I’d like us to do an exercise together. Begin by imagining a person on the other side of the political divide, perhaps a politician, or someone that we have had a very angry conversation with. Let’s think of this person now. Feel those feelings, of rage, of hatred. How could they do this? How could they say this? How could they think this? How could they be so uninformed, so wilfully stupid? Feel these feelings.

Now sit up straight. Imagine that there’s a string attached to the top of the back of your head and this string is gently pulling the back of your head up toward the ceiling. Maybe your head will go up about a quarter of an inch so your chin comes in a little. This elongates your spine. It creates a new feeling in your body–mind. Check the rest of your body, do you feel open, do you feel relaxed? Don’t let your head come forward, that is how we are when we are angry, but bring your chin back in, relaxed and open. And take a couple of soft and relaxed breaths.

Now keep this posture and think of this person again. Is it different this time? In doing this exercise we have moved from small mind to big mind, a little bit or maybe a lot. How does big mind feel about this person?

I notice in myself a change from anger toward sadness, not so much aggression any more, but sadness, curiosity, wondering. What are they thinking? Why do they think it?

Peter Harvey, the British Buddhist scholar, in his book An Introduction to Buddhism, writes about a word that Buddha used, “views,” in Sanskrit drishti.

Views refers to speculative viewpoints, theories or opinions, especially when they become dogmatic, narrowing a person’s whole viewpoint on life. Such views are seen as hidden forms of self-assertion, which lead to conflict with those of other opinions, be this in the form of verbal wrangling, or ideological wars and bloody revolutions. In this context it is worth noting that the atrocities carried out by Hitler, Stalin, and the Khmer Rouge were initiated by people who were convinced of a theory, which demanded and justified their actions.¹

Hidden forms of the assertion of self.

So it is interesting that this word “views,” drishti, also shows up in the Eightfold Path, where Buddha speaks about Right Understanding, Right View, Right Speech, Right Action, but in that context the word drishti is preceded by the word samyak, samyak drishti. Samyak is translated normally into English as right, but actually samyak means perfect, or whole, like that phrase in the Heart Sutra, anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, perfect enlightenment.

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So it’s not correct translation to say right views, right understanding in the Eightfold Path, it’s perfect views. What are perfect views?

Harvey is suggesting that our views, our political views, are linked to ego, our sense of ourselves as separate beings. And our views are merged with our sense of ourself, which we are attached to—all the things that we think, that we believe are part of our self, and when those are challenged we feel anger. We feel the need to defend this. And to me it seems like a political movement is one big ego, one big separate self, where people all share the same beliefs and are angry and aggressive when these beliefs are challenged, and this leads to all kinds of suffering. So our individual separate egos become merged with one huge ego of millions of people.

When we’re angry there’s something that goes out the window and that is mindfulness. Normally mindfulness is being aware of what is going on, and we practice that. As a person we are aware of what we see, what we hear, what we think, what we feel, but what is mindfulness when it comes to politics? Politics is inescapable. The fact that we can gather openly in the zendo is a result of politics, there’s a law about freedom of religion. The food we eat is affected by politics, the laws about how the food is grown, how it’s transported. There’s politics everywhere. But what is mindfulness in the political arena? Mindfulness is being aware of what’s going on, but we don’t know what’s going on! All we know about in terms of what we experience is what is right in front of us.

The only way we can know about what’s going on in the world is through the news media, which give us limited and biased and incomplete accounts of what’s happening. So this is very difficult, and a lot of times what we do is trust a certain source and pretty much believe what we hear. This is done on the left and on the right as well as in the center. We have to do it because we don’t have time to study all this stuff. It’s too complicated!

So mindfulness in this context is to admit that we do not know what is going on, we don’t understand it. People who study it all day disagree! And if we accept that we don’t really know what’s happening, what is there to protect? What is there to get angry about? We’re just muddling through and doing our best, and if somebody says something that opposes what we think, then that’s an opportunity to learn. Maybe they’re right, maybe we’re right. This is mindfulness, to be aware that we don’t know. To think that we really know what is going on is ignorance.

So the Zen monk was telling his teacher that he was going on a pilgrimage. The teacher said, “What is the purpose of your pilgrimage?” The student said, “I don’t know.” The teacher said, “Not-knowing is most intimate.”

This is our job now. We admit we don’t know so that we can be intimate with what’s going on as much as possible, be intimate with all the people around us. Talk to them, try to understand them.

This seems to me to be samyak drishti. Perfect view. It’s perfect because it’s empty! There’s nothing there, it’s just open awareness.

So do we just say, we don’t understand what’s going on so just forget it? That doesn’t seem right especially in a democracy. No, we have to try to understand and then based on our faulty understanding we have to take action. But as Zen practitioners it seems to me we do this from a different place. We do it from a place of mindfulness, knowing that we don’t know, but still we try to understand, and we engage. Trying to do the right thing, but being open, not angry, not protecting, just giving, openly.

So how do we do this? It comes naturally through practice. When we sit, we take up our posture and are open, we relax, we feel our breathing, and we have moments when we’re no longer in our thoughts, our views. We move from drishti to samyak drishti, a perfect view. Our ego falls away or at least is reduced. We have a taste of not knowing. We do this every day. We start to learn how to act from that place, how to think from that place. How to form judgements about what’s happening from that place, from emptiness. This seems to me to be our challenge as Zen students in this time.

1 Harvey, P. (2012). An Introduction to Buddhism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

2 Wick, G.S. (2005). The Book of Equanimity: Illuminating Zen Koans. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 63

This talk is part of the upcoming book, Digging in the Earth to Find the Blue Sky: Interfaith Zen Practice in Pandemic and War.

Chimon Carl Viggiani Sensei began his Zen training with Eido Roshi in 1987, later continuing with Robert Kennedy Roshi, who installed him as Sensei in 2013. He teaches at the New Moon Zendo in Ridgewood, New Jersey. He is a piano tuner, pianist, and composer, whose music can be heard at viggianimusic.com.

We somehow believe that now is just a stepping stone to some unspecified future that holds all we desire and need. This thought is seldom examined. Will we, this very year, realise that now is it, the it we have long sought and that has so often evaded us as we busy ourselves looking elsewhere?

Elsewhere-itis is a disease of humankind. The tonic is minute, wordless attention to what is in front of our noses, whatever and whoever it is. It’s time to allow ourselves and the world to be. We can begin by noticing it.

We can see on the news that what we do matters. To act out of selfishness is to act out of denial of our fundamental state, which is connected.

Sitting zazen engenders love, connection, empathy. We can step, unarmed, into the unknown of each moment without preference or prejudice, never wishing it to be something else; step forward without telling ourselves a story that shapes our responses ahead of time.

We can start again, each and every moment. The world that we see is our own creation. There’s a new world, it is this world, “I can hear her breathing.”

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This opens the final chapter of the upcoming book, Digging in the Earth to Find the Blue Sky: Interfaith Zen Practice in Pandemic and War, due to be published this fall in the UK and US.

Sheila Ross is an artist, writer, graphic designer, and Zen student of Roshi Robert Kennedy. She was senior designer at Fordham University, New York, where she founded the Fordham Interfaith Zen sitting group. Ross trained as a sculptor at St. Martin’s School of Art in London, participating in the Locked Room project, which led to the book The Locked Room: Four years that shook art education, 1969-73 (MIT Press, 2020). (sheilaross.co.uk)

Where was I when it happened:
The walls came down,
They are a delicate thing.
The ropes are gone!
They fell off silently.
Who broke the chains—
They are a fragile thing.

Released from jailhouse
This nobody nowhere
Is merging plunging
Unrestrained ...
Life is living itself through me.

Nothing is binding me, nothing can stop me.
Where has my shelter gone?

Where was I when it happened?
And who is writing this?

Is it just me everywhere all the time?
Where then is my place in all of this?

I remember a beautiful line by the Chinese poet Tu Fu which Roshi Kennedy brought to us.

Answering spring’s radiant glories, I too have my place.¹

What came to me when I heard this line is: Without me having my place, there wouldn’t be spring’s radiant glory.

My place is not static or solid, it is shifting, it’s “merging” or “plunging.” Sometimes there is sudden change, sometimes it is entering a soft and steady stream, being carried, flowing.

This continuous stream of everything is moving through me, touching me ... touching me—and moving on.

No boundaries, no bottom or ceiling.

No separation either. It’s stunning!

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What did The Beatles know when they sang “I am the Walrus”?

I am he
As you are he
As you are me
And we are all together.²

So much for my diary.

Who will ever fully comprehend the implications for our life when everything is included, nothing rejected or excluded?

I am you as you are me and we are all together.

Is that so?

Roshi Kennedy gave us a koan the other week. Perhaps the most fundamental koan: Who is it? Or: What is it?

I don’t know—do you?

Let me finish with a few words the Dominican priest Donagh O‘Shea has given us at a retreat in Tallaght, Ireland. He spoke about “folding in” all the ingredients of our meal.

In good and in difficult times it is always about folding in the stuff that life presents us with. It is like the ingredients in cooking or baking, he said. The difference is, that you don’t pick and choose the ingredients for this meal.

