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Zen (Chan) |
The meditation (dhyana) school originating in China that emphasizes "mind-to-mind transmission" |
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Goalless Practice
The iconoclastic itinerant Soto Zen teacher “Homeless” Kodo Sawaki Roshi famously said, “Zazen is good for nothing!” He wasn’t being facetious. He wasn’t employing some kind of “skillful means” by saying something he really didn’t believe. He wasn’t being mystical and saying it’s good (wink, wink) for nothing (nudge, nudge). Nope. He meant it. Zazen really is good for nothing. It’s useless. Absolutely useless. One of the hardest aspects of Zen practice is getting your head around the idea that zazen has no goal. No goal at all. You don’t do it for anything except itself. It doesn’t get you anywhere. It doesn’t gain you a damned thing. More » -
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How a Buddhist Can Prepare for Death
Each of us will enter the Painful Bardo of Dying and Death, some of us sooner than later. Why not prepare for this event now, while you still are able to do so? In this retreat, you will be offered practical tools to help plan this process, including completion of advance care directives, will and estate planning, death care options for Buddhists, and Tonglen, Nine Contemplations of Atisha, Essential Phowa Practice, and Dissolution of the Elements instruction. If you allow yourself this opportunity to consider your own death with clarity, lovingkindness, compassion and tenderness, you will learn to move beyond—beyond fear, apprehension, and denial, and into an acceptance and understanding of the nature of impermanence. Your willingness to do this will be a gift to your loved ones, as you will then be able to leave them with the information they will need to continue their support when you cannot speak for yourself. Retreat begins November 6, 2012. More » -
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Do Your Best
Just do your best. This is the whole of practice, the whole of our life. All sorts of chatter comes up in the midst of the circumstances of our life. Something breaks, we clean it up or fix it up. Or we can start chattering about, “Why does this happen to me? Oh, I always do this. What am I going to do? What does this mean?” We all know the consequences of that. After speaking with someone, do we continue holding on to the discussion with “internal” chatter, like, “Why did they say that to me? It’s not fair.” If that chatter—habits of reactions, habits of thoughts and emotions—arises, then right there in the noticed chatter is our practice. Just be chatter in the midst of doing, and allow chatter to pass. Bodily experience this. More » -
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Just Shut Up
Robert Campbell Chodo began using amphetamines and alcohol at age 16. He continued using amphetamines until age 24, before moving on to cocaine for the next 10 years. In 1988, Campbell got sober after seeing a psychotherapist and joining Alcoholics Anonymous, where he attended meetings 3 times a week. While Campbell says that “AA unquestionably gave me the tools to make the life changes,” it wasn’t until he began his Zen practice in 1993 that he began to get “really, really sober.” Today Campbell is one of the Executive Directors for New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, an organization that provides direct care to the sick, dying, and suffering. More » -
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How to Not Waste Time
I hate the phrase “killing time.” No one has an overabundance of time here on this earth—the idea of killing any second of it just makes me cringe. In Zen monasteries you often see an old Chinese poem written on the han, the wooden board that’s hit to call people to meditation. It goes like this: Great is the matter of life and death Moments go by swiftly and are lost To squander time is a great shame Do not waste your life People have a great variety of definitions for what constitutes time wasting and what doesn’t. Some people want to stay busy and productive every minute. On the other hand, when asked what he thought was the purpose of life, Kurt Vonnegut said, “We’re all just farting around, and don’t let anyone tell you different.” But Kurt Vonnegut accomplished a lot in his time. More » -
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Breaking Through
Detours and obstacles are a fact of practice life. Some arise out of our own psychology and conditioning: patterns of self-judgment and perfectionism, a tendency to procrastinate or seek diversions, addiction to control, and the like. Other obstacles seem to be more universal, and these are the ones that nearly every practitioner faces at one time or another. These obstacles are at the heart of practice, yet they are seldom given the emphasis they deserve. But until we can see them clearly—see how they manifest in our lives—it will be difficult, if not impossible, for our practice to move forward. There are three obstacles in particular that we need to address. Misunderstanding the depth of waking sleep More »
