Earth Dreams: Zen Buddhism and the Soul of the World

As the calendar year comes to an end, I offer this poem as a re-write of a text that one of my Sanghas has been studying. The text is called The Eight Realizations of Great Beings, one story says it was one of the last teachings given by the Buddha before passing into PariNirvana. I re-wrote the teaching as a way of distilling and remembering the practices we did together during our Autumn Ango. T...

While sitting under the bodhi tree through the night, Shakyamuni Buddha saw the morning star, was enlightened and said: I, together with the great earth and all sentient beings, simultaneously attain the way. In the Zen tradition today is Bodhi day. The day that we commemorate the Buddha’s awakening and celebrate our buddha nature. Last night, locally, people from the Zen Columbus Sangha, Mud Lotu...

What do you want? What do you really want? The cyber Monday sales have been flashing items, workshops, experiences that we could possibly want, that we should want, that we somehow need. In one of my Sanghas we are exploring a text called The Eight Realizations of Great Beings . This past week we have been exploring the nature of desire . The invitation to explore is part of what I love about the...

Greetings Friends! In these last few weeks I have been reflecting a lot on the story of Matchig Labdron and the roots of a practice known as Chod, a practice that works directly with fear through generosity. I want to share some of these reflections about fear, generosity and the awakened feminine. I also want to share that Jogen and I are facilitating our next session of Sky+Rose on Sunday Dec. 1...

It’s beautiful to be taking refuge together in all the various places we find ourselves. Ah. Here we are. Survivors of the election. Spiritual warriors attempting to live a vow-fueled life. Hearts turned towards love larger then fear. Even if fear is rattling in your gut, or anger is raging strong in your body or numbness has you hiding out. Whatever you are feeling is welcome. Whatever you are fe...

A couple weeks ago I heard a sound near our back screendoor, as if an animal were wrestling with a large bag of cat food. I assumed my cat Sasha was trying to break into her bag of treats, and noted the sound but didn’t respond right away. A few minutes later, the sound long faded, I went to check on Sasha to see how far she got with trying to claw her way into her treat bag. As I approached the b...

As part of Autumn Ango with the Zen Community of Oregon, we are contemplating a text called the Eight Realizations of a Great Being. A text that some sources say is the last teaching that the Buddha gave. We are working with an interpretation by Thich Nhat Hanh edited by Hogen Bays, Roshi. I want to start this reflection with a poem that was read to me by another Zen Teacher, Daniel Terrango durin...

Since leaving the monastery a few years ago, I have become interested in how the ancient Zen teachers talked about the spiritual path. Language about the realizations that compose awakening are nested in the Zen chants that I would chant daily as a monastic, but we were so immersed in the continuous-ness of practice, that rarely would we stop and try to map out the territory.  We were living it, w...

I am just returning from my first in-person Zen sesshin here in Ohio. It was wonderful to practice the familiar rhythm of a silent, Zen-style meditation retreat so close to the place I currently call home. We practiced as the winds and rain from Hurricane Helene blew through South Western Ohio felling tree branches and power lines on the property of the Jesuit Spiritual Center where we were sittin...

A thousand times at least I asked my Guru to give Nothingness a name. Then I gave up. What name can you give to the source from which all names have sprung? –Lal Ded Language has a trickster quality. At one moment it limits. We find ourselves hard pressed to find the word that captures a feeling, mind state or emotion. Other times, a single word can invoke so many meanings and associations that we...

We are emerging from the monthly return of the moon’s dark face—where from earth’s perspective the sun and moon appear to kiss, an aspect that astrologers refer to as a conjunction. In the Zen tradition, the moon cycles served as markers for the calendar year—with the new and full moons being opportunities for ritual and ceremony around atonement and renewal of vows. In my own life and practice, I...

Blue Cliff Record Case 39: The Golden Haired Lion A student asked Yunmen, “What is the pure and everlasting body of reality?” Yunmen said, “A fence of flowers and healing herbs.” The student asked, “What’s it like when I reach there?” Yunmen said, “A golden-haired lion!” I am landing back in Ohio after about two weeks visiting my old homes in Oregon, Great Vow Zen Monastery and Portland. I was at...