Nothing that life gives you, that comes to you, can be excluded. You don’t have to like the difficult parts, just fold them into the fabric of your life anyway.

The meal is cooked. No need to add a story in the head to it.

Let’s have breakfast.

1 Hinton, D. (trans.) (2020). The Selected Poems of Tu Fu. New York, NY: New Directions, 119

2 McCartney, P., Lennon, J. (1967). “I Am the Walrus,” Magical Mystery Tour. UK: Parlaphone; U.S.: Capitol Records

This text is part of the upcoming book, Digging in the Earth to Find the Blue Sky: Interfaith Zen Practice in Pandemic and War.

Sensei Alice Denkō Potz is a dharma heir to Roshi Kennedy. She is a German-American Catholic theologian, social pedagogue and journalist, born in Hungary, whose family fled to Germany during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. She has studied Zen with Brigitte Koun-An D’Ortschy in Munich, with Zen master and Maryknoll Sister Kathleen Seiun Reiley, and Roshi Niklaus Jinshu Brantschen, S.J., of Switzerland. She has worked for the Catholic News Agency KNA in Germany, and in Switzerland at Lassalle-Haus Bad Schönbrunn. She has taught theology and sociology for over fifteen years as an adjunct instructor at St. Peter’s University in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Step out, step off, step forward. Just do it. Our Zen practice trains us to be spontaneous, to be present, to take risks in this moment, to respond with skillfulness to just this.

At the same time, it is easy to fall into complacency, to get comfortable with routines, comfortable even with amazing insights, somehow lose the vitality, the spark.

In Case 46 of The Gateless Gate: “Another eminent master of old says, ‘Even though one who is sitting on the top of a hundred-foot pole has entered realization, it is not yet real. He must step forward from the top of the pole and manifest his whole body throughout the world in the ten directions.’”²

“How will you step forward from the top of a hundred-foot pole?”³

This koan also appears in The Book of Equanimity, Case 79, where the eminent master is identified as Master Chōsa. On this case, Gerry Shishin Wick comments:

No matter where we are in our Zen practice or our life we’re always standing on top of a hundred-foot pole. But we must not rest there.⁴

We have to enter those spaces that scare us, and we must do so over and over again. […] All kinds of discomforts come up during zazen and the rest of your life, but as long as you have the faith and determination you can encounter them with your eyes open. Just keep going forward step by step from the top of the hundred-foot pole.⁵

Life has a way of encouraging us to step forward, offering new opportunities again and again. We may be drifting. Then something shakes us up, awakens us in our formal sitting practice and in our everyday life, strips us of dualistic thinking: sacred/profane, calm/crazy, comfortable/risky, known/unknown. We face and accept this dharma gate: the dharma entrance gate in front of us right here, right now.

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When I first started sitting zazen, I went every morning to Still Mind Zendo in lower Manhattan. I was super attached to that routine since I could feel the difference in my mind; it was much quieter during the day. Then suddenly, I broke my foot on a trip to Honduras and was unable to go to the zendo. Gone, the safe, peaceful, warm, familiar space of the sangha. Gone in a flash! Stripped of that spiritual pole which grounded me, gave me strength, aligned me. A new dharma entrance gate. I began to walk the streets of Manhattan; that became my practice: Slow walking on crutches in crowds. And suddenly, the whole city became my sangha, as I slowed down and opened radically to see and receive what was around me. Complete strangers would smile and offer a helping hand, every day.

One such day, down at Gramercy Square Park, the wind was blowing fiercely and the cold air was rushing through my open coat. An elderly, elegantly dressed gentleman stopped, offered to button the coat. A few minutes later, as I crutched up the long, wide, hard stone stairs of a church, a young delivery man, rushing on a strict time clock, stopped, stood at my side, and began to accompany me silently, step by step. He was an immigrant with another language and did not say a word, just slowly walked alongside me up the long staircase, until we arrived at the top, together. Then he hurried off to make his delivery.

No gap. Responding to just this, with wisdom and compassion. Stranger/sangha member. Spiritual practice/city life. Insight/everyday kindness. Saving all sentient beings/being saved.

Mercy Sister Janet Ruffing, spiritual director, now at Yale Divinity School, formerly taught a class on mysticism at Fordham University which I was fortunate to take. One day in class she told us a story. Two monks meditated their whole lives staring at a white wall. One transformed. The other did not. What made the difference?

What holds the key to our continued spiritual growth?

Grace, we could say. In the end, it is all gift.

To quote Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “What we are, what we have, even our salvation, all is gift, all is grace, not to be achieved but to be received, as a gift freely given.”⁶

It is a gift that comes with continued determination and willingness, willingness at least to receive, and to step out, to step forward.

“We must step forward into the unknown void in order to experience the boundless life.”⁷ Desmond Tutu is certainly an example of this.

To step forward, to step out, step off, to dare to cross bridges, to go to the places we most fear, to release into a freedom few people live.

As the Kichwa Andean poet, indigenous feminist and healer, Tsaywa Samay Cañamar says, “We are also spirit that mutates within air, fire, wind, water, mother earth. An infinite force that very few of us manage to experience fully.”⁸

In the Buddhist tradition, stories tell of a monk meditating for years in a cave. Someone comes by to test his understanding, often a woman (a nun, his patroness) who approaches him to see if he will respond with equanimity or react in a habitual manner. Some monks get triggered easily, yelling angrily. Others simply freeze and can’t respond at all.

There is one such story from ninth century China about the monk Jinhua Juzhi. A nun named Shiji came to challenge him. “Give me one word,” she said, “and I’ll take off my hat.” Juzhi was speechless and could not respond. The nun walked out. Juzhi sighed and said, “Although I inhabit the body of a man, I lack a man’s spirit.” He resolved to leave his hermitage in search of understanding.⁹

Do we have understanding? What is it that holds us back from more complete understanding? What do we need to let go of?

How do we integrate our spiritual insights from zazen into our daily lives? What is the relationship between our practice on the cushion and our interactions with others?

I listened to a talk recently about spiritual and emotional maturity by a meditation teacher, Adyashanti, and an expert on trauma recovery, Gabor Mate. They both emphasized that spiritual and emotional maturity do not always move at the same rate; someone can have profound spiritual insight and yet lack emotional maturity, not be able to manifest the insight with compassion and wisdom in daily life. The true test of enlightenment, Adyashanti said, was how well we respond, not simply react, to triggers, or according to Mate, how well we have been able to heal internal wounds, to be humble, transparent, open in giving ourselves genuinely in service to others.¹⁰

Let’s circle back now to Koan 46 of the Gateless Gate, to the commentary of Yamada Roshi, which is very profound:

Figuratively, [the top of a hundred-foot pole] … is the stage of complete emptiness. […] That state is called the great death. It is a stage where there is no dualistic opposition ... such as subject and object, good and bad …¹¹

Anyone who wants to attain the true Zen experience must pass through this stage once. If you remain there, however, you will be unable to attain true emancipation. ...¹²

“Take a step forward from this stage and you will be able to manifest your whole body throughout the world in ten directions. ...”¹³

The whole universe in the ten directions is the light of [your]self [!]¹⁴

Each one of us [must] see the light that illuminates the reality of all things. It’s like being in a dream from which we cannot awaken. To awaken, we need to have trust to let go.¹⁵

Allow me to close with a fragment of a poem by Adrienne Rich.

But there come times — perhaps this is one of them —
when we have to take ourselves more seriously or die;
when we have to pull back from the incantations,
rhythms we’ve moved to thoughtlessly,
and disenthrall ourselves, bestow
ourselves to silence, or a severer listening, cleansed
of oratory, formulas, choruses, laments, static
crowding the wires. We cut the wires,
find ourselves in free-fall, as if
our true home were the undimensional
solitudes, the rift
in the Great Nebula.¹⁶

Step out, step off, step forward. Together. Again and again. Trustfall.

1 Pink, Trustfall, music video. Access:

2 Yamada, K. (trans. and commentary) (2004). The Gateless Gate: The Classic Book of Zen Koans. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 216

3 Ibid. This question is asked in the koan by Master Sekisō.

4 Wick, G.S. (2005). The Book of Equanimity: Illuminating Classic Zen Koans. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 249

5 Ibid., 251

6 Quoted in “Word for the Day,” Grateful Living, February 9, 2023. Access: https://grateful.org/word-for-the-day/what-we-are-what-we-have-even-our-salvation-all-is-gift-all-is-grace-not-to-be-achieved-but-to-be-received-as-a-gift-freely-given/

7 Wick, The Book of Equanimity, 249

8 Tsaywa Samay Cañamar Maldonado, Shunku-yay / Mirarse en la eternidad del corazón, translation from Kichwa by Fredy A. Roncalla (Ecuador: Siwar Mayu, 2022). Access: http://siwarmayu.com/shunku-yay-looking-at-each-other-through-the-infinite-of-the-heart-tsaywa-samay-canamar-m/

9 Caplow, F. and Moon, S. eds. (2013). The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 280

10 Mate, G. and Adyashanti, “Emotional and Spiritual Maturity,” Science and Nonduality Conference, April 11, 2019. Access:

11 Yamada, The Gateless Gate, 217

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 Wick, The Book of Equanimity, 251

15 Ibid., 249

17 Rich, A. (1978). “Transcendental Etude,” The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977. New York: W.W. Norton and Company

This talk appears in the upcoming book, Digging in the Earth to Find the Blue Sky: Interfaith Zen Practice in Pandemic and War.

