An old friend just shared a verse from Basho.

This autumn -

Why am I growing old?

Birds disappearing among the clouds.

A timely poem for my moment. A week ago today Lois, my mother-in-law, died. It was as easy as such things normally can be. She was surrounded by her daughters and me and had been cared for by us for the whole journey.

Depending on how one counts it has been a while. When Jan & I retired about a decade ago we came back to California to be close to her. We settled in Long Beach which is on one side of the great LA metroplex, while she lived on the other side in Tujunga, nestled into the rising slopes of the San Gabriel mountains at the very eastern edge of the city.

Subscribe now

Starting about five years ago our visits started being the focus of our time and our schedules circled around her. Three years ago we sold our condo and became her live in caregivers. The old caring for the ancient. Seven months ago she entered into Kaiser’s home hospice program. And then for the past month she turned toward actively dying. The last week of which Jan & I slept in the family room where she was in her hospital bed. I say slept, which is a bit of an exaggeration.

We shared the rising and falling of her breath as if we were one. And were awakened by any shift in the cycles.

Lois Seymour died at 7:20am on Monday the 24th, 2026. She was just shy of a month into her 99th year. As I said, Jan and her other daughter Karen were with her, as was I. We all witnessed her last exhalation, and the stillness that followed.

A strange and powerful thing.

My first thought was that pointer of the Buddha: everyone born is subject to sickness and old age and death. We might miss the old age part, but birth and death are intimate and inseparable. Birthanddeath.

It’s now been a week. Various things are going on. Another pointer from the Buddha, in this sahā world its all causes and conditions. Friday we held a graveside service at Forest Lawn in Glendale, where she was laid to rest, as we say, next to her husband Paul. I officiated. Normally I don’t do such. I learned the hard way many years ago when I was asked to preach my grandmother’s memorial. As family I want, need, there’s some right word there, to be able to part of the grieving. And officiating is many things, but one of them is a job. But she’d asked me to speak at her memorial several times. And I felt this met the obligation.

In October there will be a formal memorial service at her little dying fundamentalist church. There I’ll be in the pews, attending as best I can, and contemplating whatever I’ll be contemplating.

Then, yesterday, Sunday, we drove up to Morro Bay. Over the years we’ve been back in Southern California the Five Cities and a bit later Morro Bay have been our favorite getaway. I’m not sure how long, but it’s been years since we’ve spent a night away from Tujunga together, and about a year since either of us has wandered for much more than grocery shopping.

A good drive. I personally could feel a lot of the tension falling away with every mile traveled. And Jan said as much, herself.

We checked into our old favorite one star motel, the Morro Bay Sandpiper Inn. It’s tiny, but clean and has a mini fridge and a microwave. And when you walk out the door Morro rock is right there in your face. This will be our base of operations for the next few days. After unpacking we walked down to the harbor hoping to see the otters, but it was late in the day and no luck. We’ll return. We have a small list of things to do: high on that list we certainly want to visit the elephant seals up just past San Simeon. But today I think the feature adventure will be a walk in the El Moro Elfin Forest.

And we will be talking about what’s next.

We’ve been offered a place as elder teachers in Enso Verde. And I’m grateful. But it will be several years before they expect to open their doors. Long enough out, and in these times with so many fast moving parts, we probably should have other plans in our back pocket. Also, there’s the right now of things. The house we occupy needs to be sold in as reasonable amount of time as possible. There is mom’s will and there are heirs waiting. I’m guesstimating six months or so to get it ready and put on the market. Among the must dos after we return from this respite will be speaking with a local realtor.

So, what then?

Passing through. Moving on.

My major obsession for the past while has been that what then. I’ve tried to keep it under control with varying degrees of success. But out of it there’s been a lot of what I like to call research. Some even useful.

I’ve looked at lots of ideas, most of which Jan snorted at. Apparently living on cruise ships is not in our future. Nor is settling in Thailand or even Portugal. She also says she will not be an old widow living in Mexico. Instead, we seem to be focusing mostly on manufactured home parks. These have been a long time interest of mine. Actually, when we retired we looked at a couple before buying our Long Beach condo.

There’s a park in Florence, Oregon that I’ve been following for a couple of years. It’s what’s called an ROP, that is a resident owned park, which means the homeowner also owns the dirt on which the home rests. The other is a park within the compass of the San Francisco Bay Area in Union City. In this case the dirt is owned by a long established non-profit dedicated to affordable housing. Each brings interesting possibility and each brings problems. Both should be relatively easy to sell and both are situated in ways where they could end up being where we land for good., should the vargaries of fortune take us that route.

There are other ideas floating out there, as well. And, I’ve long since learned what actually happens is totally not what one planed for.

That causes and conditions thing.

Whatever, we hope to set a course of action during this time under the watchful gaze of Morro rock. A pretty good stand in for the rock of ages.

So. Here we are. A seventy-five year old woman and her seventy-eight year old husband, who each are a lot of things, but both walking the ancient Zen path. And that intimate way is very intimate indeed.

And so, we’ll see what happens as we pass on through. Breath in, breath out. Mystery piled upon mystery.

Birds disappearing among the clouds.

And with it I am finding myself experiencing a certain strange joy.

Peace to you all…

When Jan & I retired ten years ago we returned to California to be near Lois, Jan’s mom.

We bought a condo in Long Beach while she lived across the LA metro in Tujunga. Tujunga is an LA neighborhood nestled at the edge of the national forest at the very edge of the city.

I very much enjoyed the fact that the name Tujunga is not a Spanish word, but Tongva and it means the “Old Lady’s place.”

The old Lady continued living on some two decades past her husband’s death. A tough old bird in her early nineties friends from church in their seventies and eighties would ask her for rides. But eventually the decline began to settle in. About five years ago we started visiting several times a week to take up slack here and there in her life. Three years ago we sold our condo and moved in with her.

In time her extreme old age started catching up with her. The leading issues were congestive heart failure and COPD (an annoyance as she never smoked nor lived in a smoking environment. Well, other than LA during the terrible smog days.

About seven months ago she entered home hospice. That actually stabilized her condition and the first two of the three month reviews each time they almost kicked her back to palliative care. But starting a week before that second review she began to show some signs of decline.

The decline was fast moving. And maybe two weeks ago we all went over the edge.

Subscribe now

The day of her 99th birthday she was unable to go down the hill to the big party her church threw for her. And it’s continued into dying hard and fast since.

We’re now on the death watch. She’s in a hospital bed in the family room, an addition to her house she and her late husband did themselves. Jan and I are sleeping in the room with her. Me on the couch and Jan on an air mattress. Jan’s sister Karen joined us for this, as well. But as there’s literally no more room in the room, is sleeping in mom’s bedroom.

The pastor from her little fundamentalist church has been by, and after visiting with her, well, really sitting with her as mom has long passed from terrestrial conversations; assured us that the church would take care of the memorial service. The minister from Jan’s and my Unitarian church has also been in touch several times checking in and offering any help we want.

That wet snoring which is called the death rattle began two days ago.

Starting last night a rhythm has emerged where she inhales, exhales, and then there’s a gap. Maybe 30 or 40 seconds. It’s hard to tell for sure, but it seems to slowly be extending.

Dr Google is saying maybe a day or two. A lot of people have been saying maybe a day or two. The hospice nurse. A hospice nurse who visited on our nurse’s day off. A couple of friends who are or were hospice nurses.

A day or two.

Or, maybe a couple of hours.

Or, maybe with this exhallation.

We’re all past exhausted.

This business of dying is hard.

I think of the phrase a “maybe a day or two.” Kind of a magical placeholder, kind of like that extended out breath, pointing to the great mystery of life and death. The moment as it is and the great web.

How passing everything is. And yet how precious and even luminous it is when we allow the mystery of it all to present as it is. Like Krishna revealed to Arjuna. Like God present to Job.

And our job is not to turn away.

Hard not to think of those words inscribed on the han, the wooden board that’s struck to call people into the Zen meditation hall.

Life and death are of supreme importance.

Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost.

Awaken. Awaken.

Do not squander your lfie.

In part due our exhaustion we’re able to let it all be. And be present to it.

As she was slipping away from us to her own most important business, in a lucid moment Lois, mom said, “This is like getting ready to give birth.”

Hard work this letting go.

Nothing wasted,

Birth and death.

Nothing lost,

Life and death…

(Lois Seymour died at 7:25am today, the 24th of August, 2026, about two hours after I posted this meditation. Her daughters and I were with her. She was 99 years old.)

The image is of Lois with her daughters, Karen (on the left as you look at the picture) & Jan (on the right) & her daughter-in-law Diane on mom’s 99th birthday.

Zazen Yojinki
Points to Watch in Zazen

A classic Zen meditation manual

by Keizan Jokin

Translated by Reiho Masunaga
And lightly edited from his study, the Soto Approach to Zen

Zazen clears up the human-being mind immediately and lets us dwell in our true essence. This is called showing one’s natural face and expressing one’s real self. It is freedom from body and mind and release from sitting and lying down.

So think neither of good nor on evil. Zazen transcends both the unenlightened and the sage, rises above the dualism of delusion and enlightenment, and crosses over the division of beings and Buddha. Through zazen we break free from all things, forsake myriad relations, do nothing, and stop the working of the six sense organs.

Who does this? We still do not know the true name. We should call it neither body nor mind. If we try to imagine it, it defies imagination. If we try to describe it, it defies description. It is like the fool - and also the sage. It is high as the mountain and deep as the sea - impossible to see the top or bottom. It shines without an object, and the eyes of wisdom penetrate beyond the Body; the Body expressed itself and forms emerge. The ripple of one wave touches off 10,000 waves. The slight twitch of consciousness brings the 10,000 things bubbling up. The so-called four elements and five aggregates combine, and the four limbs and five organs immediately take form. In addition the 36 bodily possessions and the 12 mutual causes arise and circulate in successive currents. They interpenetrate with myriad things.

Subscribe now

Our mind is like the ocean water, our body, like the waves. Just as there is not a single wave outside the ocean waters, not a drop of water exists outside waves. The water and waves are not different; action and inaction do not differ. So it is said: “Even though living and dying, going and coming, they are true men. Even though possessing the four elements and five aggregates, they have the eternal body.” This zazen directly enters the ocean of the Buddha Mind and immediately manifests the Buddha Body. Then the Mind-inherently unexcelled, clear, and bright-suddenly emerges, and the supreme light shines fully at last. The ocean waters know no increase or decrease, and neither do the waves undergo change. All Buddhas appear in this world to solve its cloud. It reaches without thinking and radiates the essential teaching in silence. Sitting in both heaven and earth, we express our whole body in freedom. The great person who has sloughed off thinking is like one who has died the Great Death. No illusions distort her or his sight; that person’s feet pick up no dust. No dust anywhere and nothing obstructs.

Pure water has neither front nor back. In a clear sky there is essentially no inside and out side. Like them - transparent and clear - zazen shines brightly by itself. Form and void are undivided nor are objects and wisdom apart. They have been together from time eternal and have no name. The Third Patriarch, a great teacher, tentatively called it “Mind”; the respected Nagarjuna called it “Body.” It expresses the form of the Buddha and the body of the Buddhas. This full-moon form has neither lack nor excess. Anyone self-identified with this mind is a Buddha. The light of this self, shining both now and in the past, gains shape and fulfills the samadhi of the Buddhas.

The Mind essentially is not two; the Body takes various shapes through causality. Mind-only and Body-only cannot be explained either as different or the same. The Mind changes and becomes the most crucial problems by giving all beings direct access to the Buddha’s wisdom. They teach a wonderful way of calmness and detachment zazen. It is, in fact, the self-joyous meditation of the Buddhas. It is the sovereign of meditations. Dwelling in this meditation even for a moment will clear away your delusions. This, we know, is the right gate to Buddhism.

Those who would clear up their mind must abandon complex intellection, forsake the world and Buddhism, and make the Buddha Mind appear. Then the cloud of delusion lifts and the moon of the mind shines anew.

The Buddha is supposed to have said that hearing and thinking about Buddhism is like standing outside the gate but that zazen is truly returning home and sitting down in comfort. This is true. In hearing and thinking of Buddhism, opinions prevail. The mind remains confused; it is truly like standing outside the gate. But in this zazen all things disappear; it is not conditioned by place. It is like returning home and sitting down in comfort.

The delusion of the five hindrances arises from ignorance. Ignorance stems from not knowing the self - the self, that zazen enables us to know. Even if we cut off the five hindrances, we still remain outside the sphere of the Buddhas and patriarchs unless we also free ourselves from ignorance. And the most effective way to do this is zazen. An ancient sage has said: “When delusions disappear, calmness emerges, When calmness emerges, wisdom arises. When wisdom, arises, there is true understanding.

To get rid of delusive thoughts we have to stop thinking about good and evil. We have to sever all relations, throw everything away, think of nothing, and do nothing with our body. This is the primary precaution. When delusive relations disappear, delusive thoughts disappear. When delusive thoughts disappear, there emerges the reality that gives us clear insight into all things. It is not passivity, nor is it activity.

Free yourself from all such trifles as art, technique, medicine, and fortune telling. Stay away from singing, dancing, music, noisy chatter, gossip, publicity, and Profit-seeking. Although composing verse and poetry may help quiet your mind; don’t become too intrigued by them. Also abandon writing and calligraphy.

This advice represents a supreme legacy from the seekers of the way in the past. It outlines the prerequisites for bringing your mind into harmony.

Also avoid both beautiful robes, and stained clothing. A beautiful robe gives rise to desire, and there is also the danger of theft. It, there fore, hinders the truth-seeker. If someone hap pens to offer you a rich robe, turn it down. This has been the worthy tradition from long ago. If you have such a robe from before, discount its importance. And if someone steals it, don’t brood over your loss.

Wear old clothes but mend any holes and wash off any stain or oil. If you don’t clean off the dirt, your chances of getting sick increase, and this would obstruct training.

Lack of clothing, lack of food, and lack of sleep - these are the three lacks. They become a source of idleness. In eating, avoid anything unripe, indigestible, rotten, or unsanitary. Such food will make your stomach rumble and impair your body and mind. You will merely increase your discomfort in zazen. And don’t fill up with delicacies. Such gorging not only will decrease your alertness, but also will show everyone that you still have not freed yourself from avarice. Food exists only to support life; don’t cling to its taste. If you do zazen with a full stomach you create the cause of sickness. Avoid zazen immediately after breakfast or lunch; it is better to wait awhile.

Generally, monks watch the amount of food they eat. Watching their food intake means limiting the amount: eat two thirds and leave one third. In preparing for zazen, take cold Preventing medicine, sesame seed and mountain potatoes, In actually doing zazen, don’t lean against walls, backs of chairs, or screens. Stay away from high places with strong winds even if the view is good. This is a fine way to get sick.

If your body is feverish or cold, dull or active hard or soft, or heavy or light, you probably aren’t breathing correctly. Check your breathing, too, if your body feels overly irritable. You must make sure that you are breathing harmoniously at all times during zazen.

To harmonize breathing, use this method: open your mouth for awhile and if a long breath comes, breathe long; if a short breath comes, breathe short. Gradually harmonize your breathing and follow it naturally. When the timing becomes easy and natural, quietly shift your breathing to your nose. When breathing and mind are not coordinated, certain symptoms arise. Your mind sinks or rises, becomes vague or sharp, wanders outside the room or within the body; sees the image of the Buddha or Bodhisattvas, gives birth to corrupting thoughts, or seeks to understand the doctrines of the sutras. When you have these symptoms, it means your mind and breathing are not in harmony. If you have this trouble, shift your mind to the soles of both feet. If the mind sinks, put it on the hairline and between the eyebrows. If your mind is disturbed, rest it on the tip of the nose or on the solar plexus. In ordinary zazen, put your mind in your left palm. In prolonged sitting, even without this the mind naturally remains undisturbed. The old teaching emphasized illumination of mind, but doesn’t pay too much attention to this.

