I’m just back from a few days along the North Shore of Lake Superior – a magical time, soaking in the hot tub and gazing out at the lake. These are among my favorite activities on this planet. Zen teaching and practice, as you may know, embrace the ordinary as extraordinary. For example, a monk once asked great master Baizhang, “What is the most extraordinary thing?” Baizhang (whose name means “Hero Peak”) said, “Sitting alone on Hero Peak.” Simple as... Read more

One of the emerging voices in our blooming Zen conversation is Koun Franz, a young American guy who’s trained exclusively in Soto Zen in Japan and so offers quite a different perspective, especially in terms of what’s available online. If you follow this Wild Fox blog you might remember Koun’s provocative posts here, “Standing in One’s Position” and “Authentic Practice.” I’m delighted to see that Koun has just started a blog, Nyoho Zen, (here). Here’s a little snippet of his... Read more

But it turns out they don’t have any real conflict after all so they end the session early with a long tender stare, an explosive fist bump, and a warm (yet pelvis inverted) hug. Then they go out for sake. More on that in a minute. First, though, I want to note that my last post, “Did Hakuin Need Therapy?” was kidnapped by pirates over at Zen Forum International and as of this writing has had 900-some views and 90-some... Read more

Did he ever! In modern terms, of course, which is really not fair to the old boy, living as he did in the old times. This “Did Hakuin Need Therapy?” question came up for me while reading Norman Waddell’s new Beating the Cloth Drum: The Letters of Zen Master Hakuin – a wonderful follow up to Waddall’s other translations of Hakuin – The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Hakuin, Wild Ivy, and Precious Mirror Cave. Together these four texts provide... Read more

“Why does Dogen make it so hard to understand what he’s saying?” So asked (or exclaimed) a student in a recent study group. We’d been working through Thirty-seven Conditions Contributing to Bodhisattva Practice, a Dogen fascicle that Katagiri Roshi likened to a dharani (a powerful and evocative but incomprehensible series of sounds) and had just tackled this passage: [29] The root of samadhi is refraining from touching the eyebrows and brushing up the eyebrows. Thus, it is beyond obscuring cause... Read more

Just back from my ritual dog walk in the woods, savoring it all. The Robins are back and I could hear but couldn’t see the Pileated Woodpecker. The Ticks will be out soon and then we’ll be consigned to walking in the neighborhood and wishing we were William James. Huh? I woke up this morning wishing I were William James. I went to sleep last night in the middle of his essay, “The Will to Believe.” Reading his dense and... Read more

Here’s Bodhi after going wild in a field on a warm day, running and dancing, and then tripping and plowing through the dry grass and getting a nice necklace of hay for his trouble. And here’s a talk from the sesshin at Deep Spring Zen Temple near Pittsburgh from March 4. The other talks weren’t really talks – more like conversations working the material together. For the public talk on Sunday, though, I gave a more traditional presentation. Click here... Read more