Above is a shot of the Badlands of South Dakota – eerily beautiful county. I spent the last part of last week in Spearfish, South Dakota, which is nestled in the Black Hills about 100 miles to the west of the Badlands. There is something about the earth’s manifestation there that I find very evocative. There was plenty of time in the schedule to see the sights so Gar and I (and Bodhi) went to Devil’s Tower and Mount Rushmore... Read more

I’m back from Omaha. You can see my buddy Nonin and I pictured above (I’m the one with the hat). Nonin gave me a card with his caligraphy that says “To Have a Friend Come from Afar; Isn’t it a Joy?” It was from me too. And Bodhi had such a great time with Buddy and Sammy that he slept almost the whole six-hour ride back to White Bear.  I gave the dharma talk to a full house on Sunday... Read more

Here’s the one-flavored Zen webinar from Saturday. Click here (and select View and Video after it gets rolling). This week we reviewed the flow of the text so far (e.g., work together, attend to the intimate details of your mind at work, make something great from your wilted-lettuce life, take responsibility, realize the fundamental) and then worked with this passage from Dogen’s Instructions for the Cook:  You disciples who come after me, thoroughly contemplate there in accordance with here and... Read more

Here’s an excerpt from a short piece (click here) about the coming Great Instability as the oil economy begins to pull apart: The US military has warned that surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be serious shortages by 2015 with a significant economic and political impact. The military seems to be taking peal oil much more seriously than most of our institutions.   There are a wide range of likely effects, of course, but for... Read more

Dog Bodhi and I will be in Omaha this weekend, hanging out with dog and human friends, especially Nonin. On Sunday I’ll give the talk at the Nebraska Zen Center (click here) so if you’re in the neighborhood, please come by. Probably I’ll talk from the Tenzo Kyokun, Instructions for the Cook, the online practice focus. The following Saturday, April 24th, from 9am-noon, I’ll be leading an introductory workshop in Spearfish, South Dakota. If you’d like to come to that,... Read more

Here’s the webinar from this morning (click here), working with the section of Dogen’s Instructions for the Cook that includes this poem by Xuedou that was great nourishment for me when I was tenzo at Hokyoji many years ago:  One, seven, three, fiveThe truth you search for cannot be grasped. As night advances, a bright moon, illuminates the whole ocean.The black dragon’s jewel is found in every wave.Looking for the moon, it is here, in this wave, in the next. Read more

Just listened to a song by an old bud and fellow student of Katagiri Roshi: In Pursuit of Happiness by Lars and the Lune-a-Tick Pickers. “We jam and cram that highway/ as exhaust fumes fill the air/on the road to despair.” Read more

  Here’s a review of the PBS documentary, The Buddha (click here). I saw the last hour and liked it a lot, especially appreciating W.S. Merwin and Jane Hirschfield, a couple of my favorite poets, who did much of the talking. Clark found them vapid. Anyway, Clark’s an old friend who often finds hinky and provocative angles to things. He found the film “…haphazard, impulsive, and at times visually disjointed” among other things.  Reminds me of how I thought the Dogen... Read more

What’s true and how do we know? When I was a young guy, I stumbled on Buddhism and what struck me was that it offered a path that promised direct experience of the truth. Other religions and belief systems seemed to be about belief either in that which could not be verified experientially or in a selection of facts from which a flow of logic ensued but from which other conclusions could be drawn.  Today, some 33 years later, I... Read more

  In the section of Instructions for the Cook that we’re studying now for the online practice period, Dogen says, “Taking the backward step of transforming the self is the way to bring ease to the community” (Leighton and Okumura translation). This comment has a number of angles. One is foreshadow for several stories that Dogen then tells about his encounters with tenzos who took radical responsibility for their service.  That’s coming up next week. For now, after contemplating those... Read more