THE EMPTY & THE OPEN Jan Seymour-Ford Senior Dharma Teacher, Empty Moon Zen I’ve been in a very quiet, dark, empty-handed place for a while in my practice, and in my life. So here’s what I’ve been thinking this past week: Oh, crap! I’m supposed to give this dharma talk, and I’ve got nothing. How am I going to keep talking for at least five minutes when I don’t have anything to say? The good advice is to give... Read more

What is Zen? A meditation James Ishmael Ford A few days ago on social media, I wrote what I wanted to be a summation of the Zen way as I understand it. Zen is not about calm nor focus. It does not focus on nothing. Although it does not ignore it, either. Part of the interesting thing is how Zen or more correctly Chan emerged in early medieval China. There the hard logic of Indian scholastic Buddhism gave way to... Read more

  Carl Gustav Jung was born on this day, the 26th of July, in 1875, in Kesswil, Switzerland. His father was a rural pastor of the Swiss Reformed Church, his mother the child of a prominent clerical and academic family. He would later write how his mother’s mental illness marked him. He would say he grew up with two personalities, one the boy of his time and place, but the other, a being from some other place, he imagined the... Read more

      These days I find myself reflecting on the nature of awakening, enlightenment, or, if you will, conversion. For me the great turning is a human thing, some lovely mystery that we are all of us invited to. And many of us in our different cultures and religions seek. And find. But, what in fact is it? Certainly a turning. But, is it sudden or gradual? Is it out of the blue, or is cultivation a significant, maybe... Read more

    (On Facebook I saw a notice that today was Aitken Roshi’s birthday. The date was a tad more than a month off. But, it sparked a flood of thoughts and gratitude. A couple of years ago I wrote a brief personal appreciation of the old master and appended the “official” obituary from his sangha. I have made some minor edits to my part, and, here it is.) Robert Baker Aitken was born on June the 10th, 1917 in... Read more

  WHO WOULD YOU BE BURIED WITH? James Ishmael Ford A voice from the dark called out, ‘The poets must give us imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar imagination of disaster. Peace, not only the absence of war.’ But peace, like a poem, is not there ahead of itself, can’t be imagined before it is made, can’t be known except in the words of its making, grammar of justice, syntax of mutual aid. A feeling towards it, dimly... Read more

      A poem composed on the occasion of my sixty-ninth birthday. Today on my seventy-third birthday, it continues to hold true… I pity anyone with no regrets Old Zen priest Myoun   Read more

      ZEN RETREAT July 29-August 1st, 20221 Life and death are a grave matter. It’s not too late to turn the light inward, and to find your true nature. You are cordially invited to join Empty Moon Zen combined in person and on zoom three day Zen retreat. Our Bright Cloud Zen practice groups at University Unitarian Church (UUC) and Woodinville UU Church (WUUC) with the generous support of the University Unitarian Church, invite all who are interested... Read more

    There’s an old tale in many versions. The drift is someone is caught up in the midst of a catastrophe, often a flood. People come by and warn him and later to offer to get him to safety. He declines all the offers, saying God will help me. It happens six times. Finally, in the flood version, he drowns. In heaven he confronts the divine in all its majesty. I have been known to say I would be... Read more

      It was today, the 15th of July, in 1838 that Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered his famous Divinity School Address. It was immediately denounced as some “new infidelity.” A full generation earlier New England’s Unitarians had rejected the trinity and instead focused salvation on “character,” putting the locus of salvation on the actions of the individual in her or his life rather than through a vicarious atonement achieved by Jesus’ death. Nonetheless this first generation of Unitarians were deeply... Read more