I appreciate the clarity of these instructions. Here we find an invitation to practice with our...

Calling all you hungry hearts Everywhere through endless time You who wander, you who thirst I offer you, this Bodhi Mind Calling all you hungry spirits All the lost and the left behind Gather round and share this meal Your joy and your sorrow, I make it mine. —Kanromon Giving awakens the unbounded heart. What in our lives isn’t already shared? If we open to all the inter-relationships that make u...

I am currently spending some time with this beautiful teaching poem, Affirming Faith in Mind as part of Autumn Ango through ZCO. As I was reading it this week, I thought about how would I summarize this teaching in one sentence. I came up with: Everything’s Included on the Path! Everything is included. Maybe it seems too simple, too obvious. And yet, how often are we looking outside of our experie...

Deep Autumn Greetings Fellow Travelers of the Way! As autumn becomes us, I have been contemplating darkness and the creaturely way my body seems to respond to the cold-dark. Maybe you too feel a little more intimate with the night and the dark creature of the body at this time of year. Sometimes I feel, and I know others feel, that we are living in dark times—and whether this feels true for you— I...

Polarization & Play Polarization (def)— division into two sharply contrasting groups, sets of opinions or beliefs. When we stop seeing similarity or what is shared, but only see difference. When difference becomes a threat. Play (def)— to engage in something for enjoyment or for sport. Be cooperative. Try something out. I want to say, we are living in a polarized time. But I find myself questionin...