Yes, like dog Bodhi in the photo, we’re getting ready to move and lay some fresh tracks. You see, we’ll be burying the wild fox in a cave out back and moving – or in wild fox language, transmogrifying – in the summer of 2014. So this winter-spring, we’re in transition, giving the precepts to some Wild Fox Zen students and householder denkai (the first step in lay transmission) to another. How is this possible? My youngest child will be... Read more

How can we live meaningful lives today so that when death comes we might reflect that we did indeed live life to the full? Jesus is said to have expressed the purpose of his ministry in this way. How can we live meaningful lives today so that when death comes we will rest knowing that we did what was to be done? Buddha is said to have often framed the work of the dharma practitioner in this way. Yes, death... Read more

Happy New Year to you all. Enjoying the break here – still! My day job is cancelled again today due to the “excessive” cold. How cold? It was so cold yesterday that I didn’t take dog Bodhi for a walk. That’s how cold it was. And now a heat wave. +4 at present. Yesterday there were wind chills of more than -50 degrees (before the ’90’s it would have been in the -70’s). Or like we say in our understated... Read more

The former Central Abbot of San Francisco Zen Center, Myogen Steve Stücky, died this morning. Click here for more. And here’s James’ post at Monkey Mind. I didn’t know Steve well although we connected at conferences a few times over the past decade or so. He shared some old Katagiri stories with me that I hadn’t heard before which is always a treat. And at a difficult time in my life, Steve was enormously kind and now I feel very... Read more

Even if you don’t like death, when death comes you have to die. Even if you don’t like tomorrow, when tomorrow comes you have to be tomorrow. If you think with your head about dying, it is not real dying. When you are dying, dying is perfectly silent. Nothing to say. Just be one with the dying. All we have to do is just to be right in the middle of dying, which is perfectly silent. – Katagiri Roshi (from... Read more

Here is a solstice talk by my old teacher, Katagiri Roshi, about Dogen’s “Plum Blossoms.” It is the second installment. Click here for the first. I’m grateful to David Casacuberta for carefully transcribing these talks. David’s first language is Spanish and Roshi’s was Japanese. Dogen spoke Dogenese. And I was left to edit all this. Together, I’m afraid we’ve created a bent and gnarled rendering into English. When editing Roshi’s talks, I’m often struck by how difficult it is to... Read more

All the great traditions have at least one thing in common – the belief that “our” way is best. Such thinking is sometimes used to attack and repress those who follow other paths and in this way can be dangerous. Buddhism is not immune from this as we can see in modern times in Sri Lanka and Burma. And perhaps in our own hearts. Katagiri Roshi often observed with more than a touch of the ironic, “Under the beautiful flag... Read more

Here’s a wondrously beautiful view from a micro-moment on this morning’s walk along the shore of Lake Superior as we wrapped up a couple day trip over the holiday. Lounging around, I strolled some through the new Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism by Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Donald Jr. I bought the Kindle version for iPad and had great fun browsing entries and then following links, wandering through the Buddhaverse at the finger touch – at least... Read more