UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

Welcome, once again, to my UnMind podcast, also published on Substack, and as my Dharma Byte in the newsletter of the Silent Thunder Order (visit www. STOrder.org — STO). Please let me know if there is a subject you would like to hear about in a future segment. In STO, we are pioneering a creative, collaborative approach to establishing true Zen community (Skt. sangha ) in the USA.    Th...

Welcome to another segment of the UnMind podcast and DharmaByte column. I would like to share a concern about something I have witnessed in the propagation of Zen. I am afraid that Zen in America is being categorized — in my opinion, erroneously -— as a "religion," during its second century in the West. As Zen assimilates into the volatile and increasingly violent American cultural milieu — primar...

Beginning with this segment of the UnMind podcast and DharmaByte column, I want to depart from commenting on the content of my Substack postings, which feature chapters from a manuscript we anticipate publishing in future, working title: "Speaking With One (Zen) Voice." It is subtitled: "25 Centuries of Buddha-Dharma; 3 Countries of Origin; 9 Dharma Masters;...

 Welcome to another installment of my Dharma Byte column and UnMind podcast. We have initiated a Substack posting of the unexpurgated reference texts for this series, based on the manuscript for future publication as a book, titled:   "Speaking with One (Zen) Voice — 25 Centuries of Buddha-Dharma: 3 Countries of Origin; 9 Dharma Masters; 2 Dozen Teachings — with Commentary by an American...

In the introduction to “The Surangama Sutra, A New Translation” by the Buddhist Text Translation Society, the section on “The Reasons for the Teaching” explains six reasons for this particular sutra, the title translating to something like, "heroic march or journey":   1)    The first is the importance of balancing learning and meditation practice.   The authors explain th...

The fourth and last of the immeasurables of Buddhism is translated as "equanimity" — in Sanskrit, upekkha . Has the ring of authenticity, doesn’t it? Equanimity, not so much. Too familiar, too ordinary. Besides, nobody really knows what it means. Note how much more authoritative it sounds when we use the Sanskrit.             Brings to mind th...

The third of the Four Immeasurables of Buddhism, as defined online, is sympathetic joy, or empathy, I have long taken to indicate the kind of genuine delight that one can feel at the good fortune of others. Unfortunately, in the context of our prevailing dog-eat-dog, winner-take-all, loser-victim mentality—the emerging tribal take on social and economic standing in America—this fulsome embrace of...

The second of the Four Immeasurables of Buddhism, compassion is a term that is frequently bruited-about in Zen circles, the ubiquity of which extends to the customary reference to buddha-dharma itself as “the compassionate teaching.” Which begs the question, Compassionate to whom? When we look at the teachings of Buddha, beginning with the Four Noble Truths , they do not look all that compassionat...

From a downloaded document from one of my online dharma dialogs — dated June 8, 2016, but otherwise unidentified — we find the following definitions of the Four Immeasurables of Buddhism:   Metta (loving kindness) Karuna (compassion) Mudita (sympathetic joy or empathy) Upekkha (equanimity)   I have always felt that the immeasurables of Zen practice are more important than those aspects s...

APPROACHING THE SINGULARITY Siddhartha Gotama, the founder of Buddhism, known as the Buddha — as well as the Ancestors of Zen — struggled mightily to express the essence of the practice, meaning, and implications of Zen's meditation in the language and idiom of their time, throughout the countries and cultures of origin: India of 2500 years ago; China from around 500 CE; Korea and Japan a half-cen...

This segment is excerpted from the introduction to a yet-to-be-published manuscript of selected podcasts from 2020 forward. The working title is "Speaking with One (Zen) Voice," the "Zen" in parentheses, subtitled "25 Centuries of Buddha-Dharma; 3 Countries of Origin; 9 Dharma Masters; 2 Dozen Teachings; with Commentary by an American Zen Elder." Selections from the text are posted monthly as our...

From time to time over the nearly 50 years since the establishment of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center, a significant number of its members and its affiliates in the Silent Thunder Order have complained of burning out in terms of their participation in the Zen community. Some have faded into obscurity and were never heard from again. Others have come back after years. The record for the longest hiatus...

