This post offers some detail for our online practice period study for this week. The compelling phrase, “womb of the sage,” comes from Dogen’s Instructions for the Cook. Here’s the Foulk translation of the sentence: If your preparations are true, then your movements and activities will naturally become the deeds of nurturing the womb of the sage. And here’s the Leighton and Okumura translation from Dogen’s Pure Standards for the Zen Community: If you sincerely arrange the implements and prepare... Read more

This one’s been around for a couple years but if you haven’t seen it … well, I thought it was one lovely film, looking unflinchingly at death, and honoring it through tender ritual. Read more

Here’s a poem by Katagiri Roshi that I found last night on an aging piece of notebook paper in the old guy’s handwriting – with copious notes in Japanese on the back – while going through some old files.   I tend not to organize files very well and the virtue of this is sometimes making wild discoveries. This is one. Don’t remember how I got it but it was his working draft – lines are crossed out as he... Read more

At the workshop at Boundless Way a couple weekends ago, like usual, I emphasized the importance of discovering the subtle point of what Dogen refers to as the Buddha and ancestors’ wondrous method. In this spirit I offered a Dogen verse in zazen that included this line: Do not control the monkey mind or the horse will. Make effort like a lotus in fire. The week before, the online practice period studied a section of Dogen’s Instructions for the Cook... Read more

Here’s webinar 4 on the Instructions for the Cook: click here. In the section that we’re working with here, Dogen encourages the tenzo (zen cook) to return to their room at the end of the day and visualize all the practitioners in the monastery and then figure precisely how much rice will be needed. I find this to be a very tender practice. Dogen summarizes this section with this:  If your preparations are true, then your movements and activities will... Read more

Here’s a shot of workshop on Saturday at Boundless Way. We’re just starting to come back together after a break, I believe.  Talking about the healing point of zazen, Old Dogen said, “…when the baskets and cages are broken, a seated Buddha does not interfere with making a Buddha.” And that is the main point of the workshop – to encourage a zazen that is in itself the breaking of the baskets and cages, a zazen free of category, including silent... Read more

The new Just This, with a bunch of good stuff on Play, is up for your viewing. Click here. I’ve got a piece way toward the bottom. Comments welcome, here or there. Read more

Above is David Rynick, one of the several Boundless Way Zen teachers, the next abbot of the BWZ school and a very sweet guy, and myself outside of the new Boundless Way Temple in Worcester, MA. Looks like we might be related – and we have the same fashion consultant too. I had a wonderful time in Boston and thereabouts. We kicked off the short weekend with Sue and Arlene (thanks again for all your warmth and generosity) taking us... Read more

Here’s to the soft glow of an early spring here in Minnesota. Not much green yet but the snow is almost gone and many people here are preparing for floods.  I’ll be zipping off soon for the weekend to Boston, after the session here tomorrow night,  to play with the Boundless Way Zen folks. So this’ll be my last post for several days.  Before I shift into packing mode, I want to address one of the passages from the Instructions... Read more

A year or so back a bhikkuni friend gave me a copy of Bhikku Bodhi’s talks on the Majjhima Nikaya, one of the collections of the original teachings of the Buddha. I just got into it today and am glad I did. Click here (its free!). It includes a godzillian talks and a bunch of charts and diagrams and such on everything from The Four Jhannas and Their Factors to Fetters to Wrong View and back again. This is a... Read more