Stoep Zen

The activity of self fills our life and leaks into our Zen. By practising with no idea of gain or enlightenment, self has already fallen off and we are left in the vast field of Just This.

Inside or outside of retreat, we are forever moving between attention and distraction. When we learn to embrace both, we find that this is the ground of our practice, one that already contains care, intimacy and connection. One we can trust.

In our practice we stop, drop from our head into our body, pay attention and connect to our world. What we call compassion is not an ideal to be pursued as much as an expression of being awake.

When our default mode of self becomes porous in Zen practice, what is left is All-inclusive life experienced as Just This.

We are the closed fist. We are also the open hand. These are the inbreath and outbreath of our practice. How will we use them?

When life looks difficult, it is. But that is not all; there is also this - to take the broom and sweep the yard with no hesitation. Make this your year for a Zen retreat!

When we come into ourselves, we are naturally awake and the world naturally meets us. So selfless, so simple.

Compassion in Buddhism is not cute; it is grounded in Emptiness, in Taoism it is grounded in Tao, ordinariness. And both of these are marked by a fundamental unfathomable interconnectedness.

Whether we are on formal retreat or out in the everyday world, our practice continues. We pay attention, whatever we are doing and whomever we are with. We honour our inherent relatedness. This is where our practice is tested, refined, enjoyed and deepened.

We come to Zen through the teachings of the tradition. The brilliance of the teachings is that they have a self-destruct button. We are asked to leave the house of explanation and go into the fresh air. There we can find the Way of Attention and Connection. Very clear. Complete faithfulness to Just This.

In a world awash with information, disinformation, misinformation, debates, opinions, what can we truly rely on? This question points us back to our Zen practice itself, towards our learning to return to the roots of our unassailable experience.

Our practice is not about achieving any particular experience or state of mind; it is about coming to our cushions with nothing beyond our willingness to turn up and sit down. In this way we honour the purity and humility of this Way.

Beyond heroism and psychodrama lies the fundamental reality of interconnection. We take this as the foundation and focus of our practice as Poplar Grove Zendo.

Zen practice reminds us how natural it is to move beyond the self of judgement into the selflessness of true connection.

When heatbreak appears, boundless compassion arises instantly.

Sometimes my ancestors of yesterday are the villains of today. How do I go beyond judgement, to honour them in the fullness of their flawed humanity and include them in my life?

If we can be clear and bright on a mountaintop as well as in the city, the Way is also clear and bright.

Guided meditation 1 December 2024, after Dharma Talk : Awakeness as our natural condition.

We are naturally awakened, we just have to open our eyes. Then our attachment self falls away by itself.

Accompanying the Dharma talk "Democratizing the Dharma ."

The original Buddhist refuges in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha can be expanded to include our suffering-self, our practice self, our enlightenment-self, and every blade of grass.

Zen is not an elite sport. It is not spiritual apartheid. It is for everyone who is willing to tune into this world and hear its song.

In this talk Antony Osho teaches that our Zen practice is essentially about finding our connection to the earth beneath our feet. It is here that we detect the health and distress of our environment and it is from here that we step back into the world with healing hands.

In this talk, Antony Osho looks at how the natural faculty of attention is hijacked by the self and how Zen practice works to rediscover attention in the service of enlightenment, the kind of attention that connects us with the world. A friend's haiku and the discovery of bushman rock engravings are part of the story.

In this talk, Antony Osho talks about our modern relationship with the Buddha and reads a piece of writing about the Buddha appearing in a hospital ward.