In this third installment of my "DharmaByte" column and "UnMind" podcast, exploring the general subject of Zen in our Times, we turn to the last of three suggested topics from Hokai Jeff Harper, Halifax-based publisher of the STO newsletter:   • To everything there is a season • The wax and wane of householder zazen practice • What we are feeling right now IS impermanence manifesting itself &...

As I mentioned in the last installment, when thinking about content for the next Dharma Byte or UnMind podcast, I turn to my collaborators for inspiration: Hokai Jeff Harper, publisher of the newsletter, and Shinjin Larry Little, producer of the podcast. Jeff responded to a recent call for suggested topics with:   • To everything there is a season • The wax and wane of householder zazen pract...

"Zen in Our Time" and "Connecting the Dots" are themes that I have hit upon for 2025, forming the thread running through (one meaning of "sutra") all of my DharmaByte newsletter columns and online UnMind podcasts this year.   Contextualizing the teachings and legacy of Zen in modern times — without throwing the baby out with the bathwater — is key to transmitting Zen's legacy. Connecting the...

ZEN IN OUR TIME “Connecting the Dots” Some of you A few may have undergone formal training, in Zen or other meditative traditions, or you may be a relative newcomer to Zen.       The objective of this essay is Whatever your experience level, this course should help you sort the wheat from the chaff, to clarify for yourself which teachings of Buddhism are relevant to you, t...

Speaking of watching your Ps and Qs, when taking up the way of Zen meditation, it may seem all too easy to get things backward. In fact, according to the great Zen ancestors, getting it wrong is a natural and necessary part of the process, expressed as "Fall down seven times, get up eight," apparently an old Chinese saying adopted by Master Dogen. He also said that hitting the bullseye depends upo...

In the new Thursday Workshop I have initiated for 2025, I am attempting to lay out in great detail what I believe to be the most natural way to meditate: zazen before Zen, so to speak. It may not be your daddy's meditation, but it is that of our ancient forefathers.   Meditation, after all, was not the exclusive discovery of the historical Buddha, and his realization could not have been the f...

In the previous segment of UnMind, titled "the least important thing," I closed with a call for submissions; quoting myself:   If you have any topics or areas of interest in Zen that you would like me to explore in 2025, please let me know. You know where I live.   Having received little response, I can only assume that this podcast is not gaining much traction out there, in spite of nea...

In the last segment of UnMind, we looked at the implications of Master Dogen's expression, "the most important thing in Buddhism," from Fukanzazengi , the set of instructions for zazen he composed after returning from China. We speculated on what he could possibly have meant, by singling out one of the many points he made in the text.   I suggested that it may be more useful to consider the "...

Well, now we know. That is, we know how the vote tally turned out. What we don’t know for sure is what will happen next. As I said in closing the last podcast, we are waiting for the next number of shoes to drop. But many of our fellow citizens are worried that they know all too well what is coming, ranging from your worst nightmare to the final establishment of Valhalla on Earth. But this time th...

DOGEN ON ZAZEN Upon returning to Japan from China in 1227, at the age of 27, Master Dogen composed the first draft of Fukanzazengi , the tract in which he outlines the principles of seated meditation, or zazen, that he had learned under the tutelage of Master Rujing. In one of  the English translations, about two-thirds of the way through the text, he asks a question of the reader:   Now...

The DharmaByte™ version of this segment will post in the STO newsletter the first week of November. This UnMind podcast will drop on Wednesday after election day, which is November 5th. The next segment of Election Year Zen will be posted on December 4th, barring unforeseen circumstances such as an outright armed revolution — or “the new civil war” as it has been billed in some quarters — an impli...

Welcome to UnMind podcast, number 165. In this segment, with a sigh of relief, we turn away from the horror show that is the climactic crescendo of the current 4-year election cycle, with its implications for climatic consequences — as we are witnessing with the 1-2 punch of Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, Mother Natures’ odd couple of the moment and probable precursors of more to come. It...

Returning to the twists and turns of the endless, meandering 2024 campaign for POTUS, and looming uncertainty of threatened challenges to the vote promising to bollix up the results, the question arises as to what this may have to do with Zen.   The dedicated Zen guy who produces the UnMind podcast suggested that we take up the premise of the “Bodhisattva ideal” in Buddhism, comparing and con...