My friend and mentor the Zen priest and scholar Glenn Taylor Webb, Kangan Osho, just shared this note with me. Professor Webb studied the academic side of Zen with D.T. Suzuki, Hisamatsu Shin’inchi, Masao Abe, and many others. While at the same time delving into the practices of Rinzai and Obaku, eventually being ordained by the Obaku master Miyauchi Kanko Roshi. This note digs into the the critical Zen term “Mu” in ways I find helpful. I hope you will agree.... Read more
A little later today my spouse and I are off to Joshua Tree to meet up with some old friends and spend the weekend in the desert and environs. While this is a holiday, I am also mindful of the spiritual power of the desert. It can swallow all our ideas of what is and pushes us to front life and death. So, as the Christian mystic with some serious Zen leanings, Thomas Merton, translates from the Desert... Read more
A Facebook friend active with a Zen meditation group asked me what I thought about growing sanghas, our gatherings of Zen practitioners. An interesting question. And, actually, particularly so for me at this moment in my life. After being part of a project with established Zen centers and lots of people for a number of years, I now find my spouse and I relocated back to our native California. And with me now scant months shy of seventy,... Read more
Zen has always been intimately tied up with the arts. The way Zen approaches life, with clarity, and focus, and above all a sense of letting go which invites an intimacy with life that is both beautiful and at times stark, even terrible. I think of that anecdote of how a “Zen garden” is created, where everything is picked up, the sand is raked perfectly. And, then, at the very end going to the tree, giving it a good shake,... Read more
Maurine Stuart died on this day, the 26th of February, 1990. I wrote of her in my book Zen Master Who: Maurine Stuart, one of the first female Zen masters in America, was also one of the first to give Zen a Western face. Maurine was born in Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1922. In 1949 she received a music scholarship to study in Paris with renowned conductor Nadia Boulanger, who would later become the first woman to conduct a major... Read more
Songs in Praise of Tending an Ox: Three Zen Talks by Roshi Sarah Bender Sarah Bender is a Zen teacher I deeply admire. She currently serves as resident teacher of the Springs Mountain Sangha in Colorado Springs. She began the study of Zen in 1979 at the Honolulu Diamond Sangha as a student of Roshi Robert Aitken. In 1997, Sarah began working with my dharma siblings Roshi Joan Sutherland, and Roshi David Weinstein. In 2006 she received... Read more
Explain Mu so a baby can understand. Traditional Zen koan One of my Facebook friends John Lee Pendall of the Tattooed Buddha posted this wonderful picture today. Very inside Zen joke. Silly. And, well, it opens some questions. Ultimately it asks how do we confront the hurt of our lives? Specially, what do you say to that person who is facing tragedy, or even more simply, some personal sadness? And, it turns to those of us... Read more
Zen, the Tangle of Language, and the Heart of Our Liberation James Myoun Ford The Case The priest Ruiyan called out to himself every day, “Master!” And, then responded, “Yes!” Then he would say, “Be aware!” And again, he would respond, “Yes, yes!” He would then say, “Don’t be deceived by others!” And he would respond, “No, no!” Gateless Gate, Case twelve, my paraphrase We don’t know a great deal about Ruiyan Shiyan, not even the precise dates... Read more
I’ve been rereading a small book by the late Zen teacher Philip Kapleau, called the Wheel of Death. In the chapter “Dying: Practical Instructions” he begins by quoting three writers from diverse perspectives, pointing in one direction. A man who dies before he dies Does not die when he dies. Abraham a Sancta Clara One who sees the Way in the morning can gladly die in the evening. Confucius Abandon life and the world that you may know... Read more
The Zen master Yuan-chih of Chang-China Hall in Fu county once addressed the monks in the Dharma hall: “For thirty years I lived on Mount Wei and during that time I ate the monastery’s rice and gave it back in the latrine. I did not learn the Zen of Master Wei-Than. All I did was raise an ox. When he wandered from the path into the grass, I pulled him back; when he ran amuck I someone’s garden, I chastised... Read more
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