Any excesses lead to a disturbed mind. Anything that puts a strain on body and mind becomes a source of illness. So don’t practice zazen where there is danger of fire, flood strong winds, and robbery. Keep away from areas near the seashore, bars, and red light districts, homes of widows and young virgins, and theaters. Avoid living near kings, ministers, and high authority or near gossips and seekers after fame and profit.

Temple rituals and buildings have their worth. But if you are concentrating on zazen, avoid them. Don’t get attached to sermons and instructions because they will tend to scatter and disturb your mind. Don’t take pleasure in attracting crowds or gathering disciples. Shun a variety of practices and studies. Don’t do zazen where it is too light or too dark, too cold or too hot, or too near pleasure-seekers and entertainers. You should practice inside the meditation hall, go to Zen masters, or take yourself to high mountains and deep valleys. Green waters and Blue Mountains - these are good places to wander. Near streams and under trees - these places calm the mind. Remember that all things are unstable. In this you member that all things are unstable. In this you may find some encouragement in your search for the way.

The mat should be spread thickly: zazen is the comfortable way. The meditation hall should be clean. If incense is always burned and flowers offered the gods protecting Buddhism and the Bodhisattvas cast their shadows and stand guard. If you put the images of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and Arhats there, all the devils and witches are powerless.

Dwelling always in great compassion, you should offer the limitless merits of zazen to all beings. Don’t let pride, egotism, and arrogance arise; they are possessions of the heretical and unenlightened. Vow to cut off desire; vow to obtain enlightenment. Just do zazen and nothing else. This is the basic requirement for zazen.

Before doing zazen, always wash your eyes and feet, and tranquilize your body and mind. Move around easily. Throw away worldly feelings, including the desire for Buddhism. Although you should not begrudge the teaching, don’t preach it unless you are asked. After three requests, give the four effects (indicate, instruct, benefit, rejoice). When you feel like talking, keep quiet nine out of 10 times-like mold growing around the mouth and a fan used in December or like a bell hanging in the sky that rings naturally without reliance on the four directions of the wind.

For the trainee this is the main point to watch: possessing the teaching but not selling it cheap. Attaining enlightenment but not taking pride in it. This zazen does not attach itself one-sidedly to doctrine, training, or enlightenment. It combines all these virtues. Enlightenment ordinarily means Satori, but this is not the spirit of zazen. Training ordinarily means actual practice, but this is not the spirit of zazen. Doctrine ordinarily means stopping evil and doing good, but this is not the spirit of zazen.

Although Zen has doctrines, they differ from those of Buddhism in general. The method of direct pointing and true transmission is expressed by the whole body in zazen. In this expression, there are no clauses and sentences. Here, where mind and logic cannot reach, zazen expresses the 10 directions. And this is done without using a single word. Isn’t this the true doctrine of the Buddhas and patriarchs?

Although Zen talks about training, it is the training of no-action. The body does nothing except zazen. The mouth does not utter the Dharani, the mind does not work at conceptual thinking; the six sense organs are naturally pure and have no defilement. This is not the 16 views (toward the Four Noble Truths) of the Sravaka, or the 12 causal relations of the Pratyekabuddha, or the six paramitas and other training of the Bodhisattvas. Nothing is done except zazen, and this zazen is called the Buddha’s conduct. The trainee just dwells comfortably in the self-joyous meditation of the Buddhas and freely performs the four comfortable actions of the Bodhisattvas. This then is the deep and marvelous training of the Buddhas and patriarchs.

And although we talk about enlightenment, we become enlightened without enlightenment. This is the king of samadhi. This is the samadhi that gives rise to the eternal wisdom of the Buddha. It is the samadhi from which all wisdom arises. It is the samadhi that gives rise to natural wisdom. It is the clear gate that opens into the compassion of the Tathagata. It is the place that gives rise to the teaching of the great comfortable conduct (zazen) - It transcends the distinction between sage and commoner; it is beyond dualistic judgment that separates delusion and enlightenment. Isn’t this the enlightenment that expresses one’s original face?

Though zazen does not cling to virtue, meditation, and wisdom, it includes them. So-called virtue protects one from wrong and stops evil. But in zazen we see the total body without two-ness. We abandon all things and stop varied relations; we do not cling to Buddhism and worldly affairs; we prized religious sentiment and worldly thoughts. There is neither right and wrong nor good and evil. What is there to suppress and to stop? This is the formless virtue of Buddha nature. Usually zazen means concentrating the mind and eliminating extraneous thoughts. But in this zazen, we free ourselves from dualism of body and mind and of delusion and enlightenment. Neither the body nor mind changes, moves, acts, or worries.

Like a rock, like a stake, like a mountain, like an ocean, the two forms of movement and rest do not arise. This is meditation without the form of meditation. Because there is no form of meditation, it is called just meditation. But in this zazen we naturally destroy the obstacle of knowledge (ignorance), forget the delusive activity of the mind; our entire body becomes the eye of wisdom; there is no discrimination and recognition. We clearly see the Buddha nature and are inherently not deluded. We cut the delusive root of the mind and the light of the Buddha mind shines through suddenly.

This is wisdom without the form of wisdom. Because it is wisdom without form, it is called Great Wisdom. The teachings of the Buddha and the sermons of Sakyamuni (in his life) are all included in virtue, meditation, and wisdom. In this zazen we hold all virtue, train all meditation, and penetrate into wisdom. Suppression of demons, enlightenment, serand death all depend on this power. Superior work and illuminating sermon are all in the zazen. Interviewing the Zen master is also zazen.

If you want to do zazen, you must first find a quiet place. You should sit on a thick cushion. You should allow no smoke or wind to enter. You should keel away from rain and dew. Take care of the sitting place and keep it clean. The Buddha sat on a diamond seat, and the patriarchs sat on huge rocks, but in each case they used cushions. The sitting place should neither be too light during the day nor too dark during the night. It should be warm in winter and cool in summer. These are precautions regarding the place abandon the functioning of the mind; stop dualistic thinking, and do not plan to become a Buddha. Don’t think about right and wrong. Do not waste time make efforts as though saving your burning head.

The Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree and Bodhidharma wall gazing concentrated only on zazen and did nothing else. Sekiso (Shih-shuang Ch’ing-chu) (807-888) sat like a withered tree. Nyojo (Ju-tsing) (1163-1228) warned against taking a nap while doing zazen. Nyojo always said that you can obtain your goal for the first time by merely sitting - without burning incense, giving salutation, saying the Nembutsu, practicing austerity, chanting the sutra, or performing various duties. Generally when doing zazen you should wear a kesa; you must not leave this out. You should not sit completely on the cushion; it should be put halfway back under the spine. This is the sitting method of the Buddhas and the patriarchs. Some meditate in paryanka and others in half-paryanka. In paryanka you must put your right thigh. Wearing your robe loosely adjust your posture.

Next rest your right hand on your left foot and your left hand on your right palm. Touching your thumbs together, bring your hands close to your body. Put them close to your navel. Sit upright and do not lean either to the left or right. Neither should you lean forward nor backward. Place your navel. Keep your tongue against the palate, and breathe through your nose. Keep your lips and teeth firmly closed. You should keep your eyes open. Neither open them too wide nor narrow them too much. After you have seated your self comfortably, inhale sharply. To do this you open your mouth and breathe out once or twice.

After sitting you should move your body seven or eight times from the left to right, going from large motions to small. Then you should sit like an immovable mountain. In this position try to think the unthinkable How do you think the unthinkable? By going beyond both thinking and unthinking. This is the key to zazen. You should cut off your delusions immediately and enlighten the way suddenly.

When you want to get up from zazen, put your hands on your thighs with palms up and move your body seven or eight times from left to right with the motions getting progressively larger. Then open your mouth and inhale; put your hands on the floor; gently arise - from the cushion; and quietly walk around. Turn your body to the right and walk to the right. If you feel sleepy during zazen, you should move -your body and open your eyes widely. Concentrate your mind on the top of your head, edge of your hair, or between your eyebrows. If this doesn’t make you - wide awake, stretch out your hand and rub your eyes, or massage your body. If even this does not awaken you, get up from your seat and walk around lightly. You should walk around to the right. If you walk in the way for about 100 steps, your sleepiness should go away. The method of walking is to take a breath every short step (about half of the average step); like moving without moving, it should be done quietly. If even all this does not awaken you, wash your eyes and cool your head. Or read the introduction of the precepts of the Bodhisattva. By these various means you should avoid sleep.

The most important thing is to transcend the problem of birth and death. Though this life moves swiftly, the eye for seeing the way is not open. We must realize that this is no time to sleep. If you are about to be lulled to sleep, you should make this vow: “My habitual passion from former actions is already deep-rooted; therefore I have already received the hindrance of sleep. When will I awake from the darkness? Buddhas and the patriarchs I seek escape from the suffering of my darkness through your great compassion.

If your mind is disturbed, rest it on the tip of the nose or below the navel and count your inhaled and exhaled breath. If your mind still is not calm, take a Koan and concentrate on it. For example consider these non-taste the stories: “Who is this that comes before me?” (Hui-neng); “Does a dog have Buddha nature?” (Chao-chou); Yun men’s Mt Sumeru and Chao-chou’s oak tree in the garden. These are available applications. If your mind is still disturbed, sit and concentrate on the moment your breath has stopped and both eyes have closed forever, or on the unborn state in your mother’s womb or before one thought arises. If you do this, the two Sunyatas (non-ego) will emerge, and the disturbed mind will be put at rests.

When you arise from meditation and unconsciously take action, that action is itself a Koan. Without entering into relation, when you accomplish practice and enlightenment, the Koan manifests itself. State before the creation of heaven and earth, condition of empty kalpa, and wondrous functions and most important thing of Buddhas and patriarchs - all these are one thing, zazen.

We must quit thinking dualistically and put a stop to our delusive mind, cool our passions, transcend moment and eternity, make our mind like cold ashes and withered trees, unify meditation and wisdom like a censer in an old shrine, and purify body and mind like a single white strand. I sincerely hope that you will do all this.

The wooden statue of Keizan Jōkin dates from the early 14th century and is believed to have been commissioned by his heir Meihō Sotetsu shortly after Keizan’s death. It’s preserved at Yōkōji Temple in Sakai-cho, Hakui City.

We moved in with my spouse Jan’s mom as her caregivers two years ago.

Then a bit more than seven months ago she entered Kaiser’s home hospice program. That actually stabilized her situation for a good six months. It tightened our lives, but occasionally, we were able to get away for a date night. That’s over. Now, into the seventh month she both turned 99 and the downward spiral has resumed.

Our lives right now center on caring for her as she tends to her necessary work. Everything else is secondary to the main project.

Dying.

Jan and I are about making this as comfortable as we can.

She has her own spirituality informing her path. And it’s not my job to judge what it should or should not be. She’s totally in charge of her dying.

But as one of her assistants on this way, I see it all through my own work, my own dying, even if more abstract in the moment, and, of course my living.

As a person on the Zen way this is part and parcel of the great matter. And so once again I find myself called into something. Again. Called anew. Called once more. Like a crow greeting the morning, I find an ever renewed invitation.

Like an alarm clock.

Read more

(This will likely be my last sermon for a while. As you can learn below my ability to leave home for more time than it takes to run a necessary errands is going to be superseded by more pressing concerns. Delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica on Sunday, the 9th of August, 2026. Followers of this page may recognize some of a previous reflection shamelessly reused to a different purpose…)

Leo Toystoy writes in his The Death of Ivan IIyich

Just then his schoolboy son had crept softly in and gone up to the bedside. The dying man was still screaming desperately and waving his arms. His hand fell on the boy’s head, and the boy caught it, pressed it to his lips, and began to cry.

At that very moment Ivan Ilyich fell through and caught sight of the light, and it was revealed to him that though his life had not been what it should have been, this could still be rectified. He asked himself, “What is the right thing?” and grew still, listening.

(Then, with that, the shape of his terror shifts)

He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. “Where is it? What death?” There was no fear because there was no death.

In place of death there was light.

As I believe some of you know, two years ago my spouse Jan and I sold our condo in Long Beach and moved in as Jan’s mom’s caregivers. Two things to know. She just turned 99 at the end of July. And she is now seven months into hospice.

She suffers from a lot of things, much of it just being very, very old. But the presenting issues for her are a combination of congestive heart failure and COPD. The COPD being galling as she never smoked and she never lived with smokers.

But life. Well, and death.

After six months stabilized, now over the past month things have begun shifting again, and we might be on the long expected downward spiral. Not sure, of course. We’re a bit too far out for the hospice nurses to make any kind of predictions. Well, there was one, maybe six months. Big emphasis on that maybe.

Me, I learned years ago to pay attention to the rhythms of such liminal times. I find the dark and the deep are good terms for our most important experiences. Those places where we finally let go of our various clingings and allow the spirit to rest as it will.

Here we find a kind of not knowing. Which itself becomes a hinge between worlds.

Subscribe now

I find it very much like in that passage from the Death of Ivan Ilyich, where for Ivan dark turns to light. Or, really, as I’ve noticed, maybe dark and light are no longer clearly distinguishable. The three of us, mom, Jan, and me we’re living in a house where that certainly seems true. There’s still clinging. It’s something we humans do. But also, a body is passing through the great dark. A dark where breath itself is a fragile thing, mostly slipping away.

For us our days and nights turn on breathing and not being able to breathe. Breath. Dark. Light. Life. Death. And breath, again. Etymologically spirit means breath. It’s a connection found across the globe in many different and totally unrelated languages.

Breath. Spirit.

I think about that trope I just used a minute ago. It goes “the spirit rests (or lists if you like the King James version) where it will.” The spirit lands where it will. As someone walking the Zen way, I’ve always felt that line particularly captures something of the (if you will) spirit of Zen’s awakening.

Awakening. Another word rich in image. For me that word is rising from the slumber of distraction. Awakening is letting go and being present to. It’s a place where denial vanishes like morning dew. It’s also a kind of rebirth. It’s a gift of new eyes and new ears. As individuals we have something to do with it. But it turns out, not as much as we might wish.

Awakening has no hard causal associations. Sure, there are practices that incline us in that direction. Mainly they turn on paying attention. But the moment, the turning, the noticing; well, just like the spirit coming when it wants rather than when I want. Like the bottom falling out of a bucket. One of the great Zen images with a wonderful story attached. Or, to use an image from the Christian tradition, like tongues of fire resting on a crowd.

Every culture appears to have some image, or several, for this turning of the heart.

Most commonly in Christian iconography the spirit is pictured as a dove.

Sometimes tongues of fire. Often, as gentle as a dove. Like for Ivan, a touch can be the trigger.

I’m very much taken with the vagueness of what the holy spirit is in the Christian scriptures. In fact, the existence of the spirit is the weak link in the theory of the divine as a trinity. What the spirit is precisely is elusive, certainly not clear from the texts themselves. Its only centuries later as creeds were being developed, that the spirit becomes a face of God.

Something I’ve found helpful is how in English spirit was for the longest time also called ghost. I recall a friend’s child, the family all Episcopalians, and kind of high church, learning to cross herself saying “In the name of the father. And of the son. And of the holy monster.” That family quickly shifted its use from ghost to spirit.

Although, me, I rather like that childish use. Monster.

I think of my mother-in-law’s struggles for breath and monster fits in there. The denial of breath is a kind of monster.

And. While our contemporary use for monster is an imaginary beast, its etymology suggests something else. “To point out, to indicate, to demonstrate.” I like taking all those things together, including imaginary beast. Including in the mess struggling for air. All of it. Monster. Ghost. Spirit. Elusive. And yet unbidden, present. Like the wind. Like tongues of fire. Sometimes like a hovering dove, looking to rest.