Dr. Rev. Mónica A. Maher (Prajnatara) is a dharma heir of Roshi Kennedy based in Quito, Ecuador. She is senior minister of the United Church of Ecuador and founding director of the Ecuadorian Faith Network, former associate director of the Human Rights Studies Committee of Harvard University, Lentz Memorial Lecturer at Harvard Divinity School, Rotary International Peace Fellow at Chulalongkorn University-Thailand, and Fulbright New Century Scholar-Honduras. Trained in the Alternatives to Violence Program, she has facilitated workshops on nonviolence and trauma healing across Latin America.

The Advent liturgy is seen by many as the most beautiful of the whole year and it is choreographed very expertly. The first figure we meet is Isaiah pointing to the birth, but it is a birth in a distant future. Though he is pointing from a distance of 800 years, his speech is impassioned: “Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down.”¹ He wants the ultimate to be realized here and now.

Tear open the heavens and come down. Down from where? Down, I suppose, from abstraction and theory and endless explanation. Some abstraction is unavoidable, and it has its uses, but much of it is like a balloon with no content but hot air. Hot air rises, and so abstraction seems superior and elevated. It’s amazing how much abstraction there is in ordinary discourse. We used to divide nouns into abstract and concrete: abstract nouns such as truth, virtue, beauty, and concrete nouns such as chair, tree, stone…. But in fact the so-called concrete nouns are just as abstract as the abstract ones! The word tree, for example, is made to stand for all the trees that ever existed on this planet, though no two are exactly alike in every detail. The word tree is not experience; you couldn’t sit under it, it is only a word.

Oh that he would tear open the heavens and come down—down out of language, out of abstraction, out of hot air.

But Isaiah also said very practical things like: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord!”² That meant repair the roads! Jerusalem is surrounded by desert, desert roads get covered in sand. If some great personage was expected, the first thing to do was to clear the sand off the roads. What is sand? It’s the trillion little things, the stuff that fills and clogs our life.

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Never before has there been an age when human beings were so clogged with information or so assaulted by language on every side—morning, noon, and night. Today we have wonderful roads for driving on, but the roads that are clogged are the spiritual ones. Isaiah couldn’t have imagined it, but his words nevertheless can direct our attention to it.

The second great figure who appears in the Advent liturgy is John the Baptist. He was only six months older than Jesus, and was even a cousin. He has powerful things to say, and a very abrasive way of saying them. He is rough, he is the original Iron John. Though he is very near in time to Jesus, in other ways he is still somewhat distant.

At the end of Advent appears the third great figure pointing to the birth of Christ. It is Mary his mother. The waiting is at last focused precisely. It could not be more precisely located than this. God’s new deed, the Child, is to be born in her.

Years ago I lived in Cork, and I remember waiting once for a long-delayed bus. The queue got longer as we waited, and all the different kinds of waiting were exhibited there. Several people waited in a fidgety, restless manner, repeatedly looking up the road for the invisible bus, looking at their watches and rolling their eyes. When was it going to come? Then there were others whose waiting was quite different. These had gone into themselves and closed the door. I particularly remember one man who had became totally stoical and was just leaning against the lamp post in what looked like despair. That too is a manner of waiting.

But there, among them, was a young woman who was heavily pregnant. There was a deeper kind of waiting in her, she had an extraordinary calm, she was glowing. She was waiting for the bus, yes, but her deeper waiting was paradoxical, and this was probably the key to her remarkable calmness: she was waiting for something that was there already. It struck me that this is exactly what meditation is: waiting for something that is already here, but needing to become visible. We are not waiting impatiently, nor stoically; we are waiting for something that is closer to us than we are to ourselves. That kind of waiting puts us in the right place for that remarkable calm and the glowing sense of presence that that young woman had. Over the years I have returned to the memory of her, especially when I find myself waiting in wrong ways. She doesn’t know that she has been my teacher for many years. There’s no telling how far the influence of our meditation may reach.

In Christ, God has torn open the heavens and come down. “God is born in us,”³ said Meister Eckhart. It is hard to resist the upward pull of abstraction. Meditation is a downward pull: it is incarnation. The Word became flesh in order to live among us; what if we are not here when he comes, but in the clouds! In kinhin,⁴ every step is a grounding, down to the roots, a kind of earthing of all the static in the mind.

1 Isaiah 64, 1

2 Isaiah 40, 3

3 The actual quote is “The son is born in us.” Meister Eckhart, M.O.C. Walshe (trans.) (1981). Sermons and Treatises. London: Watkins Publishing, vol. 2, 4

4 Kinhin is walking meditation.

Donagh O’Shea was born in Cork, Ireland, and joined the Dominican Order in 1961. He studied in Switzerland and taught philosophy in England and Ireland. He is the author of several books including, A Hundred Roads to Here: Introductions to Meditation and Take Nothing for the Journey (Dominican Publications, Dublin, 2023 and 2013). He studied Zen with Daido Loori and Willigis Jaeger. He is director of the Dominican Retreat Centre, Tallaght, Dublin, home to Grey Heron Zendo.

Over seven million refugees from Ukraine are recorded across Europe. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reports that the number of forcibly displaced and stateless people worldwide has risen to 21.6 million.

The COP27 climate conference reaches agreement that the wealthier developed nations, whose activity and growth have largely created the climate crisis, should pay for its abatement in poorer countries. But at the same time some countries are backing away from their previous zero emissions targets in the face of the energy crisis brought about by the weaponization of resources in the Russian war on Ukraine.

German civilians and industry have reduced consumption of gas and found alternative supplies, ending their dependency on the Russian pipeline.

Fiji considers moving its communities from its islands which are at existential risk from climate change.

The world’s population passes eight billion.

Advent. What are we waiting for?

We have the opportunity to change, to not after all lose this precious life, this irreplaceable world. Or will we instead choose to rehearse our ancient grievances, our greed and our hatred, to the point that they sit at the forefront of our minds obscuring the view of our one indivisible life? If heaven and earth are separated by as much as one hair, nothing can join them again. It is only our minds that do this setting apart. We have, for now, the choice.

Appamāda, active, mindful care—the enacting of love. Isn’t this where the necessity lies, and also the deep satisfaction? Every day, tending to whatever comes our way. Imagine, all over the world, people turning to their neighbor, to whoever is standing next to them or appearing in their life, imagine if each person said, “What can I do for you?” Imagine, if kindness and active, mindful care were to catch on.

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This text is part of the upcoming book, Digging in the Earth to Find the Blue Sky.

Sheila Ross is an artist, writer, graphic designer, and Zen student of Roshi Robert Kennedy. She was senior designer at Fordham University, New York, where she founded the Fordham Interfaith Zen sitting group. Ross trained as a sculptor at St. Martin’s School of Art in London, participating in the Locked Room project, which led to the book The Locked Room: Four years that shook art education, 1969-73 (MIT Press, 2020). (sheilaross.co.uk)

The student says, “If I had not met you, I would have wasted my whole life reading scripture.”¹

Who is it that the student is speaking to?

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1 Cook, F. (trans. and introduction) (1991). The Record of Transmitting the Light: Zen Master Keizan’s Denkoroku. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications

This talk appears in the upcoming book, Digging in the Earth to Find the Blue Sky.

Roshi Robert E. Kennedy, S.J., is the founding teacher of Morning Star Zendo. He is a Jesuit priest, Zen master, psychoanalyst and professor emeritus of theology. He is one of the few surviving masters who brought Zen to the West from Japan, and one of several practicing Catholics who are recognized by the Buddhist community as Zen teachers. He is active in interfaith work, teaching Zen to persons of all faiths and none and conducting retreats in the United States, Mexico, Ireland and England. Roshi Kennedy studied Zen with the Japanese master Yamada Roshi, with Maezumi Roshi in Los Angeles and Bernie Glassman Roshi in New York in the Zen Peacemaker Order; in 1997 he received inka from Glassman Roshi. He is the author of Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit (Bloomsbury, 1995, 2020) and Zen Gifts to Christians (Continuum, 2004). The film Are We One, directed by Dónal Ó Céilleachair, traces the transmission of Zen through Roshi Kennedy’s life’s work (2024). Jesus and Buddha: Practicing Across Traditions, directed by John Ankele for Old Dog Documentaries Inc. (2012), features Roshi Kennedy, Christian/Buddhist scholar Paul Knitter and Eco-theologian/Dharma Teacher Hyun Kyung Chung.

Joshu asked a monk, “How many sutras do you read in one day?”
The monk said, “Sometimes seven or eight. Sometimes ten.”
Joshu said, “Oh, then you can’t read scriptures.”
The monk said, “Master, how many do your read in a day?”
Joshu said, “In one day I read one word.”¹

Let me ask you, what is this one word?

Now, let’s look at another Zen exchange that deals with a word, the final word.

