What about when you feel that you just can’t do it? When you’re beset with tight, bitter feelings. When you’ve been wronged? What is practice at just such a time? Turns out that we’re not alone, of course, and that practitioners have long had these normal human feelings. If you’d like to dig deeply into these issues, this post is for you. It includes my translation of “Case 41: Luòpǔ With One Foot in the Grave”... Read more
Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment by Robert Wright One reason that this is an important book is obvious – at number 5 or 8 or 11 on the New York Times Best Sellers, depending what you’re looking at – it’s reaching a lot of people. It could, of course, be important but not a fair or positive presentation. Fortunately, after reading Wright’s ambitious undertaking Why Buddhism is True, I can say that, in my view, it is... Read more
The point of this post is simple. Whether you identify as a Traditionalist Buddhist or Modernist Buddhist – don’t get your frickin hackles up! I’ve been a bystander on this issue for some time, but after reading some hostile posts coursing through the internet, most recently about the new best-selling book by Robert Wright, Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment (including one by a guy who starts off saying that he hasn’t read the book... Read more
Katagiri Roshi, who spent most of his life sitting zazen and studying, said that the point of studying was to discover how stupid we are. I’d add that through familiarization with the subtlety and vastness of the dharma, study deepens our appreciation for this tradition. Study of primary sources, especially, helps to go beyond what might be trendy and superficial in our contemporary dharma scene. Another reason to immerse ourselves in study... Read more
Zen doesn’t rely on words and Buddhism doesn’t have the equivalent of a Bible or Quran, although we have sūtras. Simply put, sūtras are Buddhist scriptures – and the plural there is important. Rather than just one book, we’ve got a large basket of teachings called “sūtra.” How large? That depends on what your definition of “sūtra” is. I’ll get to that in a moment. Tanya Storch, if you’re interested, takes up many sūtra related issues in The History of Chinese... Read more
I’ve just learned that the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Buddhamental Dharmadisorders – 000 is now available and that there have been significant additions. Most notable is in the “Elimination Disorders” section, under “Mansplaining,” of the subtype, “Dharmasplaining.” In this post, I share that section with you: Dharmasplaining Defined The excessive need to verbally offgas about the buddhadharma, manifested either in person or online, by making lengthy assertions that far exceed one’s personal... Read more
Unlike in 1984 when the above photo was taken at the end of a practice period (Katagiri Roshi is up front and center, I’m in the back on the right), meditation and mindfulness are booming and widely available. You can pick up basic meditation skills not only at dharma centers representing dozens of different lineages but also at yoga studios, community centers, and churches (usually of the progressive variety) from coast to coast. No need to... Read more
How does a Zen student know if a Zen teacher is a reliable guide, a verified representative of the Zen tradition? Read more
“Some Sōtō Zen scholars and priests argue that Dōgen was against ‘personal’ enlightenment and that such an experience is out of tune with Dōgen’s teaching. Therefore, they conclude that later teachers must have made up the story of Dōgen’s personal enlightenment experience (you’ll find one version of this story at the bottom of this post).” I wrote that on April 1 (no joke), 2016. You can read the whole post here. In this post, I’d like to update... Read more
Arising-extinguishing is the activity of this life-death. The kōan that I’ll be presenting today asks this question: “Who is arising-extinguishing?” First, a bit of background about the collection this kōan arises in – The Record of Going Easy, 從容錄, (Chinese: Cóngróng lù, Japanese: Shōyōroku), translated into English as The Book of Serenity and The Book of Equanimity. In my view, The Record of Going Easy expresses the characters fairly and better conveys what the text is about – going easy in the midst of... Read more
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