As to the phrase itself about the spirit listing or landing or resting. While I know the line is biblical, I have to admit over time I’d forgotten the actual citation. So, preparing for our time together here, I dug around a bit.

It first appears in the Hebrew Scriptures, in the Book of Numbers, Chapter 11, verses 25 and 26. In the King James version it goes

“And the Lord came down in a cloud, and spake unto him, and took of the spirit that was upon him, and gave it unto the seventy elders: and it came to pass, that, when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied, and did not cease.”

I then searched a Jewish website for a translation not read through a Christian lens, and in fact the text isn’t in fact much different.

“And HaShem came down in the cloud, and spoke unto him, and took of the spirit that was upon him, and put it upon the seventy elders; and it came to pass, that, when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied…”

This scene is echoed in the Gospel According to John, the third chapter, the eighth verse. The actual text in the always lovely King James version goes

“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.“

What I find important here is that in the end we cannot grasp, there is no control; instead we can only experience. But if we do, we find our true home within the wind. I watch, I witness someone dying; and see all around me the wind, the spirit, breath coming and going. But only on its own terms, never on mine.

We find it in what I consider a complicated and not entirely attractive text, the Gospel According to John. John contains some of the most sublime mystical writings in the whole of the scriptures. And it is riddled with anti-semitism. Some of my Christian friends try to mitigate by claiming it’s really pre-anti-semitic, and the more correct term would be anti-Jewish polemics. For me this is a distinction without a difference.

Internal contradictions are important, I find. It’s certainly like me and my life. As Walt Whitman said, “I contain multitudes.” The good and the ill, cheek by jowel.

As someone dies, as Jan and I sit with mom, and witness her struggles, with all the sorrow and regret, I find something that I can only call holy. A terrible holy, but holy. Another strange word with an interesting etymology. Here whole and uninjured and safe are invoked. At the very same time as struggle and death.

A point for all of us, I believe. It’s there for anyone willing to be open wide and let it all rest. And at some point, as folk within the twelve steps will tell us, we each of us need to let go and let God.

I think of Ivan Illyich. I think of the story of Saul and his fateful encounter on that road to Damascus. I think of Jan’s mom. I think of Jan and me and our hours with her. Of various moments, especially those where we touch each other.

This is what has become my universalism. Not the old Christian idea that all dead people go to heaven. Rather that the spirit cannot be contained, and genuine wisdom is available to all of us. And, how that wisdom, that awakening, that ability to be reborn something new that gift comes like a thief in the night. Often, it comes in the worst of times.

Spirit. Breath. Gift. The gift of life contains the reality of death. Awakening is our meeting it, less with our heads, as important as that can be; but most of all with our hearts. Another kind of knowing. Something never fully under anyone’s control.

Now. On balance I think we’re better off preparing ourselves. You know become fit hosts for the gift. That’s why I practice a form of meditation and recommend such practices. Me, I think Zen meditation is a good way to do that. They’re all forms of noticing, of paying attention. Maybe you have your own route. There are a lot of them. But they do call for some diligence, some preparing. They prepare us for the moment when it all falls apart.

And with that there’s a bottom line.

Like breathing. Like dying. Like that touch between the dying man and his son. Like Jan stroking her mother’s head. Like the bottom falling out of a bucket.

Monster. Ghost. Spirit. And yet present. Like the wind. Like tongues of fire. Like a dove.

Awakening. Wisdom. Death. Light. Love. All different, and all connected.

An invitation to attention. Someone asked a Zen master what is Zen? She said, “Attention.” The person asked, “Is that all? Surely there must be more?” He replied “Attention, attention.”

Turns out there are many true paths. And there’s a bottom line to it.

Prepared or not, the spirit rests where it will. And with that, in place of death there is light. It’s that significant. It’s that important.

So... Attention. Attention.

It’s the final gift.

The image is Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa

Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. Exodus 34:7

They say the problem with investigating one’s family tree is that you’re likely to find someone hanging from it.

In my case that would be my father.

I’d long known he had been in prison during the second world war and was released into the army as a medic.

There was a battle in Italy. It was bad. My father would never fully recover from it. There were a couple of functioning muscles in the shoulder of his right arm, which was otherwise paralyzed, for whatever reason it was not amputated. Over the many years that followed his arm was encased in a series of ever more sophisticated frames. They all featured a claw that rested in his palm and which he controlled by manipulating those shoulder muscles. To the day he died there were bits of shrapnel working their way out of his body.

And, of course, there were the nightmares. I know the big one, the one that repeated if he drank too much. He drank too much a lot. Over time it became one of my own dreams and is even today seared into my being as my own living memory. A glimpse into what hell humans can make.

Horror and pain.

And. I was long curious about the criminal conviction. He had a shifting story about it. Mainly it turned on a bank robbery. Mostly but not always one of his fellow robbers was killed. And so, it said, he was in prison for murder.

Finally, not long ago I sent a note to the California State Archives asking about it.

They responded.

I knew he was born in New Jersey in 1919. He claimed he was orphaned and lived on the streets in New York from some early age. Whatever the truths of that part of his life, and in big strokes it was all probably true, unless it wasn’t; I now at least know some facts from when he left that area.

In 1939, when he was twenty years old he was arrested and convicted of car theft in Texas. It looks like he served two years. I’m guessing he was on his way west. Because when he was released in 1941, he was quickly arrested again. This time it was in Los Angeles. Whether county or city, I don’t know. The documents in my hand didn’t give that level of granularity.

This time he was convicted of first degree robbery. So, not murder. That was good. I wouldn’t want to know who was in fact the triggerman. I would be wounded to know who died.

I looked up what first degree robbery might mean and it appears either a gun was involved or there was more than one robber.

He was sentenced to five years to life, and shipped up the San Quentin.

He was twenty-two years old.

Read more

(A draft of a chapter for my forthcoming Zen Master Jesus)

Alan Watts was the first person to write popular books about Zen in the west, most importantly in 1957 with his bestselling Way of Zen. He drew mainly on the scholarly volumes just being written by D. T. Suzuki, the first person to write authentically and extensively about Zen in European languages. Through Watts engaging style made Suzuki’s scholarly presentation enormously readable and genuinely compelling.

His take built upon Suzuki’s thesis of Zen as a way of being but then took a turn against formal practice. This earned him a lot of criticism in Zen circles as well as making his version very attractive. Very much a mixed bag.

I recall once attending a talk by an American Zen priest. At the end, during a question-and-answer period, someone asked about Watts. The priest sighed, and then said, “I know there’s a lot of controversy about Alan Watts and what he really understood about Zen.” He paused. And then, added, “But, you know, without Alan Watts, I wouldn’t be standing here on this platform.”

I have to say, in large part, that’s true for me as well.

In the 1960s and 70s, Alan Watts opened some important doors for many of us looking for a new way. I’m not really sure another version, a more accurate version of Zen would have caught the popular imagination. All of this is so, messy. Kind of like life, I find.

Over these passing years I’ve come to feel the title of his biography In My Own Way and the title of the English edition of Monica Furlong’s biography of him, Genuine Fake, taken together points to the complexities of this intriguing Anglo-American Zen trickster/ancestor of our contemporary spiritual scene.

There are also numerous critiques, pretty much all of them deserved.

Subscribe now

In one such, a relentless critique of Alan Watts, Lou Nordstrom and Richard Pilgrim, two religious studies scholars, one, Nordstrom, also a Zen priest, pointed out how an authentic spirituality must encompass “practice, discipline, and effort,” features completely lacking in Alan Watts’ ‘Zen.’” Big emphases on the scare quotes around the word Zen.

In significant part I agree, but not completely. On the spiritual path there is absolutely a time and place of a falling away of practice, discipline, and effort. As we open our hearts, we find the way is in fact broad and forgiving. And it seems Watts tasted that freedom and joy. I really believe he did. But. The authentic spiritual is also in that delightful conundrum of a real life, totally bound up with practice, discipline, and effort. The intimate way is also, without a doubt, harsh and demands everything. And here Watts frequently seems clueless.

Now, in my opinion, Alan Watts was at his very best during a brief period when he tried at practice, discipline, and effort. Or, at least stood in their general neighborhood.

Raised in England, his natal tradition was Anglicanism. Although he formally abandoned it by sixteen for the eclectic and Theosophically tinged Buddhism of the London Buddhist Society. In his later twenties and now in America, Watts would eventually say that he decided to become an Episcopal priest because he was desperate for an occupation that paid. From what would come out of this period, I think his relationship with Christianity was more than a job vaguely connected to his interests.

Despite not having an undergraduate degree he was admitted to the divinity program at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. Three years later, Watts graduated with a master’s degree in divinity and was ordained an Episcopal priest. He was immediately engaged as the Episcopal chaplain at Northwestern University. It was 1945, and he was thirty years old.

It appears to have been an amazing moment. He was wildly popular on campus, and his books were received in progressive religious circles as challenging and compelling.

What is most important for me, is how he touches the perennial spiritual thirst of our human condition. His divinity degree thesis was reworked and published as the book Behold the Spirit, as I mentioned first released in 1947. I can’t tell if it has ever been out of print. What I do know is you can buy a new copy today. There’s even a Kindle version.

The book is an attempt at synthesizing eastern and western spirituality grounded in a broad and sympathetic expression of Anglicanism. Here Watts offered an outline of a nondual Christianity.

While one can argue there have always been nondual currents in Christianity, this perspective has definitely never been a significant part of normative Christianity. In mainstream Christianity the world and God are seen as relentlessly separate, creator and created. A world of problems followed this setting up of a hierarchy with the spirit above and good and the world below.

If the proposition that the world is completely separate from the divine were true, well, we would just have to live with it. But and let me make a categorical statement rather than my usual inclination toward hedging: That’s not true.

Rather, as I open my heart to the world, this world, this great mess that is you and me and all things, I find each thing is created and creating all that is at the same time. We, you and me, our living and our dying, exists within a dance or web of intimacy. Here each of us is a moment in a shimmering play of reality. And that play of reality is exactly where I find the divine, the holy, the sacred.

I don’t need to go to some other place to find it. And neither do you. A small word of good news. And it sits close to the heart of this book.

Today a host of emergent and even traditional Christians don’t see the separation, either.

And. Alan Watts’ book Behold the Spirit kind of spells it all out in a way perhaps even best done by someone not actually immersed in it all. And he did it before a lot of other people in our moment in history.

It is true he stood more in the neighborhood of that “practice, discipline, and effort” than within it. And yes, that distance also means he missed some things. I admit I find Watts a tad too comfortable with his own insight, insufficiently checked by others who’ve walked the way before. Which is a danger for the spiritually unaffiliated. And I find sometimes he feels a bit too instrumental in his reframing of Christianity. Still.

He did touch something.

The book was a revelation when he hit the scene in 1945. It was I gather, and perhaps obviously, criticized for its “creeping pantheism.” I’m not sure how creeping, it was. I would say the Alan Watts of that book was in fact a thorough going panentheistic screed. Panentheism is probably the most compatible Christian variation on pantheism, another word for nondual or monistic spirituality. In panentheism the world is seen is divine, but that the divine, God, cannot be limited to the universe.

The book was published in 1947. In 1971, about quarter of a century later, it was reissued with a new preface. In it Watts said how he “felt that Catholic Christianity might be taught and practiced as a form of that perennial philosophy which is he gold with the sectarian dross of every great religion.”

I think Watts in fact spells out in that book a fair amount of what an affirmation of a nondual Christianity can look like in his thesis and book. The sad thing, as I see it, was that he couldn’t follow through for himself. His personality, what he liked to characterize as his “bohemian personality” just didn’t have a fit in the organized church. I’d have to add his lack of personal boundaries would have meant he would never had made it as a Unitarian Universalist minister, either. He was born to be an outsider. And after that five years, eight or nine counting his seminary experience, of stirring up the Anglican church, he made sure he would forever be an outsider.

But he also pointed a way.

First, he spells out a reality. In that 1971 preface to Behold the Spirit he warns “A Christianity which is not basically mystical must become either a political ideology or a mindless fundamentalism.” He certainly put his finger on that point. Fundamentalisms, bare literalisms, are a curse on humanity. Politics informed by religion cuts in several directions. If it is informed by insight into who we are and how we are related, if engaged modestly, and truly informed by love, it can be powerful.

But even that is not the primary purpose. Which is to know who we are.

His metaphors are straight out of the traditional church, which might be difficult for some of us, and to my ears even more difficult when he uses the relentless masculine by preference language of that time. He was writing before that necessary linguist shift within our culture. But, if we allow ourselves to listen, we find the underlying understanding he presents shakes the very foundations of the moral universe the conventional church preaches. He declares:

“God is the most obvious thing in the world. He is absolutely self-evident - the simplest, clearest and closest reality of life and consciousness. We are only unaware of him because we are too complicated, for our vision is darkened by the complexity of pride. We seek him beyond the horizon with our noses lifted high in the air, and fail to see that he lies at our vary feet. We flatter ourselves in premeditating the long, long journey we are going to take in order to find him, the giddy heights of spiritual progress we are going to scale, and all the time are unaware of the truth that ‘God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves.’ We are like birds flying in quest of the air, or men with lighted candles searching through the darkness for fire.”

His is the nondual God.

Watts lays out the traditions of the Christian church as a manifestation of this truth of our radical interdependence, of our bottomless unity. The man who can only stand in the neighborhood of practice, discipline, and effort, shows where it can be found. I think in part because he really did taste the deeper truths, really did to some degree, and none of us are judge of how deep any other, or for that matter, even we ourselves have traveled, really did touch the great insight.

In some ways Alan Watts treatment of Christianity feels to me instrumental. He worked primarily in the realms of philosophy and symbol. And to my taste, was always a bit abstract. That noticed, there is something in what he shared over the years, although I think best when he tried to cleave more closely to a tradition, that is something organic and true.

In the wonderful (forthcoming) book The Lost Christian Writings of Alan Watts compiled and edited by Daniel Collier contains a review of Behold the Spirit. It was written by Alan G. Whittemore, who was a the time the Superior of the Episcopal Order of the Holy Cross. The monk was a friend and mentor to Watts and served as his spiritual director through seminary and into his priesthood.

Watts deeply admired him, calling Fr Whittemore “a full-blooded mystic, who could not only sense the presence of God in every flicker of light and sound, but had also reached the deep state of contemplative prayer where one feels God in the very feeling of not feeling him, the state of the divine darkness or the ‘cloud of unknowing.’”

Fr Whittemore was equally admiring of his student.

In his review, Fr Whittemore lists how failing and flailing churches try everything under the sun to find life in their dying institutions. Bless them, the good father says. And then writes, “When they acknowledge their failure, when at last they desist if only through sheer fatigue, the Spirit of God will touch Christendom, and it will revive. It will revive because, at long last, hordes of men and women will realize what the mystics have known all along—that we do not need to attain God, because He is in us already. To strain to find God is, in the words of a Chinese sage quoted by Father Watts, “very much like looking for an ox when you are riding on one.”

In using the Zen image from the Ox Herding Pictures, one of the traditions most important guideposts we capture a hint. A deep current. Something perennial, something returning, and returning again.

The hope of our humanity.

The photograph is of, from left to right, Alan Watts, D.T. Suzuki, and Christmas Humphreys

(This article is a Dharma talk given by my dear friend Tom Daimon Wardle at the July 18th, 2026 Empty Moon Saturday sit. Tom is a Dharma Holder in the Harada Yasutani koan Zen lineage.

He holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Hult International Business School. He is also a graduate of the Zen Peacemaker’s Seminary for Socially Engaged Buddhism.

Tom is passionate about koan, lay practice, and the integration of the dharma into daily life. He currently teaches with Empty Moon Zen. You can connect with Tom here.)

