Yesterday evening I gave a talk at the Zen at Neighborhood class at Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church. Preparing for it, I ran across this from a few years ago. It ended up largely being what I shared, but written down, and has fewer uhs and ahs than last evening’s talk. Possibly worth a read… The Case Master Wuzu asked one of his students, “The woman Chien and her spirit had separated. Tell me, which is the true Chien?” Wumenguan,... Read more
My dear friend the Roshi Edward Sanshin Oberholtzer, currently guiding teacher of the Empty Moon Zen project gave the dharma talk at our Empty Moon half day retreat on the 6th of September, 2025. In it he unpacked the meaning of Zen’s teaching of not knowing. I found it very helpful, and with his generous permission to reprint it, I offer it here at Monkey Mind… *** Remember the old television show Weeds? Karen and I watched all eight seasons,... Read more
Nineteen years ago on the 5th of September, 2006, at 12:53pm (Eastern time), I posted my very first Monkey Mind blog post. It was a Gary Snyder poem. Lew Welch jut turned up one day, live as you and me. “Damn, Lew” I said, “you didn’t shoot yourself after all.” “Yes I did” he said, and even then I felt the tingling down my back. “Yes you did, too” I said — “I can feel it now.” “Yeah” he said,... Read more
The Case Zhaozhou visited a hermit. He asked, “Is anybody in? Anybody in?” The hermit lifted up his fist. Zhaozhou said, “the water is too shallow for a ship to anchor.” Later he went to a hermit, and asked, “Is anybody in? Anybody in?” The hermit also lifted up his fist. Zhaozhou said “Freely you give and freely you take away. Freely you kill and freely you give life.” And he made a full prostration. Gateless Gate, Case 11 I... Read more
I’ve been drawn into Zen Buddhist reflections on (mostly) Christian holy days over the past few years. One such day is the Assumption of Mary. It’s is a Christian festival universally celebrated in the liturgical churches. It’s marked in the Eastern Christian churches on the 15th of August as the Dormition of the Theotokos. And in the Roman calendar for the same day it’s called the feast of the Assumption of Mary. In the Anglican calendar the day is traditionally... Read more
Robert Ingersoll was born on the 11th of August, 1833. He is pretty important in the general formation of my spiritual life. And I continue to feel his influence on my more spare Buddhism. So I like to reflect on him and his contributions from time to time. What follows is something I keep working at. I expect to get it right within the next decade or so… Writer Kimberly Winston wrote of the good colonel, as he was usually... Read more
This past Saturday at our monthly Empty Moon half day sit, Roshi Edward Sanshin Oberholtzer offered a reflection out of the anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 6th and 9ths of August in 1945. I asked his permission to share it here at my blog and he graciously consented. *** On a splendid August day like today, it’s easy to put out of our minds that eighty years ago, people in Hiroshima, Japan were gazing... Read more
The 22nd of July is marked out as a feast for Mary Magdalene. As best I can, I try to note this day every year. As a person of the Zen way, but also marked profoundly by my natal Christianity, I am deeply interested in several threads of the Christian tradition. And very high on that list is Mary Magdalene. As I noted, over the years I’ve paused to reflect on this most remarkable and in some ways mysterious... Read more
“One is a Buddhist if he or she accepts the following four truths: All compounded things are impermanent. All emotions are pain. All things have no inherent existence. Nirvana is beyond concepts.” Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse[1] A quick look at the Mahayana. Over the long course of its history Buddhism has divided into two major schools. Three is you separate the Vajrayana from the Mahayana. We’ll briefly look at that. But first, the way of the elders, the Theravada. Its... Read more
More than a decade ago I shared a list of a dozen observations, which I titled “The Zen of Seeing.” I recently stumbled upon it again. I dropped a few, reframed a few. And I share them because I think they may be useful to my sisters and brothers on this long winding road. Some come whole cloth from somewhere in the depths of my heart. Others I heard some or all of. Eventually they became my own. Take what... Read more
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