Brooklyn Zen Center

Xin Xin Ming: Reversing the Light Reversing the light is looking. It is Xin being conscious of who we are, of what’s arising, of what’s going on. It is the clarity of the witnessing of our being.

Those of us who come to this practice, we set aside a lot of time to practice, to try to tame our brains, to try bringing ourselves with some kind of alignment with the universe and emptiness, to try to find the source of our true Buddha nature – not even knowing what it looks like, really. Sometimes struggling to let go of the forms and practices and things that we come to lean on to keep o...

In every situation where there’s an impulse to do something and the mind is still and that falls away—that, by definition, is freedom.

Living from a heart of service clarifies the interconnectedness that is the truth of reality, which is why the embodiment of it over time clarifies delusion and leads to liberation and awakening.

To be free, be absolutely still.

Our relationship to our ancestors is complicated because we may have ancestors that engaged in violence, we may ancestors where one group of the ancestors actually treated the other group of the ancestors badly. We may have difficulty honoring ancestors, even though they have given us everything.

We have to take seriously the vows of the precepts, we have to speak them often – again and again.

We are healing ten thousand years, transforming ten thousand years. We are working through this relational suffering that has shaped my isolation, my disconnection, and my individualism.

When we come together, with all the trauma bodies in the room, it’s not just me, it’s not just Ian, it’s not  just us – it’s all of the ancestors, all the people that came before us.

When we return to our breath one of the things we are doing is we are returning to our relationship with all things.

Bring your attention to your heart area. How does it feel, to give, this moment, to ourselves, completely to ourselves? Wherever you are, with your thoughts and feelings, painful or joyous… how is it to give, completely, to what we are feeling at this time?

For Dogen, that dropping away of body and mind that he considers awakening, is the dropping away of that center of experience.

It is often spoken about that this meditation, this sitting, is a practice to meet our own death.

In some ways, being in conversation is the only thing we can do — one long groundless conversation. That’s this life.

I have seen this happen, when some tinny little thing will happen in my relationship and the intensity of the response is so tremendous because it is connected to a whole stream of unforgiven, unnamed, unfelt pain.

How do we live in this world? From where do we respond? Are we in touch enough with the place of the heart so that we can speak to a roommate that is difficult for us from a place of openness, from a place from where we don’t disconnect?

None of us are good. None of us are bad. And we are all going to die.

I don’t have to wait for gratitude to happen to me. There are opportunities to practice it now and let it fluoresce in the heart.

How do we get back in contact with those possibilities for us to live in a playful, creative, connected, curious, courageous way?

Maybe we don’t want to even recognize that we are in pain. We are still refusing to recognize how much we are all in pain and how much the world is in pain. But when we can begin to hear the pain that is being expressed through our bodies, we begin to melt, we begin to mourn and grief that which created the pain. And we’re flowing again.

What is at stake? What is at stake for ourselves? What is at stake in my life? What is at stake when I resist? What is at stake when I insist on separation? What is at stake when I don’t know what to do? What is at stake when I am confusing myself purposely? All the time, whatever is going on, in terms of my intention – what is at stake?

As our lives come into being, as we become, we learn about sickness, old age and death. It becomes life, loss, gain, or what we see as gain and loss. And what we do with it, in terms of how we create our own suffering from those changes that happen, from the life that happens.

Zazen is a way I would offer to open to relationality and to open to spaciousness in a full life.

We are afraid to break open, afraid to cry. And that is exactly what my invitation is. Go hear stories, be in community. It’s not just about right and wrong and seing our responsibility. It’s about grief.

We can’t acknowledge impermanence in the world if we can’t acknowledge it in ourselves. And it’s frightening.