A monk asked, “What is the final word?”
Touzi said, “The word you didn’t understand at the beginning.”²

I like this monk. He is honest. He certainly knows the phrase, There is no final word of Zen. But he doesn’t just repeat words and phrases. He wants to realize the final word. Perhaps he’s been sitting long and is getting tired, tired of all the Zen talk.

This monk is humble, he is teachable, and good fortune is with him. He meets Master Touzi and asks, “What is the final word?” Master Touzi points directly at this monk and says, “The word you didn’t understand at the beginning.” Master Touzi is also pointing at you and me. Pointing at the word we haven’t understood from the beginning.

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This word has nothing to do with understanding. This is the reason it is said in the Zen tradition, “The World-honored One spoke with a hidden meaning, but it was not concealed to Kasyapa.”³ This word has nothing to do with beginning or ending, with the first word or the last word. It has nothing to do with coming or going, having or not having, with enlightenment or delusion. This word has to do with rain.

Master Touzi was asked by another monk, “One Dharma universally freshens all beings. What Dharma is this?” Touzi said, “The falling rain.”⁴ Zen speaks of the Rain of 10,000 blessings. What is this rain?

The Navajo speak of two kinds of rain. One is called She rain. This rain is gentle, steady, long lasting and deeply penetrating. It is life giving. Sitting zazen like this, one hears the voice of the raindrops. The other rain is called He rain. This rain is a flash flood. It is lightning and thunder. It is death dealing. Sitting zazen like this, one hears the lion roar and dragon howl.

Either way, it is “one dharma that refreshes all beings.”

Listen as Master Touzi once again points directly at you and me and the final word.

Master Touzi entered the hall and said, “This old monk’s energy is failing and my lips and tongue are blundering. I don’t have any idle talk to give you.” He then added, “There is no mystery that can be compared to you, yourself.”⁵

This you, yourself cannot be learned, taught, repeated, or passed on. You, yourself is not an experience. It is not an experience of oneness with the world or with cosmic energy or anything else. You, yourself is altogether beyond. The Heart Sutra culminates in the Prajnaparamita Mantra, which says,

Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond.
O what an awakening, all-hail!⁶

Zazen is to sit gone altogether beyond as you, yourself, right here and now.

1 Adapted from Ferguson, A. (2000). Zen’s Chinese Heritage. Somerville, MA: Wisdom, 141

2 Ferguson, A. (2000). Zen’s Chinese Heritage. Somerville, MA: Wisdom, 195.

3 Cook, F.H. (1991). The Record of Transmitting the Light. Los Angeles, CA: Center Publications, 219

4 Ibid., 294

5 Adapted from Ferguson, A. (2000). Zen’s Chinese Heritage. Somerville, MA: Wisdom, 193

6 Conze, E. (1972). Buddhist Wisdom Books: Containing the Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra. New York, Harper & Row, 101-2

This is part of the upcoming book, Digging in the Earth to Find the Blue Sky.

Roshi Charles Shinkai Birx received dharma transmission from Roshi Kennedy in 1998 and inka in 2014. He is co-founder of New River Zen Community in Blacksburg, VA and co-author of Waking Up Together (Wisdom, 2005). Charles is an ordained permanent deacon in the Catholic Church. He is retired from a career as a reading specialist.

The U.S. sells arms to Taiwan, escalating U.S.-China tensions.

Europe suspects sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline by Russia in the continuing energy war.

22-year-old Mahsa Amini dies in custody in Iran following her arrest by the nation’s Guidance Patrol for allegedly not wearing her hijab correctly. Thousands of Iranian citizens mobilize in anti-regime protests, with women burning their headscarves and cutting their hair in solidarity.

The UK’s new prime minister plunges the country into recession within a month of becoming leader. Pension funds risk insolvency and mortgage products are withdrawn from the market as a result of her budget plans. She is very quickly ousted.

Italy elects a far-right prime minister.

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A rain-forest activist and Forest Guardian is killed in Brazil, weeks after attending an Amazon summit organized by a murdered Indigenous specialist who had predicted his own death.

One third of Pakistan is under water this monsoon season. Record-high temperatures in China reduce the Yangtze River to a trickle; factories halt production to ease the burden on the power grid. Last year in Zhengzhou people were drowning in subway cars flooded by summer rains.

Hundreds of thousands of people are facing hunger and the threat of starvation in Somalia, due to drought, crop failure and decades of conflict, with young children most at risk in this worst drought in 40 years.

The COP27 climate conference is dubbed Egypt’s greenwash of its political realities. The cost of climate change dominates the conference.

The world’s billionaires worry how to protect their underground survival bunkers in the event of global catastrophe.

Will we wake up, each of us, to our role in this hardening of divisions—divisions that fundamentally do not exist but are rehearsed endlessly in our minds and in our habits of mind and so affect our actions in the world?

This is part of the upcoming book, Digging in the Earth to Find the Blue Sky.

Sheila Ross is an artist, writer, graphic designer, and Zen student of Roshi Kennedy. She was senior designer at Fordham University, New York, where she founded the Fordham Interfaith Zen sitting group. Ross trained as a sculptor at St. Martin’s School of Art in London, participating in the Locked Room project, which led to the book The Locked Room: Four years that shook art education, 1969-73 (MIT Press, 2020). (sheilaross.co.uk)

So what is emptiness?

Emptiness means that everything is empty of independent existence.

Everything is relational, everything is conditional.

It is empty of independent existence. It doesn’t mean non-existence. It doesn’t mean nihilism.

It is rather a device to criticise all views, even a view of emptiness itself.

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We have to be careful of this because there are some who do believe that there is a thing that is empty, a thing called emptiness, and sometimes they build a whole life around that vision of emptiness but it is not a thing at all.

Emptiness has been called a device or a weapon used to destroy naive beliefs.

The intricate fabric of being in Buddhism is not of being at all, but ceaseless becoming. There is change only. And a concept of emptiness freezes this fluid nature of reality. A ceaseless becoming can become a thought or a principle.

Another way of looking at emptiness is that it is interdependence. Interdependent, or conditional.

I know there are some people who do not like to call emptiness a weapon or a device. It is a holy principle for them. But in fact it is even said that it is better for a Zen practitioner to believe in God than to believe that emptiness is a thing.

The teaching of emptiness is that all things are empty of independent existence, therefore the correct view about emptiness is to have no view at all. The way to experience it is through zazen. No view, just practice.

This talk appears in the upcoming book, Digging in the Earth to Find the Blue Sky.

Roshi Robert E. Kennedy, S.J., is the founding teacher of Morning Star Zendo. He is a Jesuit priest, psychoanalyst and professor emeritus of theology. He is one of the few surviving masters who brought Zen to the West from Japan, and one of several practicing Catholics who are recognized by the Buddhist community as Zen teachers. He is active in interfaith work, teaching Zen to persons of all faiths and none and conducting retreats in the United States, Mexico, Ireland and England. Roshi Kennedy studied Zen with the Japanese master Yamada Roshi, with Maezumi Roshi in Los Angeles and Bernie Glassman Roshi in New York in the Zen Peacemaker Order; in 1997 he received inka from Glassman Roshi. He is the author of Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit (Bloomsbury, 1995, 2020) and Zen Gifts to Christians (Continuum, 2004). Are We One, directed by Dónal Ó Céilleachair, traces the transmission of Zen through Roshi Kennedy’s life’s work (2024). Jesus and Buddha: Practicing Across Traditions, directed by John Ankele for Old Dog Documentaries Inc. (2012), features Roshi Kennedy, Christian/Buddhist scholar Paul Knitter and Eco-theologian/Dharma Teacher Hyun Kyung Chung.

So … life is empty. Empty of what? Independent existence. That’s why we are grateful. To be interdependent and thankful for it. I experience the activity of emptiness when I look into my cat’s eyes and pet her. Experiencing emptiness is experiencing interrelatedness. It clears away mental affliction that obscures the nature of experience.

May I be granted the wisdom to cross over to the shore of enlightenment, breathing in to this virginal moment.

I ask, What is the sutra of my life? What is in the sutra of my life? Shakyamuni explained it is vitally important to perceive all phenomenal reality as a sutra. The real sutra is in the midst of daily life. In order to stop suffering, the teachings must be experienced in daily life.

All sounds, smells, tastes, sensations of phenomenal reality are the sutra without words which leaves nothing out. It enables change and connection. And so, too, birth and death and growth and decay and suffering and bliss.

Emptiness is the activity of cactuses flowering, leaves growing and coloring, falling and growing again. Emptiness enables me to feel the hot desert sun and the cool refreshing breezes, it enables me to hear the morning birds, to see the lizard in the roadrunner’s mouth, smell the flower, and feel the silkiness of my forest cat’s fur, the gesture of a grandchild’s grasping my hand to ease the pain at a burial.

Emptiness empowers us to take action, in the face of abuse and torment, with justice to diminish suffering. So, from the perspective of emptiness, it’s clear we’re all in it together.

It’s important to begin and end with emptiness when we are making decisions and deciding on a course of action. We can miss the mark and generate suffering if we don’t take into account the dynamics of emptiness when we try to love.

In emptiness, there is no place to stand your ground or stand alone.

