Today would be the 91st birthday of my first teacher, Dainin Katagiri Rōshi (1928-1990). Happy birthday, old boy! Recently, the Hōkyōji Zen Practice Community, one of the centers that Katagiri Rōshi founded, asked me to share some memories of the early days there, given that they’re celebrating their 40th year. Below you’ll find what I wrote, slightly modified. Hōkyōji was very important to my development as a Zen practitioner, and I’m very grateful to everyone who made this wonderful place possible,… Read more

          We humans have been looking in the mirror for a long time, constructing selves that we project out to the world. It’s an especially developed characteristic of our species – the particular ways we fake being somebody important – like male peacocks and their crazy tails. As I’ve been focussed on studying Hakuin Zenji this past year, one of the striking things I’ve noticed about him is how modern he was in just this way…. Read more

            WE finished a three-day weekend sesshin at the Nebraska Zen Center on Sunday. The theme for dharma talks was the Zen lineage, especially Daiō, the 13th Century monk who transmitted the Rinzai lineage to Japan. On Saturday, I presented an entanglement of great teachers in our Sōtō and Rinzai lines all commenting on the same phrase (see below), based on The Complete Poison Blossoms in a Thicket of Thorn #110 and Dogen’s Extensive Record #179. In… Read more

Once in awhile, I hear some trash talk about me and my practice and teaching in both just-sitting and koan introspection Zen. Builds character, you know. But some folks say it just shows a lack of understanding about just-sitting. Be that as it may be, on the other hand, my first teacher, Katagiri Roshi, once encouraged us to return to what he called “Zen before the Sixth Ancestor,” meaning, before the split between the Sōtō and Rinzai lineages. Another way to… Read more

              Here at the Nebraska Zen Center, we’re getting ready for the summer sesshin (a week of intensive practice) that starts on Saturday. Soon students will be packing their bags and on their way. In this year of blogging Hakuin, I think of this from Complete Poison Blossoms from a Thicket of Thorn, #332, “Hakuin’s Baggage:” “ON THE AFTERNOON of the seventeenth day of the first month of the first year of Kampō [1741],… Read more

James Myōun Ford Rōshi recently asked, “What would you say are the essential Dōgen texts?” Below you’ll find my response as well as what I’d say (if he’d asked) about essential Hakuin texts. But first, a word from Hakuin about the importance of study: “I have always lamented Zen’s ignorance of the sutras, Monks plodding ahead aimlessly like blind donkeys. Even after kenshō, unless you know Buddha’s words, You’re like a carriage only fitted out with one wheel. And if… Read more