***

Yunmen taught, “I do not ask you about before the fifteenth of the month. Come, say something about after the fifteenth.” And he himself responded, “Every day is a good day.”

Blue Cliff Record, Case 6

I came to Zen to fix myself. I was prone to anxiety, depression, and anger, so it was fairly clear to me that I needed some significant improvement, and Zen seemed like a good way to do it. All the talk of enlightenment really appealed to me, these miraculous promises of total transformation, of everything being OK. I think that was what I was really after: a sense that everything was OK, including me. I imagined that if I could just get a little of that enlightenment juice for myself, it would flip a switch inside me and I would go on to live a life of happiness and success. I even imagined that it would be effortless: once I was enlightened, I wouldn’t have to try hard, things would just happen. I would succeed. People would like me. I would like me. Heck, after enlightenment, I probably wouldn’t even need to meditate anymore!

What I really wanted was for Zen to change me, to turn me into someone else, someone better, who would live my life in my stead, and do a much better job of it than I ever could. I was lost in a curative fantasy. I thought that I could use spirituality to bypass all of the struggle in life, to magically do away with the parts of myself I didn’t like or that made me uncomfortable. I thought, I hoped, that I wouldn’t have to deal with my shit, but, that just isn’t how it works.

Subscribe now

A friend of mine once took a Buddhist tour of China, and one of the places they visited was a small temple on an island in the middle of a big lake. The temple was kept by a lone monk who had been there, by himself, for over 40 years. My friend asked the monk: “You’ve been here so long, what have you learned?” After a brief pause, the monk said, “Many decades of practice, still the same old me.” Yeah brother. This is very much to the point.

If I am the first to break it to you that all of those promises of complete, perfect, unsurpassed and remainderless enlightenment are just marketing, I’m sorry. I hope you’ll stick around anyway.

Most religions acknowledge the value of peak experiences. Whether called enlightenment, awakening, epiphany, seeing god, or even becoming god, these experiences are often the end goal of spiritual practice. If you get there, congratulations, you’ve won the game! OK, sounds good... what next? Happily ever after? That’s precisely where the problems start, because life goes on. Life goes on after you reach the mountaintop, and you can be absolutely sure that things will happen that will knock you clean out of that spiritual bliss. You’ll stub your toe, the store will be out of the thing you need, your mom will do that thing that drives you crazy (again!), or some asshole will cut you off in traffic. Can you still see god now?

I do not ask about before the fifteenth of the month. Come, say something about after the fifteenth.

Every day is a good day.

Zen may be unique amongst the spiritual traditions of the world in teaching that enlightenment is just the beginning of our work. And let’s leave that word aside from here on, it’s too pretentious and carries too much baggage. Whatever that experience may be, let’s call it awakening, and I’ll remind us all that although we awoke this morning, we will have to awake again tomorrow, just like we did yesterday.

Zen teaches that your first deep experience of awakening is profoundly important, but it requires ongoing practice to mature into that experience and integrate it into how we live our lives. We call that first deep awakening kensho, which literally means “seeing one’s true nature.” What a nice idea, but perhaps a little grandiose, so let’s think of it more as glimpsing our true nature. One of the models for the process of spiritual development that we use in Zen is the Ten Oxherding Pictures, and kensho, that first glimpse, is the third picture. This is very important: It is just a beginning. Even so, it is an experience worth having.

So how do we have that experience? The truth is, nobody knows. Experiences of awakening, the divine, the absolute, happen every day to people all over the world and they always have. There is no formula to bring about an experience of awakening, but Buddhism offers us over 2,000 years of field notes from our forebears about what they found useful and what they didn’t. Our ancestors offer pointers for us to find our own way, and amongst these pointers there is broad consensus that it really helps to have a practice. There are many helpful practices, but Zen focuses on meditation.

Awakening can strike completely out of the blue or creep in slowly and quietly, and although the tendency is to talk about it in grandiose terms (bolts of lightning or walls falling down are common images), how it comes to you will be unique, so don’t worry about what it will be like, just stay open and pay attention. Assiduously pay attention, because, with all credit to James for this turn of phrase, awakening is an accident, and our practice makes us accident prone.

If you would like to experience this accident for yourself, start by showing up. The sangha will guide you and support you as you develop stability in your meditation practice. I’d suggest making it easy for yourself at first by just focusing on attending sittings with the community. In time, you will likely find a desire to expand your practice. Good, that is necessary, but home practice is extremely hard, so a few words of caution: With all the myriad demands and distractions, it can be difficult to stick to that lofty commitment to sit a 25-minute period or two every day on our own. When we struggle to do so, it is all too easy to fall into self recrimination, and that is entirely unhelpful, so if and when you do try to establish a home practice on your own, take our great ancestor Hakuin’s advice: five minutes a day. When you have the inclination to sit longer, do so, but let five minutes be enough. The commitment will grow naturally in time.

Once you have deepened into your meditation practice and made a home for yourself there (build a grass hut where there is nothing of value), we have many tools to support you and continue expanding your practice. Retreats are particularly valuable, and I encourage all of you to sit multi-day retreats whenever possible. In our family, we also use koan, an utterly unique form of literature that has proved invaluable to generations of practitioners in having that first awakening experience and then deepening into it. Our way is to study a curriculum of koan across many collected volumes, a tradition that comes from that great ancestor Hakuin (who died about ten years before the American revolution), but it is perhaps more traditional to work with just one case or perhaps two or three across an entire lifetime of practice. Whether through many cases or just one, Koan have no bottom, just like you and me.

The first koan, usually the famous “Mu”, is used to help bring about our first big taste of awakening, our first kensho. This can take some time. If you were a monk in a Japanese monastery, it would be at least two to three years, and that is as a full-time monastic sitting a seven-day retreat every month. In my case, it took the better part of ten years, off and on. Don’t rush it, but don’t be complacent, either. No rice bags in the zendo!

Zen takes effort, but if you read much of the Zen cannon, you will quickly come across lengthy passages about the effort of non-effort and the need to let go of our striving for awakening. What gives? How do we practice with no goal when the goal is pretty explicitly this awakening-kensho thing?

Unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment anyone?

Every day is a good day. How can you NOT want that kind of equanimity and joy? How can you not strive for something like that?

Inevitably we will strive. We have to strive, but we should come to understand the nature of that striving and what it says about how we are engaging with our practice, our world, and ourselves. Striving has an inherent adversarial quality: we are trying to gain, to win, to defeat, to domineer. This is the approach of the ego, of the triumphant self that reinforces our separateness. It is understandable why the motif of the “spiritual warrior” can be so appealing, but between you and me, it’s total bullshit. There needs to be a shift, because truly there is no attainment and nothing to attain. Perhaps I should say “nothing to obtain.”

Zen isn’t about gaining or attaining, it is about intimacy, an intimacy that isn’t created but is always present, if we but notice. Pay attention. The striving is just a device, a tool that you will wear out with time. Once it is worn out, you will discard it naturally and find new ways of relating to your practice, but until it is worn out, use it and use it well. Important things happen in that striving. Our striving is where we encounter ourselves and where we can work with all aspects of ourselves, even the ones we don’t like. Through our striving, we can metabolize our karma, encountering our shit and learning to become comfortable with it, taking responsibility for it. Through our striving, we come to know ourselves anew again and again. In time, we come to see the activity of our minds with greater clarity, even as that activity continues to play out. We recognize through our own vivid experience that the ground of our truth, of our experience of reality itself, is not our thoughts nor our perceptions, but our feelings. We acknowledge and take responsibility for the fact that our experience of reality is a fabric woven of stories, just stories, and with any luck, we stop falling for our old tricks. All we have to do is notice. Again and again and again, just notice. Just...

And when you do notice, I hope you appreciate it fully, but watch out! There is a trap in that first experience of the deep. Don’t think, “This is it!”; Don’t think, “I am awake.” The work goes on. Again, that great ancestor Hakuin offers us a pointer: late in his life, he said, “At this point, I have had a few dozen major awakening experiences and more minor ones than I could count. It doesn’t matter; the practice continues.”

The poem that accompanies this case offers us further guidance:

Give up primal unity, and find the wild multiplicity of things

above and below in every direction. There’s nothing like it:

to amble along in regal ease, tracing the sound of streamwater,

to gaze far and wide, soaring free along paths of birds in flight!

Rich confusions of grasses

among hazy veils of mist:

there, you’re emptiness-born amid cliffwall paths, wildflower profusions, and a mere snap of the fingers erases that old emptiness.

Now, don’t move an inch!

One inch, and I’ll give you thirty blows!

Accident after accident, one continuous mistake. How wonderful!

So in the spirit of Yunmen, I wish you all a good day. Now go wash your ears!

The image of a man and a woman contemplating the moon is by Caspar David Friedrich, 1824

Shinran Shonin was one of those signal figures in the development of Japanese Buddhism. He has been compared to Martin Luther on occasion. He was born into Feudal Japanese nobility in 1173. However, like many spiritual figures throughout history he was visited with suffering early in his life. First his father died when he was four, then his mother when he was nine.

Driven by grief and the burning questions of life and death he entered the monastic life, joining the Tendai sect and practicing on the holy Mount Hiei. He practiced intensely for twenty years but was unable to resolve his doubts.

Then in 1201 he met the monk Honen. Also, originally a Tendai monk, Honen studied the Pure Land scriptures and came to believe that all one needed do was call upon the Buddha’s name to be saved. He left the mountain and moved to Kyoto and began to preach. He soon had a wide following, especially among ordinary people.

Honen taught that we live in the last age, where it is no longer possible to achieve liberation on one’s own. So, all upayas, all skillful means such as meditation and charity and, well, all of it no longer worked.

However, Honen quickly added, there is an escape hatch. All one need do was chant the nembutsu, calling upon Amida Buddha.

This caught Shinran’s heart.

Shinran studied for several years with Honen. After the first year Shinran experienced his great awakening called shinjin, meaning true entrusting or the awakened heart. In the following years, while he did not disrobe, Shinran began to eat meat, and married Eshinni, who may have been a nun. And in time they had seven children.

Famously Shinran declared he and his wife were “neither monastic nor lay.”

Over time this would become the normative ordination model for all Japanese Buddhists, including Zen.

But then as Zen came west, one of the significant figures was a Soto Zen missionary Shunryu Suzuki. He encouraged a hybrid practice that emerged among the San Francisco Zen Center community, and which has spread across North America and Europe.

Here the phenomena of non-ordained lay Zen practitioners has become common. But lay wasn’t quite right. These people did take a life of vow, but without leaving their householder lives. Witnessing this he repurposed Shinran’s claim, saying this new generation of practitioner were in fact neither monastics nor lay people. Many people also noted this was largely true of the people who ordained as well. In Japan after ordination and a period of training, people became parish priests. This was not really an option in the west. Although a number of people have done so, the majority who are priest ordained live more as householders than not, having ordinary jobs, and children, and the whole panoply of ordinary life.

This is an area where both Christians and Zen Buddhists can learn from each other.

Read more

In those brief years before adolescence one of my great fears was that my father was going to hell. Everyone else in the family was destined for heaven. But while we all faithfully attended a series of small fundamentalist Baptist churches; he was one of those men who stayed in the car smoking, or more commonly went to a nearby bar until services were over. He was also a scoffing atheist, who made fun of the more unlikely aspects of biblical religion, like the four corners of the earth and a person being swallowed by a big fish.

This would haunt me until sometime in my adolescence, when I left Christianity on my great spiritual pilgrimage. For some years after there would continue a lingering anxiety.

When I became a student of the Zen way I was surprised to learn about Buddhist hells. Pretty awful places, as well. Now they were all temporary, but temporary can be a very long time. In fact there’s a famous story about the great Eighteenth century Japanese Zen master Hakuin Ekaku. When he was eight his mother took him to a lecture, where the priest described the Eight hot hells.

The sermon was part of a theme of popular preaching, usually drawing on the Tendai monk Genshin’s “Ōjōyōshū,” the “Essentials of Rebirth in the Pure Land.” Genshin’s imaginative details of horror then emphasized in those popular sermons terrified the boy. At eight years the length of time in a hell, which could last a very long time. Images for that length of time were little different than images for calculating a kalpa. Such as a massive cube of mustard seeds, where once in a hundred years, someone removes a single seed. One’s time in hell could be longer than that. For an eight-year-old, or for that matter I have trouble distinguishing it from forever.

But it is different.

Subscribe now

The normative Christian teaching of eternal hell is probably the aspect of Christianity that’s most resistant to a nondual understanding of the tradition. One can see a metaphysical divide hardening into self-and-other, the ultimate denial of Zen’s “not two.” It becomes the fundamental divide: heaven and hell. And with an unbridgeable gap.

Except, it seems, for Jesus.

In the myths of many religions there are hells. Buddhist cosmology, for instance, posits many hells tailored to individual transgressions. As the young Hakuin found seared into his imagination. However, these hells in the various world religions are almost always temporary, purgative events. Among the major religions of the world only in Christianity and its sibling Islam do we get a doctrine of eternal conscious torment.

How Hell as a place or state of eternal conscious torment became a normative belief in Christianity is not entirely clear. The scriptures are messy, and it’s certainly possible to find an eternal Hell in the Christian scriptures. The Book of Revelation with its Lake of Fire has captured many imaginations over the many years.

Revelation is a monument to allegory, parable, and metaphor that generations of readers have turned into a literal description of future events. And probably more than any other book of the Bible, it becomes the source for people’s belief in eternal conscious torment. The problems with the book as prophecy are why it took a long time for it to be generally accepted into the forming canon. The last book to be included in what have become the normative lists. And to this day there are Christians resistant to its authority.

By the fifth century a normative understanding of Christianity came to the fore, along with some principal minority reports. The majority view was that the majority of people would end up in Hell, a place or state of torment. Most saw a two-step progression, the immediate death of the individual and then at the end of time a general resurrection, a judgement, and a waiting Lake of Fire.

And there has always been resistance to this dualism. The Christian tradition is lovely and considerably more complex than any simple reduction of the tradition might have it. So, like all very important things, it needs to be approached carefully.

A lot of this is built upon the tradition’s understanding of sin. Sin is a word well worth unpacking. It’s the Christian tradition’s angle on the great wound that people have noticed across cultures and time. There is within it a pointing to a facet of the jewel that is our human engagement with hurt. Hell, however, as it is commonly understood, is a worm, eating away at the truths the tradition brings forward for human healing.

That there is an eternal aspect to this understanding of abiding sin, as Buddhism speaks of endlessly arising demons of greed, and hatred, and ignorance; feels important to notice. And definitely for me as a Zen Buddhist looking honestly at Christianity, to not too quickly explain away.

But an intuition of wrongness in sin leading to endless suffering for an individual, a lot of Christians have trouble with it. Another truth. Some Christians feel for theological consistency, there needs to be a Hell; but that no one needs to be in it. Others believe in the annihilation of the unjust. And still others believe some eventual restoration of all to God. There are plenty of potential scriptural citations to prove which ever position one finds intuitively to be correct.

Among the Orthodox and for many other Christians this concept of an eternal Hell as one of two destinations to some place is a fundamental misunderstanding. Most Orthodox thinkers believe that Heaven and Hell are states, and actually are the same expression of God’s love. Heaven and hell are experienced, either as joy or as pain, depending on one’s willingness to accept the eternal gift endlessly presenting.

Love is a powerful and always, always, a dangerous thing. Love heals and it burns. But trying to define it more precisely becomes difficult.

Here’s a dangerous point in considering what hell might actually mean in our lived spiritual lives. I believe it easy to see two directions one might go. Hell represents the ultimate in seeing a dualistic world. While some approach to restoration, reconciliation, is the gift of a nondual perspective. This is the universalist intuition. Here nothing falls outside of the divine. The pursuit of salvation is a discovery of the intimacy offered within the Christian approach. Within God’s love there is no outside, no remainder, no one permanently excluded.

