Last night we had our first meeting of this 100-day practice for the local group and we go into sesshin tonight. “Holy Shit” was my capping phrase for my week of practice and life. Billy first applied this expression to Zen in a recent webinar (and toned it down to “holy feces” in his blog) and it stuck with me. It’s got a nice fundamental/relative nuance reminiscent of The Harmony of Difference and Sameness, don’t you think?, but much more... Read more

My old friend (and a true one) Yvonne Rand , also a successor of Katagiri Roshi, used to say that there’s a Zen saying that every good Zen talk included at least one story about shit and death. Roshi used to talk a lot about death. One of his most frequent comments: “When the airplane starts to fall from the sky, maybe even a Zen master will scream. There’s no guarantee.” In terms of shit, his main thing was to... Read more

Here’s the recording of the Keep Me In Your Heart Webinar. Click here. After you get the Webex recording rolling, go to View in the top menu bar and select Video from the pull down menu. This one addresses the theme “Hair on Fire,” flowing from this Katagiri story: At a sparsely attended introductory session led by Katagiri Roshi, person after person asked about the physical pain of zazen. Roshi took some time to arrange himself, adjusting his robes and... Read more

After a summer of experimenting with the technology and the more difficult challenge of finding how to communicate through the medium of Webex for Zen webinars, we got off to an excellent start this morning. Unfortunately, the host (yours truly) forgot to click the record button, so this will have to suffice as the report from the session. Those of you who attended are, of course, welcome to chime in with comments. The Koan in Genjo KoanMayu was fanning himself.... Read more

One of the practice commitments that I suggest for our 100 day practice periods is to chant the Heart Sutra after morning zazen every day. It’s a very important part of the practice – simply entoning it and then dedicating the merit to all buddhas beyond space and time. People sometimes think that we chant the Heart Sutra a lot in Zen because it’s special. When I asked Katagiri Roshi why we chanted the Heart Sutra so often, he said,... Read more

The Moon Reflected in the Water: 100 Day Practice Period begins on Saturday for those practicing from afar. The expectations might seem a bit more than you can handle – zazen, Heart Sutra, study, webinar, capping phrases (click here for more detail) – and if you think so, it might be just right. I’ve found that in the important practice of working our edge, most of us shy back from the edge and so don’t find the full aliveness that... Read more

The last webinar helped me appreciate the stages from Keep Me In Your Heart Awhile in a different way (see below for a recording of the presentation and conversation). I developed these stages a few years back after observing myself and Zen students move through what seemed to be quite a similar developmental spiral. The 10 Ox Herding Pictures, Six Realms, Five Ranks, Four Wisdoms, Nine Stages of Calming the Mind, etc., might seem like enough stages for a path... Read more

Here’s the recording of the session from Monday night: click (and then to see the video screen, select View from the top menu bar and Video). Our discussion was really cooking when we ran out of time but you all are welcome to continue that here via comments. And you are invited to join the last conversation in this series, Hair on Fire: Practicing with All Your Heart, on Monday, 9/14, at 7pm CST. Register at Facebook (click here) or... Read more

In response to recent posts distinguishing silent illumination and shikantaza, a couple practitioners wondered, “So what?” This is an important question. Simply put, imho, because the Buddha dharma is infinitely subtle (and incomparably profound too, as the verse before the dharma talk says). When the Buddha held up a flower and Mahakasyapa smiled, the Buddha recognized that he had realized the eye of the subtle dharma. Dogen wrote the nearly 100 chapters of the Shobogenzo to roll around that jewel.... Read more

This week I’ve been back at work for the schools, getting ready for the year, and yesterday Tetsugan and I looked at a house that might have worked for Wild Fox Zen and my kids. It had been on the market for a year and then sold the same day we looked at it. Dang. Wrapping up the week, I just enjoyed some of a Katagiri Roshi talk about the Genjokoan and found this sweet passage that I offer to... Read more