I have been trying to make some sense of my wife’s abrupt passing after a lifetime of perfect health. She was diagnosed on February 25, 2015, rudely, shockingly, and unprofessionally told by a CT scan technician that she had four weeks to live, and passed away on March 22, 2015, the Chinese celebration day of… Continue reading Thank You Ajahn Sumedho
Category: Zazen
Super Power Mindfulness Zen
Step Nine – Reaching the Source The Second Dharma Realm Too many steps have been taken returning to the root and the source. Better to have been blind and deaf from the beginning! Dwelling in one’s true abode, unconcerned within and without – The river flows tranquilly on and the flowers are red. Reaching the… Continue reading Super Power Mindfulness Zen
Zen: Be Kind and Shallow
Many Buddhists have heard the story about the fellow who was a good meditator and was proud of it. He developed an arrogant personality and his acquaintances sometimes wished something would knock him off his self-made pedestal. But instead of an event that would deflate his ego, an event occurred that puffed him up even… Continue reading Zen: Be Kind and Shallow
Outflows, Inflows and Zen Practice
The irony of Zen is that more words have been written about it than any other branch of Buddhism although the central teaching of Zen is that it is a mind-to-mind transmission, outside of words, independent of scriptures. It’s way past time for Zen to get back to its roots, back to its silence. The… Continue reading Outflows, Inflows and Zen Practice
Zen Practice and the Sixth Fetter
In the list of ten fetters, the higher the number, the more subtle the fetter. The more subtle a fetter is, the less seriously we take it. So when we read what the sixth fetter is, we say: “Oh, that’s not so bad. I can break that fetter easily.” The sixth fetter is the desire… Continue reading Zen Practice and the Sixth Fetter
Mean Zen, Good Results
So Time magazine tells us that the U.S. Marines are into Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. My first reaction was that using MBSR to increase the efficiency of a killing machine was a bad idea. Meditation is not a self-improvement program; quite the opposite, it lowers the boundaries between people until the meditator realizes that there… Continue reading Mean Zen, Good Results
Zen and the Quantum
I grew weary decades ago of the tiresome claims of new age non-scientist novelists that ancient spiritual masters knew all about the implications of quantum mechanics long before 20th Century physicists. Sure, the ancients may have said that all life is somehow interconnected and that the independent self is an illusion, but that is a… Continue reading Zen and the Quantum
Zen, Dokusan and Mu!
Dokusan, or private instruction, provides an opportunity for Zen students to work directly with a teacher in a confidential, face-to-face setting. In the early days of Buddhism in Asia, interactions between Buddhist masters and their students usually occurred in public gatherings of the monastic community, or on spontaneous interchanges during work and other temple activities.… Continue reading Zen, Dokusan and Mu!
The Magic Of A Zen Sesshin
Sesshin is the Japanese word that we use in the world of Zen for a meditation retreat. A sesshin may last one day, a weekend, three or four days, a week, a month, thirty days, ninety days, or more. Most are seven days. A sesshin day typically begins before sunrise and ends after sunset. Starting at 5:00 a.m.… Continue reading The Magic Of A Zen Sesshin
Zen, The Stones and Scientology
We Zen practitioners have no bigotry or bias and we practice non-opposition so as a Zen practitioner I have no beef against Scientology. Actually, only Zen practitioners who have awakened lack all bigotry and bias. I am not an enlightened master and Scientology rubs me the wrong way. L. Ron Hubbard liked the name Clearwater so he directed… Continue reading Zen, The Stones and Scientology