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When emptiness is our point of reference, no suffering ensues. When we experience emptiness, our actions manifest wisdom and radiate compassion. Our daily life is a streaming sutra, setting forth the liberating power of emptiness. Emptiness enables a balanced life. One that is wise, non-knowing and compassionate. To resonate with the beauty of nature in all its dimensions.

So, together we can transmute base knowledge into a golden wisdom. Next time you or I pick up a starfish or brush our teeth or admire a painting or see a pinecone or kick a soccer ball or gaze at the evening star or pick a flower or listen to some music, we can pause. We are a whole made up of lesser parts and we are part of the greater whole. Woven into the fabric of our existence is the means to resonate—to attune with successively broader stages of self-identity and unfolding upon the path of return to and identity with the One.

As nature does effortlessly, we can transmute our world, transforming it into the heavenly state of beauty and symbiotic peace it was always intended to be. We are not looking for meaning per se, nor explanation, nor interpretation. Just realizing what ever it is. Our very functioning off and on the mat will be our heart-beat expressing: May even for this moment, trueheartedness be. Or, as St. Stephen put it as he was dying, “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” Pure gift, pure grace. The key is willingness.

I’m reminded of a time in Virginia at a monastery. The Trappists, some in sneakers, scuffling along, some in slippers, some in old loafers making their way to choir. And all I could do is weep. The sound wasn’t beautiful, but the totality was a symphonic moment. They could hardly sing a tune. Their cantor was not there that day, but it was so gorgeous to see all these people, witnessing them—day in, day out, day after day, night after night—in their 70s, 80s, 90s—willing, loving, praying.

The pure heart always rejoices. How long are we willing to practice? The Dhammapada says—maybe we can use this as a principle in life:

Contemplation is the path of no death.
Negligence is the path of death.
The vigilant do not die. Whereas,
The negligent are the living dead.¹

This miracle of existence does not end with boundless presence. Things move. They change—magically, mysteriously, inexplicably alive; whole but not complete—never complete—whispering, swishing, sighing, stirring, rippling, clattering, screeching, humming, swirling, moving … [Bell] … More zazen.

1 The Dhammapada: The Buddha’s Path to Wisdom. Chapter 2, Vigilance. There are various translations. One, slightly different from that used here, is Maitreya, A. (trans.); Hahn, T.N. (foreword) (2001). The Dhammapada. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 5

This talk appears in the upcoming book, Digging in the Earth to Find the Blue Sky.

Sensei Timothy Man Getsu–Full Moon St. Onge, Psy.D., Ph.D., was a professional counselor in private practice, spiritual mentor, and educator. He received dharma transmission from Roshi Kevin Hunt, O.C.S.O. He has studied and practiced with world leaders and has led workshops and retreats in the Christian Zen and Centering Prayer methods.

Let us look into this together. Please, now, do not be reading a talk, instead, check inside. Let’s open up as completely as possible and see what is arising for us, in our body, as we read and as we speak.

To help us enter into this, I would like to tell two stories. One is an old Zen story and the other is a story that unfolded during the 20th century in Europe and America.

The stories of Layman Pang and his daughter Ling Xiao have been repeated for centuries. In their later years, Pang and Ling Xiao were dharma wanderers. They sold bamboo utensils they made themselves and had no fixed home.

As one story goes, the elderly Pang slipped and fell down a ravine and lay motionless at the bottom. Ling Xiao’s immediate response was to follow him to the bottom of the ravine and fall down beside him. This was the taking care of that she could offer: to be profoundly with him, to be, breath by breath, totally present in order to respond to what the situation needed. For she did not know what his situation was, she did not know what would happen next.

There are many ways that people have picked up this story. What strikes me is the immediacy of it. Ling Xiao did not make a choice and a heroic gesture, there simply was no separation between her and her father.

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The story takes place in ninth century China. Fast forward over 1,000 years to 1935 for our second story. This one is a bit heady and has its twists and turns, so please bear with me. In that year, the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger produced theoretical and mathematical work that introduced the idea of quantum entanglement. He posited that once two separate systems, in this case two subatomic particles, have interacted or have a common origin, they can no longer be separate entities, regardless of physical distance.

Albert Einstein took Schrödinger very seriously, but found his work confounding. Writing along with the physicists Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen he postulated that only one of two things could explain this phenomenon. The first was that one particle was influencing the other but information was being transferred faster than the speed of light, something that would violate a major tenet of his Theory of Relativity. If that was the case, the relationship between the two particles would be non-causal, something that Einstein found hard to imagine. With humor, he referred to what the theory was pointing to as “spooky action at distances.” The other alternative was simply that quantum physics was incomplete and incapable of explaining the proposed phenomenon. At the time, neither of these alternatives could be experimentally proven.

In 1964 the Scottish physicist John Stewart Bell presented, with mathematical precision, what would be necessary to experimentally prove that there was, in fact, a non-causal instantaneous relationship between entities at a distance, even very great distances.

And then in the early 1980s, the French physicist Alain Aspect, in what is seen by many as one of the most important series of scientific experiments of the 20th century, was able to demonstrate that Schrödinger was accurate, and that changes in entangled particles, even at great distances, were indeed simultaneous and non-causal.

What could this possibly mean? That something that was happening right now in Paris could also be happening, at the same time, in Boston or New York or Dublin? Another of the 20th century’s great theoretical physicists was amazed by these results and stepped forward to offer a stunning explanation with an illustration. David Bohm stated that human observers were only creating a problem when they tried to resolve the experimental outcome by trying to wrap their heads around what it would mean for one particle to affect another with no gap in time. The answer, as strange as it might seem, had to be that the particles, regardless of the distance between them, were not separate.

In his illustration he asks us to consider a situation in which there is a fish in an aquarium. However, we are not at the aquarium. Rather, we are viewing two screens side-by-side that seem to offer views of two fish. One view is a long side view of a big fish, the other shows a foreshortened fish face. As we watch these two different fish only the most observant amongst us might begin to notice something strange. When the big fish begins to move its tail there seems to be some very subtle change in the face of the other fish. What would it take for us to wake up and realize that this is one fish? Bohm, a very serious mathematical physicist whose early work was used in the development of the first atomic bomb, could only come to the conclusion that there
are depths of reality that the analytical mind has been unable to penetrate.¹

Now if Alain Aspect were to show the results of his experiment to the great Zen master Dōgen, the master would reply, But of course, I explained this to you in the 13th century, weren’t you listening?

Every morning I wake up in the presence of Ukraine. Is there anyone here today who doesn’t? What is it like? Deep in the gut, what is it like? A gnawing dark sense. Perhaps the return of images from the news video clips that we watched yesterday. A floating, queasy feeling that can quickly turn to fantasies in an attempt to self-calm or soothe.

What would real taking care of be? It would certainly mean not turning away. It would indeed be a profound turning toward, like Ling Xiao, a profound accompaniment. Our connection with what is happening is profoundly deep. It is not 5,000 miles away. It is right here. We are not apart from it, as much as we might try to be.

Can we rouse the energy to just come back, just come back to whatever is arising and give it the energy of complete witness, complete availability? Please, look and see, how is it now? How is it in your body now? Can you be complete witness? Without any answers. With no attempt to change it. There is a solidarity with all of humankind that is reachable and real in a way that the analytical mind, as with quantum entanglement, can never understand.

The human heart with its common origin is wonderfully, irrevocably entangled. Our fear and despondency are of no use to it. It calls for the energy of our caring attention. Will we be faithful?

May all beings have ease and spaciousness of mind, may all beings have peace of heart, may all beings be free of suffering.

1 A description of quantum entanglement can be found in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement ( Retrieved January 4, 2024). Biographies of Schrödinger, Bell, Aspect and Bohm can also be found in Wikipedia as follows:

Schrödinger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schrödinger (Retrieved January 4, 2024)

Bell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stewart_Bell (Retrieved January 4, 2024)

Aspect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Aspect (Retrieved January 4, 2024)

Bohm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bohm (Retrieved January 4, 2024)

This is part of the upcoming book, Digging in the Earth to Find the Blue Sky.

Sensei Tim Butler is a dharma heir of Roshi Kennedy and founding teacher of City Mountain Zendo in Boston. He has worked as a teacher, psychologist, psychotherapist, and career counselor for over forty years. After retiring from the faculty of the Harvard Business School in 2024, he continues as Senior Advisor to Career Development Programs at the School.

Joshu said, “I alone am holy throughout heaven and earth.”¹

On his enlightenment the Buddha said, “How wonderful, how wonderful! When I am enlightened the whole world is enlightened! Sun, moon and father star.”²

Joshu’s koan is wonderful. When it’s given to you to see it, you want to jump up and shout, Why wasn’t I told this before?

All that you see and hear and touch, all, you have fabricated it. And it has made you, all the things that make up this world. The infinite emptiness has made us exactly what we are. It is our very self.

This experience of oneness is enlightenment. There are other ways of experiencing enlightenment. There are other ways of dealing with this koan. You see that the world you are looking at is not the world that exists. We don’t know what exists, we only know what our life has shaped us to make of it. This is what Joshu is saying: “I am alone, these heavens and earth are my very self.” He says I can experience this to the extent that I am free of attachment and choice. The experience can come long before you are free of attachment and choice. I am alone in my universe, not in the universe, and when I am enlightened everything I see is changed, the world is changed.