For whom do you bathe and make yourself beautiful? The cry of the cuckoo is calling you home; hundreds of flowers fall, yet her voice isn’t stilled; even deep in jumbled mountains, it’s calling clearly.      —Dongshan One way of appreciating this experience we call life is to see it through the eyes of devotion. Whether we are conscious of it or not our lives are woven together through simple, ord...

Our attention is a precious resource. We use it all the time, and so, might forget what a resource it is. Contemplative traditions throughout the ages recognized the preciousness of attention. And also recognized that if we don’t put in the effort to train our attention, our attention may get hijacked, scattered, frittered away by the thieves of time or thoughts of worry, disappointment, greed and...

With this and that I tried to keep the bucket together, and then the bottom fell out. Where the water does not collect, the moon does not dwell.—Chiyono This is the awakening poem of Chiyono, a Japanese Zen practitioner in the early 17th Century. The poem comes after a much longer story about this person’s path of practice. In the story, Chiyono has a sincere aspiration to practice the dharma, but...

Between aspiration, practice, enlightenment and nirvana there is not a moment’s gap. Continuous Practice is the Circle of the Way. —Dogen Zenji In Dharma practice we are invited to reflect on our view—the beliefs that rest at the root of our hearts and influence how we perceive, make sense of and respond to our lives. For what we think and believe has a deep effect on what we see and perceive. Our...

This talk is part of a series of talks exploring the Engaged Buddhist Precepts of Thich Nhat Hanh and the Order of Interbeing. In this talk we explore how to practice with the suffering we encounter in ourselves, others and the world—recognizing that our suffering isn’t separate from the world’s suffering. The concept of the World Wound comes from Joan Halifax Roshi’s book A Fruitful Darkness, quo...

In the Buddhist tradition we are invited to look into the nature of suffering. To do this we have to be willing to turn towards it. While this may seem obvious—we all have habits + behaviors for avoiding what is right in front of us, especially if what is right in front of us is painful, unpleasant or uncomfortable. For even a single-celled organism moves away from a painful stimulus. And yet, wha...

The path of Zen meditation is a path grounded in love and the deep realization of our shared being, we often call these two aspects of the path—wisdom and compassion. During this Podcast Episode we meditate on the koan from Yunmen. What is Zen? An Appropriate Response. This question and response runs deep. An appropriate response isn’t something we find once and for all, and then live by it. It is...

Greetings! I am sending this Podcast Dharma Talk that I recorded last Monday, after viewing the Total Solar Eclipse. Which was spectacular, really beyond words, eerie, beautiful, humbling, I was struck with a deep sense of awe and gratitude. Below is the written version of the Dharma Talk. The exploration inspired by the eclipse is an active contemplation of the koan, Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face Bu...

We are in the midst of eclipse season. And while it happens twice a year, many of us living in the US are living close to the zone of totality or traveling to a place that falls in the zone of totality. During this dharma talk I explore the Zen teachings of the dark/light. Included is exploration of practice of bowing or touching the earth, the Dark Night of the Soul and the Koan: Everyone has the...

I always consider it quite a blessing to have found my way to the Spiritual Path. I didn’t always feel this way. I remember early on in practice wishing that I could just be satisfied with the flow of everyday life—tv, movies, music, entertainment, a regular job. As an 18 year old, I wished that the urgency of my spiritual angst wasn’t so pressing. That I could go back to normal. I’ve heard this s...

We explore the confusion or doubt that can come in when we habits return after having a taste of awakening. We also talk about how the mind will often try to recreate the peak experience, and how to meet that inclination. The heart of this stage is a deepening of faith, an awakening of devotion for the path and perhaps even beginning to recognize that we can’t fall off the OX, we can’t possibly lo...

Greetings Friends, In the on-going exploration of the Ox-herding pictures, this podcast episode focuses on Kensho—the Japanese Zen Buddhist word for seeing into our true nature, which is the third of the ten ox-herding or bull-herding pictures. The image above is a bull painted in the Lascaux cave in France around 20k years ago. While maybe not as apparent to a modern person, the Ox and bull have...

The path of Awakening is sometimes referred to as the Great Unbinding and consists of un-learning our deeply conditioned habits of mind and perception in order to truly meet our Selves as we are— This is a recording from my free online Zen Meditation group that is hosted through the Zen Community of Oregon. All are welcome to join, we meet at 6P ET on Monday nights for a period of meditation follo...