But I think simply pointing out dualism as wrong and offering a “correct” view is only one angle on what can push us to even deeper perspectives. Where I find the most important invitation is letting the two traditions present within their wholeness. And from there to allow them to work out the deeper possibilities, taking us to our true freedom. For Christians, I suspect this is looking for a larger reconciliation. The individual’s eternal suffering is also God’s eternal suffering. And if there’s an original sin, there’s also an original blessing. And so, God’s eternal bliss, is also everyone’s eternal bliss.

As a Zen Buddhist I find some important points, as well. For one thing a kalpa of punishment might as well be eternal from any ordinary human perspective. And then the play of the universe and its many causes and conditions can play out as it will. One Zen master was asked if there were a hell? And responded, yes, and I’m going there. The questioner asked why? And was told, so I can help you.

More than a joke.

When the Zen monk Hakuin entered the monastic life, he told the teacher Shoju Rojin about his bone chilling terror of hell, the young monk was rebuked. He was told that idea was self-centered. And therefore, it was rooted in a delusive understanding of who we actually are.

Another point for all of us on any authentic path. How do we shake off centering ourselves? And can we? And if so, what does it mean?

There’s a story attached to Hakuin. Well, there are several of questionable historical reliability. But for the most part they contain important points. For instance, years later, and now a Zen master, Hakuin was approached by the samurai Nobushige. Nobushige was also troubled by the idea of heaven and hell. Hakuin responded by telling him he wasn’t capable of seeing into the matter. Enraged the samurai started to draw his sword. Hakuin noted how the gate to hell had just been opened. Chagrined Nobushige returned the sword to its scabbard. And, Hakuin responded, how now the gate to heaven had been thrown wide open.

Not that far, I find, from the Orthodox sense of heaven and hell being the same state but met with different eyes, a different heart. I think of this and realize my fear for my father all those years ago, was more about seeing his choices playing out in real time.

And a question arises. What is this hall of mirrors that we’re walking into when Christian mysticism and Zen Buddhism gaze on each other?

The image of Yama by an unknown artist is from mid 17th to early 18th century, Tibet

I read J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey on the cusp between adolescence and young adulthood. This was a bit after I stopped thinking of myself as a Christian. However, I was full on in my spiritual quest.

And I was captured by how the Jesus Prayer looked like a Christian mantra. And from that seeing how it was used in the spiritual memoir of practice, The Way of a Pilgrim captured my heart. I particularly loved the Pilgrim. The prayer and especially the memoir was an important part of the confluence of causes and conditions that would lead me into a Zen monastery.

This led to the many years of my foundational practices, zazen, and later koan introspection. Along with study, various intimate epiphanies, and a long process of personal integration.

As the years went by, my memories of the Jesus Prayer of the Way of a Pilgrim assured me that whatever I thought of my fundamentalist Baptist religion, the fullness of lived Christianity offered a lot more than my narrow experience of the tradition.

Today when people look back at the inspirations for the uses of sacred words and phrases, they can find warrant in the Scriptures.

In Luke 18:13 “But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” And in the same chapter “Then he (the blind beggar) shouted, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” In Paul’s letter 1 Thessalonians 5:17, he famously advises people to “Pray without ceasing.” And in his letter to the Philippians 2:9-10 he says, “Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.”

To begin a pretty long list of scriptural inspiration.

Read more

In a well that has not been dug, water from no source is rippling.
Someone with no shadow or form is drawing that water.

Miscellaneous koan collection in the Harada Yasutani tradition

My calendar reminds me that it was on this day, the 5th of July, in 1969, I received shukke tokudo, also called unsui tokudo, ordination as a novice Soto Zen Buddhist priest in Oakland, California, from the Soto Zen priest Houn Jiyu Kennett.

I was twelve days from turning 21. Today marks 57 years from the event. And in twelve days, I will turn 78. I’ve already starting thinking of myself as “nearly 80.”

Time does fly.

Subscribe now

The English word “ordain” comes from Latin by way of French and means “put in order, arrange, dispose, appoint.” Ordination is the formal rite dedicating someone to sacred work. Some form of ordination is common across cultures, although the definition of sacred work shifts with those various cultures.

In Zen in the Japanese tradition in which I was first ordained, this had to do with entering into formation within an approximation of the monastic life. Japanese Buddhism had added in its own twists to the received tradition. And so while bound by rule, my ordination was not to what is generally considered monastic in the West, or among Buddhists generally beyond Japan and a pocket in Korea. Celibacy was not expected, the biggest divergence. Growing hair and eating meat were other monastic rules set aside in the Japanese model

But a commitment to monastic formation was strong.

Formation is another term of art. It consists of embracing disciplines and study that shapes a person’s life. In matters spiritual it has to do with prayer or meditation and, certainly in the Zen traditions, retreat. If one counts by days, years of retreat, whether one or three or five or seven or 90 or 100 days in formal blocks. I once did a rough count and I think as far as formal Zen retreat is concerned I have something around five years under my belt.

And even for the most obstinate, like me, that tends to have consequences.

And in time there was a kind of letting go for me.

I felt a lack in my Zen training. I too quickly was given titles, and too slowly growing into what they meant. And so I left the monastery I was training in, and moved on. Critically, however, I never lost something in that ordination, in that setting a commitment to sacred work.

But leaving, letting go, was also part of it.

Later I would also ordain as a Unitarian Universalist minister. I also had its formation. In this case a three year graduate school and a bunch of internships. Something else that has consequences.

Along the way I had other brushes with forms of ordained life. Briefly between Zen and Unitarian Universalism I was an independent Sacramental priest, and for about five minutes a bishop.

Here the leaving the letting go felt truer than leaving the Zen monastery. But it also left tendrils wrapping around my heart.

And letting go was somehow part of that heart thing, as well.

But the big things were and continue to be Zen and only to a bit lesser degree Unitarianism, at least in my imaginal life a thread of rational Christianity.

Living into and letting go of.

I guess my ministry was some form of universalism, a bit of a mess, but the shape of my life.

More letting go. Here of my ideas of what should be.

I’m now a couple of years past drawing any kind of regular paid work in UU world. And I’m trying hard to extricate myself from official positions in Zen world.

To cite popular literature I got my sock and I feel kind of free.

Another kind of letting go.

So, what now? What next?

I’m still committed to the sacred work. It looks like I’ve been given an opportunity to reflect and to write. Since my official retirement I’ve been able to publish two books, one with Shambhala and another with Monkfish. Another, a novel, is currently in the hands of the editors at Monkfish. And the final first draft of an appreciation of Christian mysticism from a Zen Buddhist perspective is due in the hands of its editors (also at Monkfish) sometime in August.

I barely maintain a blog hosted by Patheos. And I’m enthusiastically involved here at Substack with my Unanswered Questions newsletter.

So, I’m keeping off the streets if not entirely out of trouble.

I’m grateful for this time of reflection and writing. And, honestly, a little surprised at how fruitful this moment is.

I think of it as continuing the thread that is my vow of sacred work.

And I see in it its own seeds of letting go. Always, I’ve found, following this thread leads to letting go.

If I live long enough there’s little doubt in my heart it will find another shift. Maybe two. Who knows?

And somewhere it is a letting go into the ultimate silence. The truer mystery.

What this all reminds me of is a koan.

In a well that has not been dug, water from no source is rippling.
Someone with no shadow or form is drawing that water.

I “passed” this koan many, many years ago.

Today, I’m beginning to feel it as truer than true. A gift from the dark.

All that letting go while still feeling a thread. Hauling water without shadow, without form.

A mystery I find myself drawn into.

A mystery…

For awhile now I’ve been having difficulties sleeping. It’s annoying. For much of my life its been head, pillow, sleep. Whether this is something temporary or permanent, this my life now.

A large part of this is no doubt stress. Caring for someone in hospice can do that. And in our particular case my spouse’s mom seems to have found a stasis point, where hospice actually stabilized her. We’re now pushing toward seven months in this particular liminal place, and no end in sight. And no strong desire for it to change. Not consciously. And. There’s also age. Turning 78 in a few weeks has brought with it endless interesting changes. And, goodness knows, what else into the mix?

Now as a spiritual director within the Zen tradition, I’ve counseled many people that the spiritual should not be a denial of the physical or psychological. And when needed, to seek help in the medical or psychotherapeutic. This is in no way a contradiction from being on the path of liberation.

However, I’ve also had a low opinion of how spiritual practices are commodified and turned into recipes for relaxation. I will not elaborate as I didn’t bring my soap box.

But here I am. And my experience right now of needing help is embarrassing. Despite fully knowing otherwise, somewhere in the recesses of my heart I actually think that, no, this is a shortcoming, a weakness. A failure.

Something in that neighborhood.

Subscribe now

I have a couple of small sayings that remind and guide me, “stupid human tricks” is one. Always good to notice and to name. Another is “ordinary dukkha,” which evokes a slightly different set of issues.

And here it all is. On full display. Both of them…

Noting that, and, in case you’re worried, yes I am seeking professional assistance.

But, there has been something I’ve been doing on my own for a while, which sparks this particular reflection.

At night I’ve incorporated a mantric practice as a sleep aid.

Which opens a whole new can of worms.

I’ve tried to be polite when speaking about people appropriating spiritual things to secular uses. Like using mindfulness to calm one’s nerves. But in my heart of hearts I don’t really approve. Note the commodification line…

There is the great goal. And there’s everything else.

Misappropriation, is the word that hangs.

But what I’ve told so many other people is the truer thing. No one is exempt from living in this world as it is and as we are. The long play of causes and conditions are our existence. And here I’m trying hard to listen to my own advice. We are not one and we are not two. We live in both worlds, the spiritual and the mundane. And there is no easy or ultimate separation.

And the mundane that play of causes and conditions do their thing.

And desperate times call for desperate measures.

So… A sleep aid drawn from spiritual practice.

The practice I’ve used as my sleep aid for about a year now has been the Jesus Prayer in its longer form. “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” I’ve used the shorter and older version without “a sinner,” but ultimately did the whole thing. Every night. For a year now.

It has had positive effects. It has helped me to fall asleep. And the really hard part for me, when I wake up in the night, it has helped me tumble back into sleep. So, I’ve been enormously grateful.

And I’ve felt guilty about this for a couple of reasons. First the embarrassment of appropriation and the sense of the easy slide into misappropriation. That misuse of a spiritual practice. It’s a real thing. And the Jesus Prayer is not about sliding into sleep.

But there’s another thing. The Jesus Prayer is also not exactly within my actual lived spiritual life. I have more than a passing positive feeling toward Christianity. It is my natal tradition and I have long since burned off my resentments for its negative aspects in my upbringing. I sometimes say that the Bible world lives in my heart. I certainly, and freely use the language of the scriptures. And in many ways they use me, framing how I think and talk. I’m even called a Zen Christian on occasion by observers of my writings.

But in a shove come to push I am a Zen Buddhist. A friend described me as a Zen Buddhist who loves Jesus. But there’s a bottom line in there. I am a Zen Buddhist. The way I frame the distinction is that my brain is Buddhist. Digging into it I fit more or less into the “modernist” version of the tradition with a heavy lean into “naturalistic.”

There are some significant caveats to that box, but the details are beyond the necessary scope for this reflection. Bottom line I try to be honest to myself and my tradition. And that said, Zen is where I live. It is where my practice life is. I am a person of the Zen way.

Beyond the questions of what is my tradition, there is an interesting point. I’m also mindful that those who actually live with the prayer as their lifelong and daily practice, those following the Hesychast tradition, if I understand this correctly; intentionally use the Jesus Prayer to lead into sleep. They trust the prayer will continue within their hearts through the night. A point I hear.

All that said, for a while now, I’ve been trying to find a Buddhist practice that might be adapted into my sleep aid.

My daily practice is a form of shikantaza. Shinkantaza is a term associated with the thirteenth century Japanese Zen master Eihei Dogen. It’s the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese term zhǐguǎn dǎzuo, which is usually rendered into English as “just sitting.” My version of this practice is what the American Zen master Robert Aitken sometimes called “shikan-mu.” Mu is a koan that invites us to the vast emptiness. A term itself I won’t try to unpack for this piece. But, putting this all together my practice is one of inviting presence, or active presence. It’s an engaged, active surrender into just this.

This practice is raised constantly in my formal sitting, and also carried out into daily life. At this phase of my life it’s something I slip into and fall out of throughout the day.

And I’ve not found it helpful when trying to sleep. It feels more awakening in the sense of keeping me from wandering into sleep. Over this past year I’ve just not been able to bridge into “just sleeping.”

I don’t know what the “should” of this should be. In my life it’s a fact on the ground.

So, I’ve been seeking a mantra I might use as the sleep aid other than the Jesus Prayer. Mantras are not used as a formal practice in my school of Zen. The Obaku Zen school does use the Nenbutsu, “Namu Amida Butsu.” I’ve tried it, but it hasn’t resonated. Possibly because for me Amida and Jesus kind of collapse into each other. But the weight seems to go to Jesus.

For about ten days I’ve been trying on something different. I’m using the Mahamantra that concludes the Heart Sutra: “Gate gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha.”

It is both a mantra, a sacred word, and a dharani, a sacred phrase often considered an epitome of a spiritual assertion. In this case vast emptiness. Max Müller rendered the mantra into English as "Gone, gone, gone to the other shore, landed at the other shore, O wisdom Svaha!” Red Pine renders it “Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, enlightenment, so be it.” While Kaz Tanahashi and Joan Halifax rendered it “arriving, arriving, arriving all the way, arriving all the way together: awakening Joy!”

The Heart Sutra and with it that mantra are pretty much a daily experience for me and has been for decades. It’s part of my practice tradition. In the Zen schools the Heart Sutra is chanted every day. And frequently more than once.

However, the mantra/dharani is not separated out and used on its own. The only exception I can think of is how some Western Zen schools, following, I’m pretty sure, Thich Nhat Hanh, when chanting the Heart Sutra, repeat the phrase three times. That’s kind of it.

I thought maybe this is it. So, I did a little digging.

It is used as a mantra in devotions to Prajanaparamita, mainly in the Vajrayana schools. For me Prajnaparamita, the “Perfection of Wisdom” is a theological term, addressing the wisdom way of vast emptiness. It is the name of the body of literature of which the Heart Sutra is sort of a summation. But in the Vajrayana it is also personified as the mother of the Buddhas. She is commonly depicted as a golden figure, with four arms, and holding a scripture and a lightning bolt.

That resonates.

And for a while it’s been an easy slide for me, at least, from my daily discipline into my needful sleep. It’s not a complete fix. The Jesus Prayer pops in when it wants. But it is deeply helpful. And so far, so good.

In the Vajrayana version the mantra is often prefixed with Om or Tadyatha which means something like “like this” or “thus.” I use the phrase without these additions, untranslated from the Sanskrit as it is almost always done.

Gate gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha.

I figured I’d place it on the out breath. Breathe in, and then as I exhale, think, Gate gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha. And then repeat as needed.

The first night I saw tying it to breathing was a bit too complex. I can do it easily enough sitting up, but laying down it’s too long for my natural breathing patterns. In those waking moments I tried to adjust. First, I repeated “gate.” Interesting but it felt too short. Then I found “Bodhi svaha.” And it felt pretty useful.

I ended up fluxuating in my waking periods between the full mantra and the concluding phrase. When I’m awake enough, I tie the Bodhi svaha to my breath. That breathe in and then exhale Bodhi svaha.

What I didn’t expect is the the deity made something of a visit. Visualizations are not part of my practice life. But there it happened. On the second night I tried using the Heart Sutra mantra she popped for a visit in that liminal space between wakefulness and sleep.

Not fully formed, but there. Golden body. Two arms resting with her hands in her lap, for me in the standard zazen posture. One arm holding a large book open in her hand. While the other held lightning. Not the vajra of the official image, but actual lightning.