If this is enlightenment why are we not the ocean? Because we are not free of attachment and choice. This is what limits us, we are vast but we are limited only by our own attachments. So when I choose anything for myself I choose for my whole world, my whole world can change.

This state of enlightenment is called interdependence. It means that we are deeply connected to one another. It means we are one another. I see you, it’s myself I am looking at.

I remember being challenged on this very point. Glassman Roshi told me to show up in Los Angeles with my robes to be introduced to Maezumi and Maezumi’s community as a teacher. After the ceremony the head monk said, “Does anyone have a question for the new sensei?” A woman stood up and said, “Well, Father, how does it feel to know that all the prayers you’ve said to God have really been prayers to yourself?”

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Since we are one with each other, never do anything that would ever hurt the integrity of the other person. Not only are you hurting that person, you are hurting your very self.

The basis of Mahayana Buddhism is compassionate action. Of the three jewels of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, the important thing is the sangha. We know from the Diamond Sutra that there are no Buddhas and there are no dharmas. But to a certain extent there are people in the sangha. The basis, then, is compassionate action toward the other.

In this sense of oneness, when we sit we should never search for any private spiritual growth that would exclude everyone else. We cannot sit outside a sangha, we would be very ignorant and it would be shameful. I’ve been in that position. I went looking for a teacher, for enlightenment, not for a community. I am grateful to all my teachers for their patience.

When we sit we should sit without any expectation of fulfilment. Fulfilment will be a gift. Sit and wait for the gift to be given.

This unity that we have with the whole world: How beautiful and vast you are! Those of faith would say we are made in the very image of God, not to be chattering little things.

And the final judgement which we were taught to fear, is in reality a time of intense joy, when we finally see each other as we really are.

1 Sekida, K. (1977). Two Zen Classics. New York, NY: Weatherhill, Inc., 306

2 Paraphrase of the handed-down words of the Buddha on his enlightenment. The tale can be found in Cook, F. (2003). The Record of Transmitting the Light. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 29

This talk can be found in the upcoming book, Digging in the Earth to Find the Blue Sky.

Roshi Robert E. Kennedy, S.J., is the founding teacher of Morning Star Zendo. He is a Jesuit priest, psychoanalyst and professor emeritus of theology. He is one of the few surviving masters who brought Zen to the West from Japan, and one of several practicing Catholics who are recognized by the Buddhist community as Zen teachers. He is active in interfaith work, teaching Zen to persons of all faiths and none and conducting retreats in the United States, Mexico, Ireland and England. Roshi Kennedy studied Zen with the Japanese master Yamada Roshi, with Maezumi Roshi in Los Angeles and Bernie Glassman Roshi in New York in the Zen Peacemaker Order; in 1997 he received inka from Glassman Roshi. He is the author of Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit (Bloomsbury, 1995, 2020) and Zen Gifts to Christians (Continuum, 2004). Are We One, directed by Dónal Ó Céilleachair, traces the transmission of Zen through Roshi Kennedy’s life’s work (2024). Jesus and Buddha: Practicing Across Traditions, directed by John Ankele for Old Dog Documentaries Inc. (2012), features Roshi Kennedy, Christian/Buddhist scholar Paul Knitter and Eco-theologian/Dharma Teacher Hyun Kyung Chung.

The South Korean president offers COVID-19 vaccines to North Korea, which has no vaccination program. The offer is refused.

A blockade of Ukrainian ports by Russia weaponises famine by preventing Ukrainian grain exports critical to the world food supply. Russia cuts off gas supplies to Germany. A counterattack by Ukraine’s troops has forced some Russian units back over the border. A Russian diplomat in Geneva resigns, saying he has never been so ashamed of his country.

MacDonald’s leaves Russia permanently having closed its restaurants. “Hot food to help end the cold war” was its slogan when it first opened.

A widespread heat wave affects at least 120 million Americans in central and southern regions with thousands losing electricity. Oregon Route 224 reopens after being closed in 2020 by wildfires; fires force the evacuation of thousands in Yosemite. Megadrought hits the western states. President Biden considers enacting a climate emergency.

Crops stand dead in the fields of Europe in severe heat, drought, and wildfire. Delhi has had five heat waves already this year. In Pakistan temperatures reach 122 Fahrenheit. Cattle are dying. Somalia’s lack of seasonal rain has led to its most severe drought for decades. There is a mass movement of people in search of food and water. Oceans have grown to their warmest and most acidic levels in the past year. Greenland is losing about 270 billion tons of ice mass per year, adding to sea level rise.

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The UK government is facing calls for a windfall profit tax on oil and gas companies. A 40-year high in inflation affects poorest households the most.

A mass shooting in Buffalo, NY is streamed by the gunman on Twitch. One of the deadliest school shootings in American history occurs at an elementary school in Texas. Mass shootings occur in Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Washington State. A bipartisan agreement is reached on gun control law.

The U.S. House Speaker visits Taiwan and is accused of provocation by China and recklessness by critics within the U.S. China ends co-operation with the U.S. on lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

Are we separate or are we one? Can we see that we are the world we are so damaging? We are cutting off our own arms and legs.

This is part of the upcoming book, Digging in the Earth to Find the Blue Sky.

Sheila Ross is an artist, writer, graphic designer, and Zen student of Roshi Kennedy. She was senior designer at Fordham University, New York, where she founded the Fordham Interfaith Zen sitting group. Ross trained as a sculptor at St. Martin’s School of Art in London, participating in the Locked Room project, which led to the book The Locked Room: Four years that shook art education, 1969-73 (MIT Press, 2020). (sheilaross.co.uk)

The fourth patriarch Daoxin, when still a student, asked his teacher, “Please, with your great compassion teach me, how can I free myself?”
“Who is binding you?”
“No-one.”
“Then why are you seeking freedom?”
On hearing this, Daoxin was awakened.¹

What is freedom? Sometimes we think that freedom means we can do whatever we like whenever we like. We may confuse self-indulgence with freedom, and just act impulsively. We may feel energized by that kind of freedom, but the feeling is short-lived. It can be followed by more suffering and confusion, and we seem to fall into the same pattern of reaction over and over. We struggle with the same unconscious patterns.

Buddha’s teaching of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path are all aimed at one purpose: to help us to free ourselves. If Buddha’s spiritual path is a path to freedom, should we ask freedom from what?

The Buddha asks us to imagine taking six long ropes and tying one end to each of the following creatures: a snake, a crocodile, a bird, a dog, a jackal, and a monkey, and then tying the other ends into a big knot. What would happen? Each of these animals would pull in a different direction in trying to return to their favored territory. Each imagines it is free, but we can see that each is programmed to seek pleasure and avoid pain, knowing only how to seek gratification in familiar places. Even if one were to gain a temporary advantage in the tug of war, eventually it would be dragged around by whichever is the strongest. Buddha used this story to illustrate the state of the undisciplined mind, with the six animals representing our senses (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind). The human mind and body are bound by internal restraints: our human nature and natural selection, our ego, ignorance. They will always pull in different directions. Anxieties pull us one way; anger another. Fear pulls us; our cravings and habits pull us. In this situation a person has no freedom whatsoever.

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The Buddha sees freedom as the moment-by-moment experience of not being run by one’s own reactive mechanisms. When we are, we need to notice that these emotions are biting and clawing us, covering us in wounds, destroying our freedom of mind.

From the Buddha’s perspective, the freedom to act on compulsion is an illusion created by a deluded mind. The solution offered is not to let go of the emotions, but to tie the rope, the mind, to a strong post or stake. Each still tries to pull away but only as far as it can go. The post, secure in the ground, represents the mindfulness of the body.

This still place is our chance to break free from the bondage of endless craving and uncontrollable desires. True freedom is determined by our minds, not by our place in life. If we are controlled by our desires and aversions, we live in a prison of our own making.

The Buddha presents a peaceful picture of what happens to the animals. After a while they finally realize they have nowhere to go, and quiet down in one another’s company, no longer exerting themselves.

The Buddha’s teaching is primarily a study of the mind and a system for training the mind. It is spiritual in nature, not religious. Its goal is to see our true nature. It relies on contemplation and meditation, to transform knowledge into something completely beyond knowledge or intellectual understanding.

Meditation does not lead to a flat-line life free of desire. Mindfulness does not turn us into a rock or dead wood, but aims to not let desire, craving, and emotions gain complete control of our life. We sit quietly in meditation, watching our thoughts and impulses rise and fall. With this awareness, instead of rushing toward stimulation, the impulses can disappear and the mind can settle down.

When we have mindfulness and awareness, the mind is experiencing a greater freedom through wisdom.

For Buddha, true freedom is being free from endless craving. It is freedom from obstructions that cut us off from connection to the world around us; freedom from struggling to control things.

This freedom opens us up to our hitherto completely unknown capacity to benefit everyone around us. It is freedom from the self-centered habits that prevent us from living a vast, incomprehensible web of connection. These kinds of freedom can only be experienced by a disciplined mind.

Who is binding you? No-one.

If no-one is binding you, then no-one can free you but yourself.

