From time to time I like to share something from Dogen’s Extensive Record (this one is #306). It fits very well with our current online practice period work on Instructions for the Cook. I’d say Dogen is very modern, encouraging piercing and all and has a very dry sense of humor. How does it strike you? Dropping off body and mind is good practice.  Make a vigorous effort to pierce your nostrils.  Karmic consciousness is endless, with nothing fundamental to... Read more

Yesterday in the webinar, I encouraged the practitioners to take care of the ingredients of their lives as if they were their eyeballs. As Dogen says in his instructions for the cook,  Having received [rice, vegetables, and so on] protect and be frugal with them, as if they were your own eyes.  After the webinar, I went to the local supermarket and was just starting my weekly shopping in the vegetable aisle. I glanced back and saw a large 60-ish... Read more

Here’s the first webinar in our current online practice period – Wholehearted Play: 90 Days of Cooking this Great Life. Click here (then select Video from the pull down menu). We’re exploring several ways of practice that are based on the tradition – sitting, study, working with each other – but are adapted to the emerging global culture and use the technologies that are now available. One reason for this is that many of the people interested in wholehearted practice... Read more

Here’s an excerpt from an essay by Katagiri Roshi originally published in Japanese in 1978 and then translated into English and published in 2001 as a part of Nothing is Hidden: Zen Master Dogen’s Instructions for the Cook (buy now – 17 used from $6.95!).   There is no fixed form for engaging the way. It is about how to live intimately with things. However, this “how to” is not a question. Questions require our discriminating mind, but this “how to”... Read more

Yesterday the “Tricycle Daily Dharma” had a nice quote from Joko Beck, including this: …It can seem as if the point of practice is to have breakthroughs. The usefulness of these openings exists only if they clarify life and our ability to live it and serve it. I read this as I made the final preparations for the Introduction to the Wild Fox Online Community (click here for that). We’re about to enter into a 90-day practice period with a... Read more

We’re getting ready to jump back into ango (peaceful dwelling), both online and at Transforming Through Play Temple. In the online version, we’ve been working on some creative ways to build in a key element of the Japanese monastic practice called mutual polishing.  Now I tend to think that Americans aren’t so good at this aspect of practice, given our cowboy, me-first mentality. But today I listened to a clip of a talk by Katagiri Roshi. He said that when... Read more

It is vital that we clarify and harmonize our lives with our work and not lose sight of either the absolute or the practical. – Dogen I just finished working through the Tenzo Kyokun (Instructions for the Cook) again, planning the ten sessions of the upcoming online practice period. The above quote says a lot of what we’ll be doing – harmonizing our lives and our work, whether that work be in the home, the practice place, the community or... Read more

I drove to work through our latest storm this morning, mostly crawling at about 15 mph, listening to Jiryu Rutschman-Byler‘s recent talk at Green Gulch. I found the talk nicely synchronous with the theme of Extensive Study, and especially with the business of intimacy with the ultimate limit. Jiryu has a nice California Zen way of talking about practicing with the life we have and letting go of our craving for some other life, some other set friends, some other... Read more

I’m enjoying some post-sesshin work time, preparing an outline for the upcoming online practice period focusing daily life and mutual polishing. For more, click here, or contact [email protected] with questions. As promised we worked with the passage from Dogen’s Extensive Study and had some good Zen fun while waking up at 3:30am and sitting much of the day. We’re a small group and the people who are here are here because they want to be here.That clears the energy field... Read more

  We’ll be in sesshin this weekend, studying the flip, as Dogen says below (the above photo is a real groaner). Sesshin is a rare and wonderful opportunity to taste the deep settled mind, a treasure hidden in the open field of this oh-so-busy, going-in- circles world. As I drove into work this morning through light snow, roads wet with thick slush, I listened to a talk by Katagiri Roshi about dharma transmission, “Plum Blossoms,” and wondered if the next... Read more