Her eyes were cast down in meditation.

It lasted as long as it lasted. In the meantime I was repeating the mantra, either the full thing or that concluding bit.

Then.

I’m also very fond of Guanyin as an archetype. And somehow they flow into each other. At least they do in my heart. And, so, “Namu Kanzeon Bosatsu” has begun to take over as my sleep mantra.

It seems to bring all of together for me. At least in this moment. And least for the last few weeks.

Since then it has repeated a couple of times in my half wake, half sleep. Namu Kanzeon Bosatsu. And sometimes it’s Oh Quanyin! Unbidden.

But here…

For me this all becomes an invitation into that place which sometimes arises as if between the great empty and my bodily experiences. Sambhogakāya, the body of bliss, the realm of magic, the dream worlds.

Sweet dreams.

And. So far, so good.

<iframe width=”560” height=”315” src=/__u/jamesiford.substack.com/&#8221;%3C/p>

title=”YouTube video player” frameborder=”0” allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen></iframe>

The image of Prajnaparamita is by an unknown artist, circa 1000 CE.

First draft for a chapter in my forthcoming Zen Master Jesus (Monkfish, 2017)

Íñigo López de Oñaz y Loyola was born into minor nobility at the family castle in the Basque country on the 23^rd of October 1491. He became a solider in the service of the Duke of Nájera. Somewhere in this time he began to use the name Ignatius. In 1521 at the Battle of Pamplona, a cannonball fractured his right leg. He would limp for the rest of his life. During his long recovery at the family castle, Íñigo requested his favorite reading, the novels of chivalry wildly popular at the time and a century later parodied by Miguel Cervantes.

But there were only two books available in the castle, neither chivalric romances. They were De Vita Christi, the Life of Christ, by a German Carthusian monk, Ludolph of Saxony and Flos Anctorum/Lenda Aurea, The Flowers of the Saints/The Golden Legend by an Italian Dominican friar and Archbishop of Genoa, Jacobus de Voragine.

These books profoundly captured him at a just right moment. Out of this time of recovery and reading, Íñigo converted from soldier and courtier toward a life fully in pursuit of God.

He decided the next step was to take a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On his way he paused at Benedictine monastery of Montserrat. Fatefully, as it turned out. In his time there first her confessed his lifetime of sins in so much detail that it took three days. Then he changed wearing noble finery to a beggar’s rags. And as the final gesture of his new direction, after an all-night vigil before the Black Madona he left his sword and dagger at the altar.

Leaving the monastery, he stopped at the Hospital of Saint Lucia in Manresa. There he helped care for the destitute, sick, and dying. Feeling a need for a quiet place to pray he found a limestone cave not far out of town. For eleven months he spent his time working at the hospice, begging in the town square for his living, and then going to the cave for hours of prayer. During this time, he wrestled deeply with his own ego and with his path to God. Importantly he also kept a detailed record of his experiences.

Later he and six companions would begin the Society of Jesus, the Jesuit order. One of those, Francis Xavier, would record his famous encounter with the Soto Roshi Ninshitsu, the first of what would become fruitful meetings between Jesuits and Zen teachers.

And, critically, out of those months and his recorded experiences he would develop the Spiritual Exercises. Centuries later Carl Jung would call the Exercises “the exact equivalent of the Eastern methods, especially of Yoga.” Others outside the Jesuit order and the Catholic church more broadly, saw profound value in them, as well.

Íñigo formally changed his first name to Ignatius in the 1530s, partially because the Basque name was hard to pronounce, and possibly in honor of Ignatius of Antioch.

Ignatius worked on the spiritual exercises for nineteen years. While written in Spanish it was first published in Rome in Latin, in 1548. It was translated by three of Ignatius’ disciples. Today the text is available in virtually every major language.

Read more

There’s a contemporary spiritual practice engaged by a lot of my friends. It mostly seems to have emerged along with the arrival of a new form of spiritual direction. What we mainly meet today with that term, where someone undergoes a period of training, reads a lot, experiences a number of practices, and then works with people in a sense similar to counseling or coaching.

One practice has caught my attetnion. Or, maybe it’s two. For me they seem entertwined.

The first is Lectio Divina. That’s Latin for divine reading. It is defined originally as prayerful reading of the scriptures.

Those who admire the Lectio often place its origins among the Desert Mothers and Fathers. And there certainly is something to it. One practice that arose among them is Melete, a Greek word meaning “care” or “attention” or even “practice.”

John Cassian, who died in 435, captured the sense of this practice in his Conferences (Conference 10, chapters 10 & 11). In the Conferences he captured the teachings of a number of monastics at Scetes, one of the three great monastic centers of the Desert Fathers and Mothers.

He quotes Abba Isaac describing the practice of melete. He used an example of a child learning to read by tracing the letters of the alphabet and pronouncing it until it is firmly place in the heart, there is a spiritual foundation assisting on the path to continuous recollection of God.

He advised taking a line from Psalm 70, “Oh God, make speed to save me: Oh Lord, make haste to help me.” And then to hold it as a constant.

In Edgar Gibson’s translation.

“Whatever work you are doing, or office you are holding, or journey you ar going, do not cease to chant this. When you are going to bed, or eating, and in the last necessities of nature, think on this. This thought in your heart may be to you a saving formula, and not only keep you unharmed by all attacks of devils, but also purify you from all faults and earthly stains, and lead you to that invisible and celestial contemplation, and carry you on to that ineffable glow of prayer, of which so few have any experience. Let sleep come upon you still considering this verse, till having been moulded by the constant use of it, you grow accustomed to repeat it even in your sleep. When you wake let it be the first thing to come into your mind, let it anticipate all your waking thoughts, let it when you rise from your bed send you down on your knees, and thence send you forth to all your work and business, and let it follow you about all day long.”

Subscribe now

Some see the origins of the Jesus prayer in this, as well. From a Buddhist perspective it is easy to see something akin to the Nembutsu practice of Shin Buddhism.

The idea behind it is to find an integration of prayer and daily life, labor, and other duties. So, the practitioner murmurs the prayer intending it to occupy the mind throughout the day. Melete seems a translation of the Hebrew hāgā, which means to sigh, muse, or murmur. With this inspiration the practice of Abba Isaac and the Desert Fathers and Mothers take a passage of scripture as a practice.

From here we see this sense of a slow and ruminative engagement with scriptures gradually taking shape. Origen, Ambrose, and Augustine all allude to this kind of engagement in their writings. In the 530s Benedict names lectio divina as one of the three primary practices of monastic life, alongside liturgical prayer and manual labor.

But it isn’t until the Middle Ages we see a clear description of the practice. The French Carthusian monk Guigo II in his Scala Claustralium, the Ladder of Monks, describes the four rungs of a ladder.

The first is Lectio or reading. This is that slow and attentive reading of a short passage of scripture. Guigo warns that in this reading one is seeking spiritual nourishment. And like with eating, it’s wise to take small bites.

The second is Meditatio or meditation. Here we see that sense of melete taught by Issac and the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Again using an eating metaphor, it’s like “chewing” than what most might mean by meditation today. The passage is actively engaged with both memory and attention. This allows inner meanings to emerge.

The third is Oratio or prayer. Out of that emerging sense one finds through meditation a sense arises. This might be a longing, it might be contrition, it could be praise. It’s the response of the heart. This is the end of what human effort can be.

And with that, the fourth rung is Contemplatio or contemplation. It is resting in God. It is a place beyond images or concepts or words. This comes only as a gift, in that sense from John, the spirit rests where it will.

While the language is different this path is not completely unlike my experience of Zen practice. At least in this sense. There is what I can do. Like holding my body in an attentive way. It is noticing my breath. It is staying for a set period of time. Those things. But what happens, as one of my teachers said, is none of my business. Awakening is like being hit by a bus. He added, but those practices do make you accident prone. In a Mahayana sense this is where self-power becomes other-power. Or, more properly, perhaps, where it’s no longer clear who or what is in charge.

Others like Bernard of Clairvaux in his Sermons on the Song of Songs offer similar approaches to the inner life. And importantly Hugh and Richard of the Augustinian abbey of St Victor in Paris begin to build a mystical theology integrating these practices with a deep Neoplatonism. This is for the most part the nondual thread of Christian mysticism.

However, over time from here there comes a shift. I’ve heard it described as a move from monastery to university. The spiritual discipline becomes an intellectual enterprise. The older sense of this sacred reading survives in some monasteries, particularly among the Carthusians. But for the most part concern with reading scripture largely mutated into analysis, resolving contradictions in the texts, and finding support for debate. This trend culminates in the Reformation where scripture becomes more about supporting doctrines of one sort or another, or, at best as private devotional reading.

Then in the middle of the twentieth century there’s a revival of interest in ancient spiritual practices. Thomas Merton serves as an inspiration for both students of Buddhism and for Christians. I see him as a linchpin figure, both literally, and as a type of something happening. Merton’s broad and generous interest in the world’s approaches to the deep matters, inspires people looking at monasticism and at claiming an inner life in the midst of living in the world.

Merton enters monastic life in 1941 and is serving as novice master when Vatican II begins in 1959. The council serves as a revolution within the Catholic church, but it’s influence extends well beyond that particular church. While Merton anticipated some of what would come, he was in many ways both liberated and served as an example of the open doors of that council. And the zeitgeist of that moment.

Here young people and not so young turned to the East in significant numbers. Hindu and Buddhist practices captured many imaginations. Some traveled to India, southeast Asia, and Japan. Many became adepts at the various meditative disciplines, and some were authorized as teachers of those practices.

And both inspired by and in reaction to this, many Christians wanted to dig deep into their own traditions for their practices.

Pioneers in presenting Lectio as one of those reclaimed practice, especially engaged outside the monasteries were from monks like the Cistercian monks Basil Pennington and Thomas Keating. They weren’t the first. For instance the Benedictine monk Jean Leclercq established much groundwork for this particular engagement. Nor would they be the last. But they were pivotal in this revival.

Of course, I think it fair to say of course, this engaged meditative reading has always had a place beyond the focused discipline within the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. For a long time people saw value specifically in engaging poetry. The psalms themselves are poetry, and it’s a short step into poetry not confined to the canon. The approach of the Lectio is poetic. And so we see things like Bernard’s comments in his Sermons on the Song of Songs are themselves literary and poetic.

Medieval commentators already were noting the “Book of Scripture” is complemented by the “Book of Nature.” So, Hugh of St Victor, as an example brings this expansive approach into his writings. In Nineteenth Century America, the Transcendentalist movement within Unitarianism was explicitly a broadening of what scripture might be. They looked to the newly translated texts of the world’s religions, as well as to nature as sources of genuine inspiration.

And then in the twentieth century there is a flowering of this approach. Perhaps the earliest extension of the specific disciplines of Lectio into secular writings comes with the Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast. Another Benedictine, the nun Macrina Wiederkehr led retreats that inspired a lot of people in spiritual direction networks. And perhaps Christine Valters Paintner has been the most systematic in this broader engagement of Lectio.

And then there’s writing as a spiritual practice. Especially writing poetry.

Gregory of Nazianzus was an archbishop of Constantinople in the late fourth century and so before the use of the title Patriarch or Ecumenical Patriarch, and more importantly is counted as one of the three Cappadocian Fathers. Okay, there’s a mother, Macrina, as well. Not only was she Gregory of Nyssa’s sister, but many scholars would say, his teacher. But you know; patriarchy. Among many other things Gregory, is arguably the godfather of writing and specifically poetry as a spiritual practice.

His confessional poem Peri tōn idiōn stichōn, sometimes translated as “On His Own Verses,” and sometimes translated as “Concerning His Own Verses,” was written late in his life, is both his justification for his writing poetry as well as an outline of how to do it. He outlines four points.

First, is how it is a discipline. Gregory did his writing for the most part in either Didactic Hexameter or Iambic Trimeter. Much of our contemporary poetry is one form of free verse or another. While the archbishop might not approve, it does bring discipline. Sadly, I know of people who arrange prose on a page as if it were poetry. And it usually for the reader it falls flat. Free verse as poetry has a musicality about it. This is achieved with alliteration, assonance, and repetition.

Second, It’s reflective. As Gregory said, in Peter Gilbert’s rendition, putting “my own afflictions into verse.” But it is also a “cheering medicine.” It is as much for the reader as the writer. He put more emphasis on the didactic element, but I think that bringing one’s deepest into words is also critical. It becomes a mirror, and it is possible with discipline and guidance from true friends to see what obscures that mirror.

His third point is more of his time. Offering the teachings in a way accessible to the reader of the day, for whom verse is entertainment. He probably would approve of using contemporary forms of media to expound the way. If disciplined, if pointing to the deep, even if “sweetened.”

The fourth returns us to its greatest value. Gregory calls it “consolation.” Here poetry and prayer are one. Or, from my Zen perspective, perhaps it would be better to say poetry and prayer are not two. In poetry every word matters. It’s distilled. As he says it’s not “overstuffed.” It points directly. It invites intimacy. Here he calls us back to the discipline of this project. It is the writing of poetry as prayer itself.

Here I find a congruence of two traditions informing a contemporary practice of spiritual reading and writing.

Probably the most important figure for spiritual writing, especially poetry, in our contemporary context is the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. I find something important in Hopkins’ use of the terms, “inscape” and “instress.” These are expanded from the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus and I believe rooting even deeper into the Neoplatonic mysticism of Christianity. As I understand this from my Mahayana perspective, they are Hopkins’ sense of how the causes and conditions of the universe coalesce into the unique individual, and the individual’s sense of others in the same condition. With that his poetry and perhaps ours, attempts to perceive or intuit the “haecceitas,” the “thisness” of things.

Another important figure for me is T. S. Eliot. To what degree he was informed by Lectio or even Gregory of Nazianzus I have no idea. But he was traveling in similar territory. And his influence is wide. Similarly, this broad sense of poetry as a spiritual discipline appears in Thomas Merton, Ranier Maria Rilke, Frederico Garcia Lorca, Jessica Powers, and of course Mary Oliver, and Rumi, to begin what quickly can become a long a list.

Merton particularly explores drawing poets like these into one’s contemplative practices. This practice begins to be given a structure with people like Macrina Wiederkehr and Christine Valters Painner. A critical step along the way.

And now, with the rise of the contemporary spiritual direction movement, we find a full flowering of a spiritual discipline: reading and writing, especially poetry, as twin pathways into the deep.

The challenge in these practices is tumbling fully into subjectivity. Especially if the practice is outside of a traditional context, like their origins within monasticism. Reading and writing are spiritual disciplines that are intimately personal. My advice is the discipline is best exercised within a context of some sort of accountability, not for “good writing,” but for holding ourselves accountable in our exploration of our own depths. This is a spiritual practice. Its purpose is to help us move ever closer to the deep, to the true. God is the word used for this in the west. And so, I suggest having a competent spiritual director, formal or informal, is important.

That said, this reading and writing as spiritual practices are a fascinating invitation into creative contemplation.

And feel an authentic path into the deep, taking us to the face of God.

The painting of St Jermone is by Matthias Stom, from the first half of the 17th century.

(Here I continue the feature of sharing talks and essays by teachers within our Empty Moon Zen community. This is a talk by Dharma Holder Tom Wardle. A householder teacher, Tom works as an Executive Coach. He holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Hult International Business School. He is also a graduate of the Zen Peacemaker's Seminary for Socially Engaged Buddhism. Tom is passionate about koan, lay practice, and the integration of the dharma into daily life. You can connect with Tom here.)

Most of us come to practice to improve our lives. Something seems off. Life could be better, unhappiness abounds, and so we look for ways to correct this. Things aren’t exactly how I’d like them to be, so I wrestle with reality itself trying to contort it to fit my preferences. I cling to things that make me happy, and I chase after things I think will make me happier still, while I try hard to avoid the unpleasant things in life, but none of this actually works, I just end up frustrated and exhausted.

