A Note on the Use of Chairs in Zen Meditation I have been practicing Zen well past fifty years. My skin is wrinkling. My hair is a different color than it was in my youth and maturity. I’m shorter than I once was. And I need to go to the bathroom when I need to go to the bathroom. Admittedly, I still am not worried about buying green bananas. But I know that day is right around... Read more

    A Simple Introduction to Zen’s Koan & Huatou James Ishmael Ford It seems we all have a question. Why was I born? What is it all about? Who am I? What is this? In my adolescence along with all the other things of changing body and awareness, I realized how desperately I wanted to know if there was a God. It burned in me in ways that words simply fail to convey. Questions. In Zen there are two... Read more

  Zen as a Way of Magical Realism James Ishmael Ford Yangshan Huiji had a dream. In it he traveled to Maitreya’s hall, where he was led to the third seat. No sooner had he sat than a senior monk struck the bell and announced, “Today the one sitting in the third seat will preach.” Yangshan immediately stood up, and also gave the bell a strike. He then said, “The truth of the great way is beyond the four propositions... Read more

      Charles Gore was born on the 22nd of January, 1853, in London, to an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family. His great-grandfather was an earl, his grandfather a general. Following the path of privilege he was educated at Harrow and then Oxford, taking a first class in Classics in 1875. In the same year Gore was elected a fellow at Trinity College in Oxford and the next year ordained a deacon in the Church of England. In 1878 he was... Read more

      Recently my thoughts have turned to the place of hell in Christian thought. Back in 2021 the Pew Research Center conducted a survey of American belief in heaven and hell. It found across denominations from Catholic to Pentecostal to Fundamentalist in the aggregate, ninety-two percent of those who identify as Christian believe in heaven. I’m intrigued by the eight percent, but for here I’m setting that aside. A somewhat smaller number believe in hell, again across denomination... Read more

    Convocation 2023 UU Buddhist Fellowship Convocation is a biennial opportunity for UU Buddhists to sit together, compare notes on our sangha experiences, study and play together. We have been holding convocations since 2005. For each convocation we invite a guest teacher to offer dharma talks and teaching. In addition, there will be times of meditation, workshops, and informal meals and breaks where you can get to know other attendees. The 2023 Convocation will begin on Thursday, April 27,... Read more

              Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, Lewis Carrol to the world, died on this day, the 14th of January, 1898, at his sister’s home in Guildford, a small town in Surrey, England. He was two weeks shy of sixty-six. He was born at the All Saints’ vicarage in Cheshire, England, today, the 27th of January, in 1832. His family produced military men and clerics. His great grandfather a bishop in the Church of England, his father... Read more

      A fun factoid. All three of the earliest dateable examples of printing, a piece of paper, a printed book, and a printed book using moveable type are Mahayana Buddhist texts. The oldest existing printed text that is dateable is the Mugujeonggwang, the Great Dharani Sutra, and was printed in Korea somewhere between 704 & 751. The oldest printed book is a copy of the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, the Diamond Sutra found in the Dunhuang library in China, and is dated,... Read more