SokukoJi Buddhist Temple Monastery

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The most important thing you can do is train your mind so that you can see the conflicting emotions about what your own life is fundamentally about. Don’t get your understanding from anyone. It needs to come through your consciousness, your awareness. You will not be able to figure this out. You actually have to see it yourself, and it’s not going to be easy. As the Buddha said, "Life is suffering...

Classically, the parts of practice are the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. It’s pretty hard to do this unless you meet someone who has been doing this for awhile and has some clarity about what this is. Of these three, the very most important thing that I spent my time on as a student of the buddha’s dharma, and that I was introduced to by my teacher, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, was the sitting p...

When I say, "Don’t do 'something'," it’s not a command. It’s meant to help you question, through the action of awareness, whether you are doing that kind of thing. Bardo means gap or intermediate state. When your life comes to an end you have no touchstone at all. You don’t have this incredible physical form that anchors you into this dynamic where things look so intensely real: the bardo of this...

According to the Buddhadharma, there are three kinds of pain. The pain of pain is anything from a toothache to some kind of paranoia about what’s around the corner. Sometimes the most difficult kind of pain is emotional: mental anguish, anxiety and pain. The pain of alternation shows up in the pain of pain. The pain of conditioned existence shows is the pain of the composite. All three show up in...

Don’t ignore the incredible vastness of the relative by shrinking down into your little petty mind with your concerns about what he said or what they did. The shrinking down is out of fear of too much space. If you need an image, go outside and look right down at your feet. Then look up at the vastness of the sky. This is just the relative vastness, minuscule compared to the vastness of your mind....

https://youtu.be/4LBg8Zwr6yU https://www.sokukoji.org

Whatever arises in your mind, don’t object, don’t run away, and don’t cover it up. If it’s intense and it’s coming up in your mind stream, then I highly recommend that you go right into the negativity. When I say go to hell, I’m saying be responsible for what arises in your mind stream and respond to it. The third of the three pure precepts is to be with all things. If you intend to do that, you’l...

There are different ways this shows up as a spiritual path. The sitting practice of meditation takes you into seeing everything you’ve been covering up. You may need the help of someone who is dedicated to you, someone who sees your neurosis and addresses it in a way that doesn’t take your intelligence away from you. The first thing to do is to listen to your own mind without doing anything other...

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The mantra at the end of the Heart Sutra, “Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha,” is usually translated as “Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, awake, so be it.” Kobun Chino Roshi’s translation was said to be “Falling apart, falling apart, falling apart, nothing to do, everything all at once.” The translation of “svaha”, or “so be it,” is “everything all at once.” This encou...

Whatever arises — taste, touch, thinking, sight, smell, sounds — just receive. This is basically shikantaza: Just Precisely This. The idea is to keep it very, very simple. You might immediately start to speculate. If you do, just watch the speculation. Correct nothing. You can just receive your thoughts, without complicating. Sit down symmetrically in front of the wall and whatever shows up, that’...

https://youtu.be/bC_h6nis7MQ

What makes the self-centeredness, the "me"-feeling stronger, more assertive and pushy, like a dictator? When a negative emotion shows up in your mind stream in all its variations we tend to personalize it. Something triggers us and suddenly we are enraged. There is no direct cause; everything is done with everything else. It’s called dependent origination. What strengthens the ego is commenting on...

Questions from Sangha: How do we appreciate difficulty? Whatever arises in your mind stream needs to be appreciated. It’s hard to appreciate something in its completeness without giving it space. With space it will not solidify. How do we appreciate anger? You might not produce out of the anger if you’re fully receiving the anger you’re having and not trying to get rid of it by blaming someone. Ha...

The spiritual path is not about cause and effect; there is no transaction happening here. If you think so, you’ll go in circles. The awareness needs to drive this incredible vehicle of the Buddha’s Dharma. Stop looking to see whether you are making progress and just look at the obstructions. You have to awaken, and to do that you have to look at the walls of the mind, no matter how crazy that may...

The third of the three pure precepts that we receive when we enter formally into the Soto Zen Buddhist path is the vow to be with all things. Another way of saying that is, “save all beings, put other beings before yourself.” This is practically impossible to do. It’s not something you can maintain. Just remember the vow and intend to return to that vow over and over again. It is said that this is...