I’m here to provide encouragement because we could all use some. The truth is that meditation is hard and you have to work at it. People that are trying to sell you things may try to convince you that it’s easy. It’s not. What’s easy is finding ways to avoid doing it. I think of it as like flossing. It’s something we know is good for us that we don’t really want to do. Having a plan helps in a... Read more
“Separate yourself from disturbance and face whatever appears before you.” –Hongzhi Sometimes our being is described as like a mirror. There are several conditions that a mirror can be in. A dirty mirror might reflect what’s in front of it in a distorted way. A broken mirror might be even worse. But a mirror that is clear and clean is going to give you an accurate representation of whatever you put in front of it. We often see the... Read more
“The practice of true reality is simply to sit serenely in silent introspection.” “Here you can rest and become clean, pure, and lucid. Bright and penetrating, you can immediately, return, accord, and respond to deal with events. Everything is unhindered, clouds gracefully floating up to the peaks, the moonlight glitteringly flowing down mountain streams. The entire place is brightly illumined and spiritually transformed.” “If you accord everywhere with thorough clarity and cut off sharp corners without dependence on doctrines, you... Read more
2,550 (or so) years ago today a man sat under a tree. He saw a really divided world, where people struggled and argued and fought with each other, often over trivial things. He saw people who valued greed over kindness, He saw people who valued hate over love, He saw people who valued lies over the truth. And he saw that these people were not happy. He saw people not finding fulfillment in their lives. He saw people railing against... Read more
“The Great Way is gateless, Approached in a thousand ways. Once past this checkpoint You stride through the universe.” This is the opening of the famous Zen text “The Gateless Gate”. It sounds like weird hippie nonsense. A lot of old Zen sayings like this are a little hard to unpack because sometimes they seem so weird. I think it’s worth a second look. The Great Way is the path we’re on. The path inspired by the Buddha, the... Read more
Some teenagers came to my door recently. They were Christian missionaries. I didn’t invite them in, but I also didn’t slam the door in their faces. In my estimation there are much worse things teenagers could be out there doing. They asked me if there was anything they could pray about for me. And when I told them there wasn’t they asked about the Buddha statue on my porch. So I told them that I’m a Buddhist. They said they... Read more
It was the 5th century. About 1000 years after the Buddha’s death. And Buddhism was in decline in India. The teachings of the Buddha had had a rough time. In those thousand years many Buddhist teachers had left. Many had spread the teachings far and wide and never returned. This was the world Bodhidharma lived in. And he left India too. He had heard rumors that Buddhism was flourishing in China and he wanted to go see for himself. When... Read more
I’ve been doing public meditation events for four months. 38 people came to my event in September. I never could have predicted that. 38 feels like a big number. I sort of accidentally stumbled into this but as it turns out there is a demand for public meditation. People want opportunities for stillness and silence for reflection and concentration and they like nontraditional opportunities like on the lawn of a museum. I think people value meditating in public for a few reasons. Because... Read more
“What is basically present is here and now. It does not depend on cultivating the path or sitting in meditation.” -Mazu We may tend to think of our spiritual path as a journey with a distant goal, like climbing a mountain. That’s how a lot of people like to describe it, I think. That’s what we’re used to. In other situations when we learn that’s how it works. We slowly accumulate knowledge and skills as we’re trying to approach some... Read more
Hongzhi (1091-1157) was a well known Zen Master in the Tsaotung lineage. It was in his lifetime that the lineage which had fallen on hard times, really took shape and underwent a revival. It became distinct in it’s emphasis on seated meditation and realization of our innate Buddha Nature through cultivating an open heart and mind. Hongzhi was a proponent (and maybe the first teacher) of Silent Illumination practice. He described this in poetic writings as a process where we... Read more
Bodhisattva Road
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