Perhaps the problem is me, so I look for ways to become a better person, to reconfigure myself into a mighty achiever so I can conquer life. Often, this leads us to meditation. The benefits are well documented, and Zen is kinda cool, so we walk into a Zen center and learn to meditate. We hope that if we do enough meditation, we’ll become a better version of ourselves, a version that will do the thing, get what we want, and be more successful. Maybe meditation can make us more attractive, purging what we don’t like about ourselves so we can win friends and influence people and whatever else your version of this fantasy happens to be.

Maybe it’s not so grandiose.

Maybe it’s a simple life of contentment that you fantasize about.

Maybe it’s just things not hurting quite so much anymore.

Subscribe now

What ever yours happens to be, we all come to practice with fantasies about how our meditation practice will change us, but these fantasies tend to break down pretty quickly because you meditate and then nothing happens.

We might feel some transient peace or relaxation. We might even make sitting into a regular habit, but typically very little changes. We may notice some benefits, but the core problem remains the same: life is a constant struggle and we aren’t getting what we want.

So what went wrong? Why haven’t all our problems gone away? Why do we still struggle?

We struggle because we are still engaging the world in the same way. We continue to navigate our lives by our preferences, chasing our desires and trying to line things up just the way we would like them to be. We are still playing the same game, and it’s a losing one.

You see, my life is a very personal thing. Everything feels like it’s happening to me. This is a totally natural assumption that arises out of the body. All of my myriad senses feed me a constant stream of information, and everything I experience happens to me, so obviously it’s all about me, right?

More to the point, I have feelings about the things I perceive and experience: some I like and some I do not. At the most fundamental level, I experience pleasure and pain in response to the things I encounter: Pleasure good; Pain bad. Moving toward pleasure and away from pain seems the obvious solution, at least until you actually try to do it.

That makes it sound like a rational decision, but most of the time, it isn’t. That movement away from pain and toward pleasure is usually instinctive, a response that arises so seamlessly with our experiences of the world that we don’t even notice the gap. It doesn’t feel like a response or reaction, it feels like a description of reality itself: some things are good, others bad.

But I meditate every day why aren’t I winning life? what’s missing?

Maybe nothing’s missing. Maybe the problems that I see aren’t actually problems at all. Maybe there is entirely something else going on.

When you become a Buddhist, you take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Often that’s about as much attention as those three get while we hurry on with the more important work of meditation. And look, meditation is important. Zen literally means meditation, after all, and we have that creed about being a “special transmission outside the scriptures, not founded upon words and letters.” This can lead to the distorted view that dharma study is unimportant for Zen practice, maybe even counter-productive. What matters is personal experience, so don’t waste your time with lots of reading and obscure vocabulary, get your butt on the cushion!

The Dharma isn’t in the scriptures and ancestral texts.

Those writings are maps, the Dharma is out here in the world. It’s between you and me right now, it’s within each of us, flowing through and around everything. The challenge of studying the Dharma isn’t learning obscure vocabulary, it’s seeing it out here in the world. It’s not enough to understand the concepts, you have to actually find these things arising in your own life. That is the practice of study in Zen. Connecting the maps in our scriptures and ancestral texts to the world we inhabit is the practice of taking refuge in Dharma.

You have to look for it and see it in your own life, just like the Buddha did. You can and should verify it for yourself, but this is where it gets really tricky because I have stories about who I am, what’s going on and why, how things should actually be, who the villains are and who the heroes, etcetera.

Here’s the thing : Those stories are complete bullshit.

They are driven entirely by the self centeredness of my experience, an experience that is based on selective perception and incomplete information. But still, it feels vividly real. I actually feel things based on my stories, so they are very hard to give up.

These distorted stories that we believe about ourselves and the world, these stories that we inhabit, that we actually live in, these stories are samsara. This is where we are trapped, wandering in circles, chasing the same things again and again, all for nought.

It’s like that old bumper sticker: It Ain’t What You Don’t Know That Gets You Into Trouble. It’s What You Know for Sure That Just Ain’t So.

Dharma is a tool to take apart our stories and see through them. It can help us tell a new, different story, one that might actually be more useful than the ones we currently tell.

So what do we need to know to tell this new story?

Let’s start with karma. This one has seeped into the zeitgeist, so there are a lot of strange ideas out there about karma and the consequences of tipping at the coffee shop. Simply put, karma means “action”, and there is really only one thing you need to understand here: everything happens for reasons. Call it causes and conditions, and use it to hit the reset button on all of your BS stories about why something is the way it is and what that means. Just causes and conditions, beginningless and unknowable. Let go of your whys.

Hopefully that opens up a little working space for you, so let’s go deeper. If we are talking foundational Buddhist teachings, the Four Noble Truths are a great place to start. They were literally the first thing the Buddha taught after his awakening, so let’s give it a go:

The first truth is dukkha, and while this is conventionally translated as “suffering”, that rendering loses much of the nuance. Dukkha includes suffering, but it also includes discomfort, disquiet, imperfection, angst, and feelings of incompleteness; it has many flavours, all at least a little bitter. Dukkha is so important that it is not only the First Noble Truth, it is also one of the Three Marks of Existence that are shared by all things. Whether experiencing physical or mental pain, loss, or existential angst, we inevitably tell stories about why it is happening, what or whom is causing it, why it should end, and so on. You have your routine and I have mine, but the important thing is to notice how those stories carry with them long to-do lists to make things right, with some tasks for ourselves and some for others, but it is all about aligning the world with our preferences. Whether tacit or explicit, the assumption is that if would go the way I think it should, then my dukkha would go away.

When you actually say it out loud, it sounds kind of ridiculous, doesn’t it?

When we remember that dukkha is inherent to existence, we can let go of the assumption that we shouldn’t feel certain things, or that certain feelings mean something is wrong and must be corrected. When we loosen our grip on that story, then we can tell a new one, one without villains and heroes or associated to-do lists: “Ah, right! This isn’t happening for reasons, it is happening because it is the very nature of existence! Dukkha, right here in my own experience.”

Why is dukkha inherent to existence? Because of impermanence, another of the Three Marks of Existence. Everything changes. Nothing lasts. It can be profoundly helpful to remember that the universe is fundamentally unstable and feelings of lack are the norm, not an anomaly.

The second Noble Truth goes deeper: We experience dukkha because we want. We have preferences for how the world should be, including ourselves and our experiences. We want for stability, security, and comfort in an unpredictable, unstable world. This wanting, called tanha or thirst, can show up in three ways: craving, clinging, or aversion, all different forms of the same thing. These reactions arise endlessly, inevitably, and they always carry with them a false promise: If you get what you want, everything will be better.

Again, sounds a little silly when you say it out loud, doesn’t it?

And so it should, but what is even sillier is how we constantly forget how silly it is! Yeah, this is in the dharma, but it is also vividly in our own experience. How many times have you gotten what you want only to find yourself not entirely happy once you got it? I know, I know… but if only it came in red…. Dukkha reminds us that even the red one with all the bells and whistles wouldn’t satisfy us, and when we remember that, it can be a little easier to let things be as they are.

The first and second Noble Truths contain that subtle invitation, which is made explicit in the Third Truth: What if you just let it rest? What if everything is actually OK, even though it feels like it isn’t? What if you don’t actually need to do anything at all? This is the Truth of cessation, and it is the Good News of Buddhism.

The Fourth Noble Truth lays out an Eightfold Path for getting to cessation, but you don’t really need the whole list because there is a unifying theme: pay attention. Pay attention to how you live, what you do and say; pay attention to what you give your time and attention to, where you invest yourself and how you move in the world; most of all, pay attention to the stories you tell.

We are meaning-making creatures, so those stories arise endlessly, but we don’t have to be ruled by them. We tend to want the stories to all stop so we can be free from them, but that isn’t what Zen offers us. That freedom, freedom from, is conditional, so it is very fragile. Zen offers us something much more useful and profound: freedom in. Freedom right here, in the midst of all of our stories, wants, and heartaches. Studying the Dharma can be a powerful way to experience that freedom, just remember that the Dharma isn’t in the text, it’s in you.

The image of the Buddha teaching is from the Kushan empire. It is housed at the National Museum in Delhi.

The author of the Cloud of Unknowing is anonymous. Probably a man, likely a monk, possibly a Carthusian priest. According to people who study such things, his dialect places him in England’s Midlands. Which was also the neighborhood of Walter Hilton. Partially because of this some have thought they were the same person. He wrote in Middle English rather than Latin.

The book was written around 1375. These were terrible times. The Black Death swept through England four times in that century. The Peasant’s Revolt was six years away but the conditions that led to it were in full force. England’s territorial gains in France were being undone.

And mystical religion was in full flower. Perhaps because of this, maybe in spite of this, likely both are true. In England alone, his contemporaries included Hilton who I just mentioned, but also Richard Rolle, and Julian of Norwich. In Europe, Meister Eckhart had died a generation earlier. These were people who understood that outer catastrophe and inner awakening are not opposites.

The Cloud stands in a long tradition. Christian mysticism built its intellectual scaffolding on Neo-Platonism pretty much from the beginning, running through Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Augustine, the Cappadocians. Atlhough the most direct influence on our anonymous author is the Syrian monk we know as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. From Pseudo-Dionysius comes the great Christian articulation of the Via Negativa, the apophatic way.

Because God is wholly other, no positive description applies. Ultimately the divine can be approached through negation, the systematic shedding of concepts, images, and ideas. What makes the Cloud distinctive is that it takes this not merely as a theology or a philosophical stance, but as a spiritual practice. The apophatic argument becomes an apophatic discipline.

It is a call to unite the soul with God.

Read more

I’ve been thinking about my “favorite koans,” by which I mean the koans that haunt me, and to which I return and return, even though I’d “passed” them in the curriculum many, many years ago.

The so-called dog koan, Mu, of course. Stripped of its story, just that syllable is an endless return to the great mystery. The cat koan, the one everyone hates, featuring a knife and a killing; it for sure. A small handful of others.

But after Mu, I’d say it’s the Fox koan that looms highest in my inner life. I wrote about it here at Unanswered Question a couple of years ago. To repeat the case:

Master Baizhang gave a series of talks. Among the gathering there always was an old man. He always left when the gathering dispersed. Finally one day he remained. The master asked him, “Who are you?”

The old man replied, “I’m not a human. Ages ago I was the abbot here. One day a follower of the intimate asked me “Does someone who has awakened fall under the laws of cause and effect, or not?” I replied, “Such a person is free of cause and effect.” Ever since I’ve been reincarnating as a fox spirit, five hundred lives now. Please, I beg you, free me.”

He then made bows, and stood again before the master, “Does someone who has awakened fall under the laws of cause and effect, or not?”

The master replied, “Such a person is one with the laws of cause and effect.”

Upon hearing this the old man awoke. Making more bows he said, “I’m now free of that fox body. The corpse is on the other side of this mountain. Please give me a monastic funeral.”

Master Baizhang had his head monk announce to the assembly that after the midday meal, there would be a funeral. The monastics were confused. “We’re all well. No one is in the infirmary. What does this mean?”

After the meal the master led his company around the mountain, to an outcropping of rocks. Probing with his priest’s staff he uncovered a fox’s body. They carried it back and gave it a monastic’s funeral.

That evening Baizhang told the monastics the whole story.

Huangbo stood and said, “Sir. You say the old man missed the turning word, and because of that was reborn as a fox five hundred times. But what if he gave the right answer? What then?”

Baizhang smiled and said, “Come closer to me, and I will tell you.” Huangbo walked up to his teacher and quickly gave him a slap. The master laughed, and said, “Here I thought the old Barbarian had a red beard. But right here is a red bearded barbarian!”

It’s captured as case 2 in the Chinese classic Wumenguan, the Gateless Gate. If one follows the conventional koan curriculum in both orthodox Japanese Rinzai or the Harada Yasutani koan stream, this is where it is met in all is complexity. It’s also featured as case 8 in another Chinese koan anthology, the Congrong Lu, the Book of Serenity. It also features as case 34 in the Japanese collection, the Shūmon Kattōshū, Entangling Vines.

I enjoy many aspects of this case. For instance I love that it’s a ghost story.

I think its also important as a reminder that on the Zen way there is no hard distinction between the worlds of emptiness and form. Or, rather there is and there is not separation between these realms. “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form,” as the Heart Sutra guides us.

Subscribe now

The emphasis in the case is mostly about causality. It’s important for two reasons. For one, it reminds us, and specifically the engaged student of the way, that we are not separate from the flow of causes and conditions. And it behooves us to not forget, as there will always be consequences.

But then toward the end there is something else. Another pointing.

And that’s what I’m particularly thinking about today.

In my treatment of the case I cited, I wrote in the Harada Yasutani school, we poke into five specific areas on the path of discovery. I’m focusing on three. We’ve visited two. And here we come to the one that makes this all a grave mystery. The most important point. Although a point that requires our meeting the other two before. Our vast emptiness. Our intimate play of rising and falling.

Huangbo asks the question. “What if old Baizhang gave the correct answer each time?”

So, what about that? What about how our meeting within our ordinary lives and the great openness manifests?

I think about foibles and broken vows. I know a renowned Zen master who used to sneak cigarettes. I know another, a profoundly wise teacher who died because of his alcoholism. As the great Zen missionary to the West, Shunryu Suzuki observed, “An enlightened person who loves alcohol, when they pass the liquor store, their head will still turn.”

Many of us want our Zen teachers to be perfect. Enlightenment means not being tangled, not doing the wrong thing. And then they meet real Zen teachers. It can be very disappointing. Even in Suzuki Roshi’s smoking story, the renowned abbot, despite Suzuki’s line “He knows how to treat his desire” runs up against the fact the abbot continues to sneak a smoke. And, to make sure we don’t miss the point, there’s Maezumi’s fatal addiction.

And. And this is so important. This does not mean they did not penetrate to the heart of the matter.

There’s an old Zen line, even the Buddha is still training.

The classic formula for Zen as a living tradition has three aspects. One is the great achievement, that winning of the race, finding our true nature. It is summarized in the Zen way in the deep knowing as it says in the Heart Sutra, form is emptiness and emptiness is form. But also there are the constellation of practices. After all the word “zen” itself is a Japanese pronunciation or mispronunciation of “chan” which basically means meditation. The Zen school is a Mahayana Buddhist school focused on a handful of meditation practices. And the third, sadly neglected too often is an embrace of a middle way informed by precepts, by our vows.

And then what? If we speak and no matter the answer we get five hundred lives as a fox. We become a renowned Zen master and we sneak cigarettes. We found one of the most vibrant Zen lineages in the West and are killed by drink.

It’s the light inside the dark. Which comes from an ancient Chinese poem the Cāntóngqì, more commonly known in English by its Japanese name Sandokai. It also says there’s dark inside the light. It can be hard to discern anyway to disentangle the parts.

In my old age I’ve come, slowly, slowly, to appreciate the foibles and outright flaws of my character, the bad choices mix up with the good choices and the better aspects of who I am. They are not extricable one from the other. They can be minded, there are good anti smoking workshops, and I’m a big fan of AA. Me, my abiding issues as they manifest these days lead me to be a paying member of weight watchers and to have a prescription for a GLP-1 drug.

There’s no letting ourselves off the hook, or the several hooks. There are always consequences. And they’re not ours alone. We’re all in this mess together.

Oh yes, and there’s that koan I kind of love out of our Western tradition. I’m a big fan of a small collection of ostensibly light verse offered to the world by a journalist Don Marquis in the early twentieth century. Over the years I’ve revisited these poems, some of which I genuinely believe to point to the true.

