Here’s Bodhi on his one year birthday – yesterday. I just came in from beginning to get the beds ready for planting – in about a month. Digging in the earth in the spring is so aromatic. Ahhh! The great earth’s goldenness arising in tune with the rotting of last year’s growth and all the many years before. Anyway, GS did some wonderful transcribing work and so I have a Katagiri Roshi offering for you today on this theme. Here... Read more

Above is the first loon I’ve seen this season, spotted a few days ago on Bald Eagle Lake. The traceless path of a bird, Dongshan’s wholeheartedness expression, for the loon includes appearing on the surface and disappearing into the depths. Much like our next practice focus in Genjokoan: When buddhas are truly buddhas, they are not conscious that they are buddhas; yet, they are the verifying buddhas, ever continuing to verify buddhas. In verification, there is no one who knows,... Read more

At the Empty Hand workshop on Zazenshin we worked with the third section – Hongzhi’s poem, Dogen’s comments and then his expression of the precept of zazen. This section is important because it clearly distinguishes shikantaza from silent illumination zazen. I’ve written about that in this blog previously, though, so that’s not the point of today’s post. I had hoped to provide context for our Empty Hand discussion with a different view on thinking/not-thinking/non-thinking but didn’t find a way to... Read more

“Like a bird on a wireLike a drunk in a midnight choirI have tried in my way to be free”– L. Cohen Today is Shakyamuni’s Birthday. And it’s our birthday too. In Zen circles, the birth story of the Buddha includes the little oh-so precocious One stepping out of his mother’s side (to spare her the pain of vaginal birth), pointing one hand to the earth, one to the heaven and saying, “In the heavens above and beneath the heavens,... Read more

Here’s the group shot of those who studied together at Empty Hand Zen Center (thanks to Still Chuck, not pictured). Susan Jion Postal, abbot, is behind me and Dennis Shofu Keegan, priest, is to my left. Btw, the young person right next to Susan, age 15, sat the whole day with us manifesting the most wonderful attentiveness. I’ve just skyped with a practitioner in the 100-days who reminded me that we’re at day 34. In the middle period of a... Read more

The first part was rough. My flight was five hours late in arriving at LaGuardia (as we floated in Buddhist purgatory circling western New York sandwiched between a vast blue sky above and mountains of pure white clouds below, waiting for the airport to reopen after a thunderstorm) and so I arrived almost 30 minutes late for my own talk. Still, Barry Magid’s Ordinary Mind group seemed to take it as quite ordinary and were a delight to speak with... Read more

I’m off to New York for the weekend to talk about Keep Me in Your Heart Awhile among other things. I’ll be at the Ordinary Mind Zen Center on Friday night, Brooklyn Zen Center on Saturday morning, and then at Empty Hand Zen Center on Sunday, including a talk in the morning and a Zazenshin workshop in the afternoon. Details on the sidebar. I’ll probably miss the ice transforming to water on Bald Eagle Lake (above) and another snow this... Read more

Before I get to that, a story comes to mind. I don’t remember if I heard this from a friend or read it, probably in Crooked Cucumber. And instead of looking it up, I’ll tell it from memory – so please regard it as such. Soon after Tassajara was established, Suzuku Roshi invited Yasutani Roshi and his attendant/assistant teacher, Phillip Kapleau to come by. Other teachers might have been there too. I believe Katagiri Sensei, Chino Sensei (they were not... Read more

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We’re on the “fly-way” here (also the “fly-over” from the West to the East Coasts but that’s another story), near enough to the Mississippi that we get a lot of migratory bird traffic. It started about a couple weeks ago. This morning I spotted (click the photo in order to see ’em) a couple Tundra Swans with a very cool honk and shot the above from the hip. Years ago in the middle of a tough sesshin, I went outside... Read more