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Zen (Chan)

 The meditation (dhyana) school originating in China that emphasizes "mind-to-mind transmission"
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    The Seventh Zen Precept Paid Member

    By Nancy Baker
    What exactly is blaming? We all know what it’s like to blame the weather, the government, our parents, or the person who rear-ended my car, which is now costing me a pretty penny. And then there’s being enraged at my computer when I’ve made a mistake. These are obvious examples, but blaming can also be very subtle. I remember teasing my mother that I was going to put on her tombstone the words “Who took!” Whenever she misplaced or lost something, she would instantly call out, “Who took…!” to her four children and our father. Even though it had the syntax of a question, it was clearly an accusation. But even if she had asked it as a question, it would have been like the philosopher’s favorite non-question—“When did you stop beating your wife?”—but asked of someone who had never married. More »
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    Umbrella Man Paid Member

    For decades, Sojun Mel Weitsman has been an anchor of the Buddhist community in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. It might well be, however, that even if you’ve been around the North American Buddhist world for many years, you know little or nothing about him. I’m pretty sure that Mel—or Sojun Roshi, as he’s called formally as a Zen teacher— is just fine with that. More »
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    When It Happens to Us Paid Member

    By Ezra Bayda
    This is a fact of life; we don't like pain. We suffer because we marry our instinctive aversion to pain to the deep-seated belief that life should be free from pain. In resisting our pain by holding this belief, we strengthen just what we're trying to avoid. When we make pain the enemy, we solidify it. This resistance is where our suffering begins. More »
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    Instructions for Listening Meditation Paid Member

    By Martine Batchelor
    Try to sit stable like a mountain and vast like the ocean.Listen to the sounds as they occur. Do not imagine, name, or analyze the sounds. Just listen with wide-open awareness. Let the sounds come to you and touch your eardrums. Go inside the sounds and notice their fluid nature. If there are no sounds, listen, and rest in this moment of silence. Notice how sounds arise upon certain conditions and disappear upon others. Do not grasp at any sounds. Do not reject any sounds. Just be aware of sounds as they arise and pass away. Open yourself to the music of the world in this moment, in this place. In your daily life, notice the positive and negative habits you might have in your approach to listening. What helps you to listen fully and spaciously? If you are in a place that is very noisy, how can you help yourself? Must you find a quieter place or wear earplugs? Or can you be with these sounds in a different way? More »
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    Meditation, Mental Habits, and Creative Imagination Paid Member

    By Martine Batchelor
    We have to be careful not to think that meditation is about getting rid of thoughts. On the contrary, I would say that meditation helps us to creatively engage with our thoughts and not fixate on them. When people say they cannot concentrate, I say, “No, no, no! You are concentrating—too much on any one thought!”It is interesting in meditation to notice all the different places where our thoughts lead us—what distracts us and what occupies our minds. It is important to notice these things in meditation because these will be the same things that occupy our minds in daily life. As we become more familiar with our thoughts in meditation, we will see how repetitive our thoughts are. We often think very similar things over and over again and it is actually rare to have what I would call a creative, original thought. More »