Someone made a Facebook friend request this morning. We had two “friends” in common, which considering I have almost five thousand Facebook friends (don’t ask how, it just sort of happened), isn’t all that significant. As I am pushing up to my limit I look to see what if anything we actually might have in common. And near the top of his Facebook feed was a meme of something called the “Ten Non-Commandments.” What struck... Read more
Jan & I spent the past week exploring Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks. All along our way we discovered our constant companion was John Muir. A person of multiple parts, he was central in the saving of these areas for posterity. But, he was also a scientist, a forester, a mountaineer, well, the list goes on. But, most important for me was being introduced to his mystical side. John Muir is perhaps the great exemplar of nature... Read more
As our holiday adventure exploring Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks winds toward its end I found myself recalling something Gary Snyder said about the Parks. Actually over the years he’s said a number of things about the parks. But rummaging around the inter webs I found the line I was thinking of. It turned out it was his enthusiastic dream world conclusion to his essay “Buddhism & the Coming Revolution,” which was collected in his 1969... Read more
As the Wikipedia article on the Xinxin Ming tells us: “Xinxin Ming (alternate spellings Xin Xin Ming or Xinxinming) (Chinese: 信心銘; Hànyǔ Pīnyīn: Xìnxīn Míng; Wade–Giles: Hsin Hsin Ming; Japanese: Shinjinmei or Shinjin no Mei), Faith in mind, is a poem attributed to the Third Chinese Chán (Zen) Patriarch Jianzhi Sengcan 鑑智僧璨 (Hànyǔ Pīnyīn: Jiànzhì Sēngcàn; Wade–Giles: Chien-chih Seng-ts’an; Japanese: Kanchi Sōsan, died 606) and one of the earliest Chinese Chan expressions of the Buddhist mind training practice.”... Read more
The direction of my life has been following a path laid out by the masters of the Zen way. The practices of shikantaza and koan introspection have opened my heart into a path of presence and gratitude. However, I came to this raised by a fundamentalist Christian mother and an Ingersoll atheist father. And with that at my beginnings I’ve always felt some tensions of the heart between my Zen Buddhism and the forms of Western rationalism... Read more
I find Bastille Day well worth marking. Perhaps especially so these days… Together with the Fourth of July it is one of the great markers of the beginning of a longing for a more or less genuine republicanism within human affairs. Prior to this the idea was limited to very small states, and all of them flawed experiments. A powerful few were always, it seems, too powerful. I think immediately of Athens & such mercantile oligarchic experiments... Read more
On one of those Zen pages on Facebook, in this case one focused on the Soto school someone asked for a pointer to an introductory book. People offered their views. Some even seemed helpful. And it set me to thinking about what books might be helpful for someone seeking a small library of useful titles for a beginning student of Zen of the Soto flavor, or at least leaning in that direction. I found I came up with eighteen... Read more
Teitaro Suzuki died on this day in 1966. He was 95 years old and at that time widely acknowledged for his critical part in the migration of Japanese style Zen Buddhism to the West. One could fairly say we here in the West use the Japanese term “Zen” for that tradition which birthed in China and is known there as “Chan” and which traveled in addition to Korea, where it is called “Son” and Vietnam where it is... Read more
Jiun Sonja (1718-1804) was first ordained within the Shingon school, but was wildly eclectic, with interests that included various schools of Buddhism, as well as Confucianism and Shinto. He also deeply immersed himself within Soto Zen under master Daibai at Shoanji Temple in Shinshu. The following selection from the Jiun Sonja Hogoshu was translated by Taizan Maezumi Roshi and published in the Spring/Summer 1974 issue of the ZCLA Journal. There is also a larger... Read more
I stumbled upon this in my files. At this point I have no idea where the story originated. But, the retelling is mine. May it be helpful… Once there was a couple who lived together more happily than not for twenty years. Much too early the woman became ill with a terrible disease. As sometimes occurs the woman became obsessed with what would happen after she died. Not her afterlife, her husbands. I’ve been with too many... Read more
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