It’ll All Get Swept Away – And Happy New Year Anyway

Last updated on: January 25, 2022 at 8:00 pm By Dosho Port

Meanwhile, the center is closed for winter break, giving me more time for reflection and bumbling around with some misguided translation work that I just can’t get right. In the midst of this confusion, a passage popped out that seemed fitting for the New Year – not necessarily all glowy and positive, mind you, but fitting. It’s from the preface that Wansong offers for The Record of Going Easy, (從容錄, Chinese: Cóngróng lù, Japanese: Shōyōroku) “Case 74 Fǎyǎn’s Substance and Name.” “Abundance... Read more

How I Got Dōgen Wrong: Enlightenment, Just Sitting, and the Bodhisattva Heart

Last updated on: January 25, 2022 at 8:01 pm By Dosho Port

“This mind is Buddha” is one of the most evocative teachings of our Zen school. It is a “teaching,” not a philosophical assertion or a faith statement, but rather a description of enlightening experience. Dōgen cites “This mind is Buddha” teaching in several fascicles in the Shobogenzo, eight dharma discourses in the Eiheikoroku, and also in his Shinji Shobogenzo (1). In this post, I will explore Dōgen’s working through of this kōan in relationship to enlightenment... Read more

Feet Frozen But Heart Assured: The Mutual Verification of Homeleaving and Householder Practice

Last updated on: January 25, 2022 at 8:02 pm By Dosho Port

I just found this old photo of Tangen Harada Roshi, the last living successor to Daiun Harada Roshi, in the foreground, and my old friend, Jiku-san, in the background with the ring staff. I remember the morning it was taken during the winter of 1991. I was practicing as a Zen monk at Bukkokuji in Obama, Japan, and it was a day for takuhatsu (托鉢 “begging” or more literally, “holding up the alms... Read more

“It Came From Beyond Zen” and What Dōgen Did Not Teach

Last updated on: January 25, 2022 at 8:03 pm By Dosho Port

In this look at Brad Warner’s new book, It Came From Beyond Zen: More Practical Advice from Dōgen, Japan’s Greatest Zen Master, I’m going to focus just on one issue – kōan. But for decorum sake, let’s start with this: Brad Warner has done a lot of good for Zen in the West. Most practitioners I talk with who are under 40-years-old found their way to Zen through Warner’s books, especially Hardcore Zen. Warner has cultivated an image... Read more

Dōshō the Dōgen Hater (Not): A Preemptive Blog For My Dear Critics

Last updated on: January 25, 2022 at 8:04 pm By Dosho Port

I’ve been working on a review of Brad Warner’s new book, It Came From Beyond Zen: More Practical Advice from Dōgen, Japan’s Greatest Zen Master, to be posted soon. Given that I have a different perspective than Warner and nonkōan Zen folks generally on what Dōgen practiced and taught, and given the curious sensitivity of the kōan issue, I thought I might do some preemptive blogging. After I write about my views on Dōgen and kōan, you see, although there are... Read more

Who Am I? What Is Death? What Happens After Death?

Last updated on: November 8, 2017 at 9:36 am By Dosho Port

Above is Zenshin Tim Buckley, a friend and fellow traveller on this Zen way, who died on April 16, 2015. You can read more about Zenshin here. We’re not here today, though, to memorialize Zenshin but to ask, “Who is it that dies?” You can read the run up to this post, “Birth Death and Intimate Self Knowledge,” here and listen to a talk about it here. In this post, I’ll unpack a kōan from... Read more

Birth, Death and Intimate Self Knowledge

Last updated on: January 25, 2022 at 8:05 pm By Dosho Port

At the end of the day in most Zen practice centers, a student rises from zazen, goes to the han and before a series of roll downs, recites this verse (or some other version): I beg to urge you everyone, Life and death is the great matter. All things pass quickly away. Awaken, awaken, take heed. Make use of this precious life. The great matter of life and death is a focus for our Zen work. This goes against the... Read more

Zen in Fantasyland

Last updated on: January 25, 2022 at 8:06 pm By Dosho Port

A few weeks ago we were talking about koan. A guy who was new to the center but who seemed to have been practicing for a while on his own, suddenly interjected, “You mean there are right answers? Isn’t a koan about what I or anybody sees in it as true?” Good question. I’ll come back to that. First, I want to tell you about Kurt Andersen’s Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History. In a... Read more

Long-Distance Train: Remembering Beginning Zen Forty Years Ago

Last updated on: January 25, 2022 at 8:07 pm By Dosho Port

Forty years ago today, I walked into the Minnesota Zen Center building (pictured), met Katagiri Roshi, and started this Zen journey. It was windy and cold. I was twenty-one and nervous as hell. I had dropped out of college because it no longer made any sense and instead spent my days working in a K-Mart warehouse, hauling boxes of plastic products from one trailer to another – stuff that people didn’t really need. I was looking for meaning. I was... Read more

Want to be a Sōtō Zen Priest? Fuhgeddaboudit

Last updated on: January 25, 2022 at 8:08 pm By Dosho Port

I was talking with an Zen teacher friend this past week and he mentioned that his next meeting was with a practitioner who wanted to become a Zen priest. “Any thoughts about what I might say to him?” he asked. “Just discourage him,” I said. We went on to talk about why someone might want to become a Zen priest these days. Lay teachers can do pretty much everything that priests can do to share the dharma, if that’s a... Read more