1 Cook, F.H. (1991). Samyutta Nikaya (35.247). The Record of Transmitting the Light. Los Angeles: Center Publications

Sensei Amy Enhai Yee was born in Macau and graduated from Shin Chien University of Taiwan. In 1982, she moved to the U.S. She has worked as a food chemist and as a public school teacher. In 2019 she became a dharma heir of Roshi Kennedy. She recently translated Roshi Kennedy’s book, Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit into Chinese for publication in Taiwan.

Because without it: “... we have a false account of reality …”¹

He goes on to say: “We replace reality with abstraction, ideology, rumination, speculation [but] if we reground ourselves and feel the reality that we are expressions of nature and that our role is to serve nature and not get in the way of it we will never put the reality of human experience below an abstraction.”

When we do replace reality, this leads directly to the suffering and conflict that we are seeing in the world today. Kastrup would say that the ideal of a Slavic Empire is an abstraction that is being used to replace the actual lives of the people of Ukraine. No abstraction can replace human life. “When one abstracts away from the felt reality of human experience, the suffering of the people, and concludes that there is a State above and beyond its own people you have what is going on in Ukraine.”

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The second grace of his teaching for me is his declaration that when we are not directly experiencing our lives, we feel a “gargantuan sense of existential lack of meaning and that we fill this black hole in our chest through addictive patterns of behavior, eating meat, eating sugar, dominating people around us, buying compulsively, and being addicted to money because it is a symbol of power.”

He has a beautiful phrase: “The will to power is the normal reaction of someone who is disconnected from reality and feels that sense of lack.” He says if we think we are an individual and that we live for ourselves, that doesn’t fulfill our primary sense of meaning because it is in contradiction to reality. “It is this natural addictive response to a false account of reality that leads to the destructive patterns we are caught in ... bringing the world to systemic collapse.”

I have never heard the dilemma expressed so concisely or so well.

Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, as she sits in her stone and wrought iron depictions with a thousand hands and eyes, is always and directly connected to reality and sensitive to the suffering of the world. Her embodiment in form is the essence of stability, rootedness, and stillness, out of which the seeing and responding take place. This compassion is not of fragments spread across the whole world extending herself beyond herself. Suffering reaches her, she responds.

We learn through hard painful sitting that effort doesn’t work. We cannot muscle our way to mindfulness. Not trying seems to move us deeper. Stepping backwards drops us in. Allowing things to fall away when they are ready, instead of giving things up, works.

We learn that to rest is to surface the very life we have been searching for, it comes unbidden because room has been created. Not driven by ideals we simply live. Might systemic change follow as we learn this?

During COVID the people were ahead of the politicians in knowing what was needed. The teenagers are ahead of the adults on climate change. The thinking of the prisoners I work with is far ahead of the system that imprisons them. Those who are sick are often ahead of the treatments and doctors they must submit to.

The self-interested stance and profit-making of some businesses seem terribly out of date even as they persist.

When the war began in Ukraine people asked how can there be war in the 21st century? Somehow, we know collectively that we have gone beyond it. It is a terrible thing to see the tail end of powerplays wreak such catastrophic pain.

If yielding, loving, breathing, and being have been the most effective lessons in living fully, perhaps systemic change will come as we fully live.

If we breathe as a way to know life, if we allow ourselves to be breathed, all there is to be known is that which is being breathed. In our willingness to know life, to know it and know it and know it for what it is as it is, direct knowing replaces needing to know from a distance. One day our own faithfulness to directly experiencing our life may reveal even more of what we are. We set out on a journey without knowing what it is we are looking for, because this seeing in us is not something we could ever know or imagine from a distance. We follow the foot prints, sense the presence, struggle with taming the ferocity of our primal energies, energies that become our fuel as we travel on.

Now that my storehouse has burned down,
nothing obstructs the moon.²

1 Kastrup, B. (2022). Excerpted from Rupert Spira’s Podcast Channel, episode 41, conversation between Rupert Spira and Bernardo Kastrup hosted by Simon Mundie, rupertspira.libs

2 Mizuta Masahide, 17th century Japanese poet and samurai, translated by Yoel Hoffmann

This talk is part of the book, Digging in the Earth to Find the Blue Sky.

Roshi Miriam Yukan Healy is a chaplain working with the Irish Prison Service. In her years in New York she studied Zen with Janet Abels at Still Mind Zendo and then with Roshi Kennedy, acting as head monk at Morning Star Zendo. She received dharma transmission from Roshi Kennedy in 2014, and inka in 2019. She teaches at Grey Heron Zendo, in Tallaght, Dublin.

Weighted down by our fixed ideas, the fog caused by our fixed ideas becomes so dense, we are prevented from seeing that we are awake, are at one. We are left with our fear and dis-ease.

When I speak of fixed ideas in this talk, I mean also fixed viewpoint, opinion, or hand-me-down notions, or dictums, or dogma.

We say the last words of Buddha were: “I have preached the Dharma to you, now you are on your own. You must be diligent, trust in experiencing it for yourself.” But if you could be in that forest grove, with the dying Buddha lying on his side, you would hear but one final word: “Appamāda.”

Appamāda is a Pali word that means mindful active care. It was a common theme in Buddhist teaching, a theme, not a dogma, not a doctrine, not a doctrine of fixed ideas, a theme, it was, is, an encouragement for energetic care, care not to get stuck through clinging to anything, to remain clear. Buddha often compared appamāda to an elephant’s footprint, which is so large that it can contain the footprint of any other animal. In the same way, Buddha said appamāda, mindful clear care, contains all of his other teachings.

Fixed ideas fix us, and so keep us from being receptive.

In Hamlet, Shakespeare’s term for fixed idea is settled matter.

Fixed idea: I am entitled to the best.

Fixed idea: There is a God.

Fixed idea: There is no god.

Fixed idea: I cannot know whether or not there is a god.

Fixed idea: I know what will make me happy.

Fixed idea: I must always be making progress.

Fixed idea: Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.

“Oh Shariputra, there is no form, no sensation, conception …”

Fixed idea: There is no form.

Some fixed ideas are no more: The Third Reich will live for a thousand years.

Some are very vulnerable: Government of the people, for the people, and by the people, shall not perish from the earth. Democracy is the rarest and most endangered form of government on the earth.

Fixed idea: I must look good to be appreciated.

Fixed idea: Animal and human excrement. To a fly it’s candy.

Fixed idea: I know what impression I just made on that person.

Fixed idea: Desist from saying, It is what it is. Use instead the Zen saying, Things are not what they seem, nor are they otherwise.

Fixed idea: I have no fixed ideas, I’ve gotten over that.

Fixed idea: She hates me.

Fixed idea: For most people in Mississippi … New York City. For most people in New York City … Mississippi

Fixed idea: Cause and effect

Fixed idea: A lack of cause and effect

Fixed idea: My mind is an object, I am the subject. This is ignorance.

Fixed idea: I practice Zen to purify my mind—one of the hottest Zen potatoes. Drop it!

I practice Zen to purify my mind. What are we talking about?

Seng-ts’an, in the Hsin-Hsin Ming, says, “Do not seek the truth!”

Now we come to five false fixed ideas.

One: I am the center of the universe.

Two: My life is of more objective value than anyone else’s life.

Three: My persona is my personhood. Persona: wife, manager, son, scientist, teacher

Four: Through Zen I can and will become a different person.

You are always changing, the other is always changing, but you are always the same person. You always were. The other is always the same person.

Five: I am failing. At this moment in my zazen I am failing. At this moment in my life I am failing, therefore my zazen and my life are failures.

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When we keep stopping over and over again to judge, we are giving in mindlessly to a fixed idea, rather than giving over to the flow of zazen, the movement of life. My sisters and brothers, we must take mindful care not to cling to fixed ideas. Until we discipline ourselves to let go, we cannot be open to our experience. With a mind crammed with fixed ideas, we cannot come to realize that we are already awake.

Which notions should I let go of? All of them. Poco a poco, little by little, on your mat, zazen is the great act of watching them go. Buddha taught, “That which has the nature of arising, has the nature of falling away.” That which has the nature of arising, has the nature of falling away.

Finally, we find a major uncovering of fixed dualistic thinking in the Mahābhārata, the longest epic poem in the world, eighteen times longer than the Bible. The Mahābhārata’s main story concerns a great war on a battlefield in northern India. At the center is one of the primary texts of Hinduism, the Song of Lord Krishna, or the great “Bhagavad Gita,” a very long dialogue between the admired and feared warrior Arjuna and Krishna, who here is in the form of his charioteer. Arjuna and Krishna are in the center of the battlefield in deep conversation. The armies are massed, the drums are rolling. Arjuna has become immobile, confused. Krishna tells him: “Seek detachment. Fight without desire.” Arjuna asks Krishna, “Teach me right action.” Krishna says, “Men are born into delusion. But I will show you the whole. I embody all the contradictions of the world.” Arjuna says, “I am paralysed with fear, I cannot move, I cannot act.” Krishna says, “Rise up, because I love you.”

Then Krishna tells him, “Victory and defeat are the same.” Arjuna’s fear begins to drop off. He rises up. The fixed idea of defeat and the fixed idea of victory lose their grip. The battle commences.

