At our Saturday morning zazenkai on October 13th, 2024, my dear friend and co-conspirator at Empty Moon Zen, Roshi Edward Sanshin Oberholtzer gave the Dharma talk. He explored the first verse of Dongshan’s famous Five Ranks. I asked if I could share it at my Monkey Mind blog, and he graciously consented… It often takes a child to ask a question that opens either a can of worms or a fresh insight into the nature of things. Where do babies... Read more
Many years ago I ran across a book describing a visit to Japan sometime before the second world war. I don’t recall a lot about it. Except, that is, for one thing. The writer described encountering a small Buddhist society whose members were following an adaptation of the rule of St Francis. I’ve long since lost the book and have never been able to find anything else about this little band, almost certainly consumed in the fires of that second... Read more
The 2nd of October is Bandhi Jayanti in India. It is one of three national holidays in the country. The United Nations has also marked out today as an International Day of Non-Violence. For me an important world spiritual holy day. I try to take time to reflect on Gandhi, the paths of nonviolence, and what it means for me on this day as it rolls around. Sometimes I also recall to share a thought or two here at the... Read more
I’m much taken with the feast of Michaelmas, sometimes also called the feasts of the saints Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael. Or, in short the feast of the Archangels. It’s an important holy day in my personal if wildly eclectic spiritual calendar. This festival touches on the liminal. The dream. The miraculous. I don’t note it here on this blog every year as it rolls around, but I do revisit it every few years. An archangel is a chief or principal... Read more
“Why are perfectly accomplished saints and bodhisattvas still attached to the vermillion thread?” Harada Yasutani Zen tradition, Miscellaneous koans Songyuan Chongyue, who lived through much of the twelfth century and almost a decade into the thirteenth, liked to rub our noses in things. He posits this question about the vermillion thread, the red thread, and it has been gathered as an important early koan in my Zen school. It’s wrapped up with a couple of other questions, one of which... Read more
Hildegard of Bingen died on the 17th of September in 1179. Today this day is observed as a feats for one of most interesting and complex individuals in the annals of Christian mysticism. Itself a complex subject. The mystical life is often mixed up. In any number of ways. Hildegard was born in the vicinity of 1098 within our common era to a family of “lower nobility,” within the confines of the Holy Roman Empire in what is today Germany.... Read more
Burning burning burning burning O Lord Thou Pluckest me out O Lord thou pluckest T. S. Eliot, the Waste Land Jan and I live in the land of smog and dreams, also known as the Los Angles basin. After a quarter of a century out of state, mostly living in New England, our retirement plan gradually became returning home to California. Specifically to be near Jan’s mom, who lives in Tujunga at the far north eastern edge of the... Read more
Among the problems in transmitting Zen along with other Buddhist meditation schools to the west has been frequently the fact it is part of something larger is too often forgotten. Zen, for instance, has three aspects: First, Zazen and koan introspection, the particular kinds of meditation unique to the Zen schools. Along with that there’s also a teaching about awakening, our true home. These two things are attended to, to greater or lesser degree. But then there’s that third thing,... Read more
I recall the late 1960s when I found my heart calling me to Zen, that there weren’t a lot of books available. Basically there were the works of the scholar D. T Suzuki, important, in many ways, if in some others a bit misleading. He had an Introduction to Zen Buddhism which was translated into English in 1949. Alan Watts wrote a summary appreciation of Suzuki’s contributions, the Way of Zen in 1957. He in fact exaggerated the shortcomings of... Read more
I’ve been thinking a lot about Shinran Shonin of late He was one of those signal figures in the development of Japanese Buddhism. He has been compared to Martin Luther on occasion. Without the bad parts. Shinran was born into Feudal Japanese nobility in 1173. However, like many spiritual figures throughout history he was visited with suffering early in his life. First his father died when he was four, then his mother when he was nine. Driven by grief and... Read more
Select your answer to see how you score.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In