Now as a young man Siddhārtha Gautama knew the ancient stories, heard the “Bhagavad Gita” and appreciated its wisdom, and as a young seeker, he held many fixed ideas. Now he is an old man, lying on his side, in a forest grove surrounded by disciples. He speaks no fixed dogma, says only, “Appamāda,” mindful active care.

This talk appears in the book, Digging in the Earth to Find the Blue Sky.

Roshi Gregory Hōshō Abels is a dharma heir of Roshi Kennedy. Now retired, he spent 30 years as a senior teacher at Still Mind Zendo in Manhattan. Hosho enjoyed a 54-year career as an actor, stage director and Master Teacher of Acting. He has published two books of poetry: Never Something Else, Poems from the Eye of Zen and Where to Begin. (stillmindzendo.org)

What in our belief systems allows us to go on killing each other and depradating the earth, what perhaps even makes it seem necessary?

So many these days don’t believe in belief, but do implicitly believe in language and its many constructs. We do believe that language and what it tells us is true, that its very structure—one word after another—expresses a truth: subject and object, the linearity of cause and effect, inevitability, but we forget that we invented language, syntax, and with it logic, karma and even time. It is a figment of the mind. This kind of belief lives underground, assumed, unexamined.

Zen digs everything up.

In the beginning was the Word—and this Word was—everything. Undivided.

Do we not need to return to the great reality, the Here Now, by climbing down out of our heads and disbanding the concepts in which our perception of division and duality are rooted?

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This text appears in the book, Digging in the Earth to Find the Blue Sky.

Sheila Ross is an artist, writer, graphic designer, and Zen student of Roshi Kennedy. She was senior designer at Fordham University, New York, where she founded the Fordham Interfaith Zen sitting group. Ross trained as a sculptor at St. Martin’s School of Art in London, participating in the Locked Room project, which led to the book The Locked Room: Four years that shook art education, 1969-73 (MIT Press, 2020). (sheilaross.co.uk)

Besides just sitting, I practice Not Knowing and Bearing Witness with the Zen Peacemakers and then try to find the actions which follow. Soon we’ll be going back to Auschwitz to bear witness. It doesn’t get easier.

Auschwitz is a hard place to practice not looking away because there’s so much that hurts whenever we look at it. I wandered around during our lunch break because I couldn’t eat, and came to a grove of trees. So very peaceful, so quiet, so calm. Later, I found out the grove has a name: The Grove of the Hungarian Women. When the number of people who were to be killed exceeded the capacity of the gas chambers, exceeded the capacity of the furnaces, people were made to wait in this grove.

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We don’t go to Auschwitz to learn how to prevent the next holocaust. We go to absorb the lessons of the place, and to Bear Witness. Bernie Glassman’s lasting aspiration was that we would always have the courage to bear witness, to see ourselves as the other and the other as ourselves. Although it’s painful, it doesn’t become terribly hard to see ourselves as the victims. But the victims weren’t the only people at Auschwitz.

At the very first Bearing Witness retreat, Bernie intended that we not only read the names of the dead, the victims, but also the names of perpetrators. He gave that up. It was clear that there would be a revolt. So we sit by the railroad tracks where the selections were made, taking turns to read the names of the dead. I read the names of ordinary guards also. That’s not on the official program, but that’s my practice there.

Not Knowing is a hard practice. We know stuff, we just do. But besides the stuff that we know is all the stuff we don’t want to know and especially the stuff we don’t want to know about ourselves. Auschwitz is a place to consider that. And I try that. I keep going back because I’m not quite able to see myself as all of the others. That’s what we need do.

So, just a bit of encouragement:

Numberless beings, I vow to serve them.
Inexhaustible delusions, I vow to end them.
Boundless Dharmas, I vow to practice them.
Unsurpassable Buddha way, I vow to embody it.¹

1 The Four Great Vows as practised by the Zen Peacemakers.

This talk is part of the book, Digging in the Earth to Find the Blue Sky.

Sensei Robert Jin Gen Ertman is a dharma heir of Sensei Rose Mary Myoan Dougherty, a School Sister of Notre Dame, who was a dharma heir of Roshi Janet Richardson, founder of Silver Spring Zendo/One Heart Sangha in Maryland, where Robert was until recently guiding teacher. He is a long-time member of the Zen Peacemaker Order. He was an attorney for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Greed is not just seeking material wealth and living an opulent lifestyle. It also refers to excessive eating and excessive drinking.

Greed is clinging to people, places, things, and opinions. Greed is grasping after fame, approval, and recognition.

We can also be greedy in seeking endless spiritual experiences.

Transformation does not come from denying, suppressing, or repressing our human tendencies toward greed, but rather from acknowledging them, becoming aware of them, and developing wholesome habits and behaviors that provide balance and harmony in life.

Zen provides a balance to greed. It gives us direct experience of the joy and beauty of simplicity. Each day at home, the time you set aside to go into your room to meditate may be some of the most peaceful, pleasant, and enjoyable moments of your day. Simply sitting, simply breathing, simply resting, awake and alert to what is within and around you.

Zen emphasizes the experience of emptiness. Other words to express emptiness are spaciousness, no boundaries, no division, no separation, no obstruction, or empty oneness. Opening to emptiness is an antidote to greed. In the experience of empty oneness, you are whole, at peace, and content. You see that there is nothing you lack.

The second poison is hatred, sometimes called anger or aversion. Again, it is important not to deny, suppress, or repress anger. Tendencies that we ignore become our shadow side and eventually leak out in ways that can be problematic and destructive. The point is to be aware of these tendencies and develop appropriate ways to express our needs and find balance and harmony in our relationships with others and their needs.

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Zen practice transforms hatred, anger, and aversion by expanding our awareness. Sitting in zazen we see thoughts and feelings arise. Like the cycle of the moon each month, we become aware of feelings such as anger, sadness, or fear, arising, intensifying, and then waning. If we don’t fuel these feelings with thoughts and stories, they arise and then dissipate all on their own. Over time, awareness of our thoughts and feelings grows, and we see that we are not our thoughts and feelings. We are much more than our thoughts and feelings. In daily life, increased awareness allows us the space and time to choose to act in a more balanced and harmonious way.

Rather than aversion, Zen leads to acceptance of the reality of life just as it is. Acceptance does not mean that we approve of bad behavior or deny the crises and problems people face in life. It is like the Serenity Prayer.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

There is a well-known quote by the anchoress Julian of Norwich that says, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well…”

That is the way I always heard this quote. However, the other day I came across a longer version of it that says, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, for there is a force of Love moving through the universe that holds us fast and will never let us go.”¹

Rather than hatred, anger, and aversion, we are called to awaken to this force of Love moving through the universe. It will transform us.

During zazen, at times we settle deeply, and can experience a Great Love arising from empty oneness. Awareness of this Great Love is a healing balm.

The third poison is ignorance. Once long ago, I remember Roshi Kennedy being discouraged by a bishop who was hassling him about teaching Zen. Sister Janet Richardson firmly reassured him saying, “Now Bob, that’s just ignorance, and we aren’t going to pay it any mind.” I have found these words of Sr. Janet helpful in many circumstances down through the years. That’s just ignorance, and we aren’t going to pay it any mind.

Sometimes it’s easier to recognize the ignorance of others than it is to acknowledge our own ignorance. That’s why we need to keep an open mind.

I remember Roshi Kennedy changing his mind about something, and when we pointed this out to him, he said, “Can’t an old man change his mind?” Well of course he can, and so can we.

In zazen we sit with an open mind and an open heart. We let go of all thoughts, concepts, and opinions and open to what is present right here and now. Earlier I spoke about simplicity, but we must also acknowledge complexity. Life is the coming together of innumerable influences and circumstances. Often things are not black and white. It’s complicated.

The antidote to ignorance is wisdom. Wisdom requires the integration of multiple perspectives and ways of knowing—knowing through the intellect, heart, hands, and spirit. This is why posture is important in Zen meditation. The body knows—sometimes through a gut feeling or through muscle memory. Spiritual knowing requires us to be open and sensitive to spiritual insights when they come our way.

Not knowing is another way of knowing and is an aspect of wisdom. Not knowing in the Zen sense is not the same as ignorance. It is an encounter with the inconceivable. In the words of Zen Master Hisamatsu, it is to “stand right at that place where there is no place to stand.”²

Avoiding the three poisons reminds us to be more aware, to try to do better—to live with simplicity, contentment, acceptance, love, wisdom, and compassionate action.

1 Pruitt, K. (2023). Beyond all galaxies. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Kenmare Press, 89

2 Mitchell, D.W. (2008). Maseo Abe’s earlier spiritual journey and his later philosophy. Buddhist-Christian Studies, 28, 107-110

This talk appears in the book, Digging in the Earth to Find the Blue Sky.

Roshi Ellen Jikai Birx received dharma transmission from Roshi Kennedy in 1998 and inka in 2014. She is co-founder of New River Zen Community in Blacksburg, VA and the author of several books including Embracing the Inconceivable: Interspiritual Practice of Zen and Christianity (Orbis, 2020) and Selfless Love (Wisdom, 2014). Ellen Birx is Professor Emerita at Radford University where she taught nursing.