Marquis explained these were not his, but actually the writings of a cockroach named Archy. Being quite small Archy wrote at night by jumping from key to key on Marquis’ typewriter. Among the consequences of this style of communication is there are no capitalizations in Archy’s offerings, nor punctuation. One of the bug’s favorite characters was an alley cat named Mehitabel. Mehitabel had once been Cleopatra, but had come down a bit in her various reincarnations.

Five hundred lives.

I think she is the perfect explanation of the what if the answer was correct each time? A dharma talk. A teisho. The true shout.

She offers nother version of the key question in the fox koan.

The Case, if you will:

this is the song of mehitabel
of mehitabel the alley cat
as i wrote you before boss
mehitabel is a believer
in the pythagorean
theory of the transmigration
of the soul and she claims
that formerly her spirit
was incarnated in the body
of cleopatra
that was a long time ago
and one must not be
surprised if mehitabel
has forgotten some of her
more regal manners

i have had my ups and downs
but wotthehell wotthehell
yesterday sceptres and crowns
fried oysters and velvet gowns
and today i herd with bums
but wotthehell wotthehell
i wake the world from sleep
as i caper and sing and leap
when i sing my wild free tune
wotthehell wotthehell
under the blear eyed moon
i am pelted with cast off shoon
but wotthehell wotthehell

do you think that i would change
my present freedom to range
for a castle or moated grange
wotthehell wotthehell
cage me and i d go frantic
my life is so romantic
capricious and corybantic
and i m toujours gai toujours gai

i know that i am bound
for a journey down the sound
in the midst of a refuse mound
but wotthehell wotthehell
oh i should worry and fret
death and i will coquette
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai

i once was an innocent kit
wotthehell wotthehell
with a ribbon my neck to fit
and bells tied onto it
o wotthehell wotthehell
but a maltese cat came by
with a come hither look in his eye
and a song that soared to the sky
and wotthehell wotthehell
and i followed adown the street
the pad of his rhythmical feet
o permit me again to repeat
wotthehell wotthehell

my youth i shall never forget
but there s nothing i really regret
wotthehell wotthehell
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai

the things that i had not ought to
i do because i ve gotto
wotthehell wotthehell
and i end with my favorite motto
toujours gai toujours gai

boss sometimes i think
that our friend mehitabel
is a trifle too gay

Over the years I’ve come back to this poem a number of times. Mehitabel’s koan. Mehitabel’s presentation and invitation.

After all that Zen stuff, after the great assertion, after throwing myself over and over again onto the pillow, after I bind myself to vows and fail and fail again, then what? What does it look like?

I count Archy and Mehitabel among my friends and companions on the intimate way.

As to Mehitabel. I suspect for her sins it was five hundred lives as a cat.

I originally identified with Archy, the wry observer of life. But I realize my soul was Mehitabel’s. The grandeur of the awakened life is there, but often a dream of a past life. Today maybe its all more of a garbage scow and always mixed up with the come hither of that Maltese.

My 500 lives.

These are hard times. I suspect rather than riding a handcart on our way to perdition we’re more likely all on that garbage scow on that journey down the sound. I can smell it. But broken and failed and a faint version of a better self, you know, I find how beautiful it can be, how good it can be. Even the garbage scow. (There’s a koan pointer there, in case you didn’t pick it up.)

And, I return to the pillow. And I practice with friends and cherish companions. I lean up against old Shakyamuni and wink at his friend Jesus.

I find it hard to tell Archy and Mehitabel and Don apart, creator and created, the divine and the earth. And those five hundred lives as a cat.

And those five hundred lives as a fox.

My five hundred lives. And, maybe, yours?

I find the way is feeling how the light and the dark weave together creating what we can be...

Toujours gai

Friends. In this hard time…

toujours gai

The illustration of the cat and fox is by Percy James Billinghurst, and first published in A Hundred Fables ofLa Fontaine, 1900.

(This continues my plan for occasional talks and essays by Empty Moon Zen teachers. This by Dharma Holder Mo Weinhardt. Mo has been a student of Zen for more than twenty years. She received Denaki transmission from me in 2009. As a householder teacher Mo weaves a deep practice with the everyday. She holds a BA from the University of Michigan and an MS from Lesley University. As a Fractional COO and consultant Mo works with corporate venture capital firms and early-stage startups in the tech industry. Mo shares her home in Prescott, Arizona with Dharma Holder Tom Wardle and two cats.)

We walk this path together, you and I. Wandering, exploring, stumbling… finding our way through the 10,000 grasses. We live in this world of form, dream, and stories; coming and going through this world of samsara. We strive to awaken within this sea of delusion. To be more precise, we strive to awaken to delusion itself — to our own dukkha and tanha, the undeniable unsatisfactoriness and craving that define our biology and so readily drive our behavior — knowing that there’s no way out.

This is where we meet each other.

As our community begins this new season of Precept study and Jukai preparation here at Empty Moon, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to navigate this terrain together. What does it mean to take up the ethical framework of the precepts, to commit to a vow, and to show up for each other — not as perfect beings, but as flawed, messy companions in the mist?

Subscribe now

As spiritual friends in this beautiful, complicated labyrinth, we often weave in front or behind each other. Sometimes we follow different trails through the grasses, losing sight of one another; down the road, our paths might cross again — or they might not. But when we’re lucky, we get to walk side by side, which is what I like best; all of us striving to awaken, studying the great mystery, and trying not to pass our days and nights in vain.

There’s a poem called A Medicine Woman’s Prayer that points to this beautifully — the author is unknown:

I will not rescue you.

For you are not powerless.

I will not fix you.
For you are not broken.

I will not heal you.

For I see you, in your wholeness.

I will walk with you through the darkness

As you remember your light.

This understanding of love, compassion, and what it means to genuinely help someone, reminds me of a story about Layman Pang, a legendary Zen Master and Householder from the 8th century.

The story goes:

Layman Pang and his daughter, Lingzhao, were out traveling the road, selling bamboo baskets to make a living. Coming down off a bridge one day, the Layman stumbled and fell heavily to the ground.

When Lingzhao saw this, she didn’t run over to pull him up. Instead, she ran to her father’s side and immediately threw herself flat on the ground right next to him.

“What in the world are you doing?!” cried the Layman, looking at her.

“I saw you fall to the ground, so I’m helping,” she replied.

The Layman looked at her, laughed, and said, “Luckily, no one was looking.”

It’s so easy to conflate “helping” with swooping in like a savior and solving someone else’s problem. But that’s not what Lingzhao does. Instead, recognizing that her father doesn’t need to be rescued or fixed, she meets him exactly where he is — and lies flat on the ground next to him.

And there’s Layman Pang laughing sincerely and joking: “Luckily, no one was looking.” Of course people were looking. And even if they weren’t looking, it doesn’t matter. Embarrassment is. And Layman Pang completely owns his embarrassment, his human clumsiness, and the sheer absurdity of the moment. It’s a commitment to absolute intimacy with the situation.

We are all spiritual friends here, walking the Buddha Way. Sometimes we rub hard up against each other, causing friction and frustration. But like stones in a rock tumbler, this is exactly what helps us examine our attachments and motivations, providing ample opportunities to smooth out our rough edges.

As Torei Enji says, “...it’s best to bow down. This is the Buddha appearing to us, Finding ways to free us from our own attachments — the very ones that have made us suffer, again and again and again.”

That’s the beauty of sangha. That’s the beauty of spiritual friendship. It’s not meant to be easy; it’s meant to be honest and sincere. Countless mirrors that help us see ourselves more clearly. Sangha is also where we can look to each other for guidance; for support; for courage; for refuge. For companions to walk with through the darkness, as we remember our light.

That’s why it’s good to reflect and take stock from time to time:

What kind of companions do you keep and invite in? What kind of companion are you for others along the dark and broken roads? How do you meet your practice honestly, authentically? What is the ground on which you stand?

Ananda, the Buddha’s attendant, once came to him and said, “Lord, I think that spiritual friendship and companionship is half of the holy life.” He meant that as a great compliment. But the Buddha immediately corrected him: “No, Ananda. Spiritual companionship isn’t half of the holy life. It is the whole of the holy life.”

This is what it means to be a Bodhisattva.

The word Bodhisattva comes from Sanskrit, meaning “awakened being.” In the Mahayana and Zen traditions, a bodhisattva is someone who moves away from the pursuit of private, individual awakening, because they realize that any separate, personal nirvana is an illusion. Instead, realizing that we’re all intimately in this together, they vow to attain buddhahood — extinguishing the fires of greed, hatred, and ignorance — for the sole purpose of liberating all sentient beings from suffering.

The Bodhisattva looks at the boundary between ‘self’ and ‘other’, and realizes this illusion of separation. Realizes the deep, intimate interconnectedness we share with all beings. Realizes that this universe itself is one seamless body.

This is why, every single day in temples and Zen centers around the world, practitioners chant the Four Bodhisattva Vows:

Beings are numberless; I vow to free them.

Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them.

Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them.

The Buddha Way is unsurpassable; I vow to embody it.

Chanting this affirms our commitment, again and again, to remembering exactly this: that we are one absolute, interdependent, ever-changing body.

That ants, and trees, and stars, and we ourselves are all different shapes cut of the same cookie dough — and to this boundless cookie dough we shall return.

And yet, these Four Bodhisattva Vows are seemingly impossible. They’re cosmic paradoxes designed to break the small mind — designed to reshape and infinitely expand this container of “I”.

When divisions of self and other fall away, who is this “I” that vows to free all beings? …to end all delusions? …to walk through the myriad Dharma gates? …to embody the Buddha Way?

Who is this “I” that vows?

Who is this “I”?

***

In the West, our cultural understanding of a “vow” is heavily skewed toward what we mean by a “promise.” We tend to treat it more like a contract: you sign on the dotted line in front of witnesses, you commit to always keep this promise no matter what, you double-triple-pinky swear, and if you break your promise, that’s it. It’s broken. You’re in breach of the contract, and you will be held accountable and punished for your failure. It has a real “all or nothing” flavor to it.

And to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with expecting others — and ourselves — to keep our promises. To uphold and follow through on our commitments.

In Zen, however, taking a vow — like the Bodhisattva Vows, or the Precepts — is completely different. It’s not some rigid “keep this promise come hell or high water or you’re going to be punished” situation. These are not sticks to beat ourselves with. In the Zen context, taking a vow is setting the compass of your intentions. It’s setting the compass of your heart.

By definition, in the world of form, the Bodhisattva vows are impossible to fulfill. They are infinite tasks that can never be achieved by mere individuals. I mean come on, free all beings? I can’t even free myself from craving coffee every morning, how the hell am I going to free all beings?

There’s no way to avoid falling short here. From this point of view, the idea of taking vows at all kind of crazy.

And yet…

Taking vows in the Zen Way is a radical act of humility. It’s a commitment to step outside of our narrow personal desires and live from the truth that we are one seamless body. It’s consciously entering into a relationship with unattainable aspirations that will — with absolute certainty — break your small ego every single day.

These vows are shining Guiding Stars that influence our actions and behavior. But us? We’re just flesh-and-blood human beings wandering through the 10,000 grasses. The vast distance between us and these Guiding Stars isn’t a sign of failure — this is the space where practice actually happens.

Vows are our commitment to return, to remember our Guiding Stars, again and again. In fact I would say that a vow only truly exists the moment we realize we’ve forgotten it — because it’s in the act of catching ourselves, realizing that we’ve forgotten and pivoting back to awareness, that the vow is renewed.

So much about our practice just comes down to remembering. Remembering to breathe; to notice those beats between a knee-jerk reaction, and a more intentional response; remembering to adjust one’s posture; to be aware of not just what we say, but how we say it; to recognize when our physical or emotional selves need care of some kind; to slow down and connect with the visceral experience of this present moment, outside of the endless narratives and whirlpools of thought; remembering to see through our habit energy, our fears, our anxieties as the empty mind bubbles that they are — so they don’t control us from the shadows; remembering to intentionally practice compassion, whatever that might look like in the moment. Even if we aren’t feeling very compassionate.

Vows are not static states of purity, just as a Bodhisattva is not a title of perfection. Whether we like it or not, we’re all people who get angry, tired, who lose ourselves to ignorance, slip into old habit energy, and have blind spots. We all fuck up and cause harm, sometimes even when we’re trying really hard not to.

There is no escape from this. But there is freedom within it.

What makes a Bodhisattva is not that they never fall down; it’s that the moment they realize they’ve fallen, they pick themselves up and rededicate to the well-being of the whole.

What makes a vow is not keeping it perfectly or keeping a ledger of transgressions to judge someone’s worth or value; it’s an act of surrender, atonement, or “at-one-ment,” aligning with these Guiding Stars again and again, every time we remember.

In truth, we do not carry our vows; our vows carry us.

***

Later this year, some members of our Empty Moon sangha will step forward to make this invisible compass visible by taking the precepts. Some of you are choosing to take the first 5 precepts and sew a Wagessa. This is vowing to live an ethical life and committing to your own practice in front of our community. Others, who are called to a more formal commitment to the Zen path, are choosing to take the full 16 Bodhisattva Precepts through the Jukai ceremony — sewing a rakusu and fully entering the stream of the Empty Moon lineage.

Both of these paths require a deep commitment to study, sangha, zazen, and practice throughout our lives. But for those who feel called to take the full 16 Bodhisattva Precepts, the path goes a bit further. Jukai is a process of deep personal discernment. It’s a confirmation of your desire to practice earnestly within this specific lineage and community, fully stepping into the Buddha’s family.

To do this, students must ask one of our Empty Moon teachers directly for the precepts and to be their Preceptor, formally entering the stream of the lineage. This relationship becomes a pledge of guidance, training, and mutual responsibility — where the teacher commits to helping that student reflect, prepare, and shine a light on unseen habits along the way.

While many choose to take the first five precepts before making this leap, that is not a prerequisite. Your personal discernment of vow is entirely your own. Whether taking the 5 or the 16, one path is not greater than the other; it’s just a deeply personal choice, to be discussed with teachers as is helpful — and as a community we lovingly embrace and celebrate both.

No matter what, we are companions, walking side by side.

And regardless of the chosen path, this is a great act of humility and surrender. As our friends publicly align the compass of their hearts with these vows, with these Guiding Stars, remember — they’re looking to all of us in the sangha and humbly asking: “Please, help me practice. Help me see my blind spots. Walk through the mist and the grasses with me.”

So much comes back to remembering — but we are all incredibly forgetful. It’s easy, dare I say habitual, to fall asleep at the wheel of consciousness. The ancient Zen Master Ruiyan knew this all too well.

As described in the Gateless Gate, I offer you the koan of Case 12: Ruiyan Calls “Master”

Every day, Master Ruiyan would call out to himself, “Master!”
and then answer himself, “Yes?”
Then he would say, “Be aware!”
and reply “Yes!”
“Never be deceived by others!”
“No, no!”

I just love this. It’s such a hilarious way to remember — and also, completely serious. In calling out, Ruiyan isn’t talking to the self of his ego; he’s intentionally calling out to his own true nature. We all need a version of Ruiyan’s shout to snap us out of our narratives and perpetually busy, rushing, planning, worrying, time-traveling brain-bananas — to bring us back to awareness.

Physical anchors are also especially effective at helping us remember — like wearing a mala, placing small statues or pictures around, setting a “mindful minute” alarm every day like Bernie Glassman Roshi used to do, or putting sticky notes for ourselves on the bathroom mirror. There are a million creative ways we can leave breadcrumbs for ourselves — helping us find our way through the 10,000 grasses of chaotic, consuming, everyday life, and back to practice. Presence. Intimacy. Back to the compass of our hearts.

Because the truth is, we are going to fall down. We are going to cause harm, and fall short of our vows; we are going to forget, and lose sight of our Guiding Stars. And inevitably, we’ll find ourselves flat on our faces in the mud of our own karmic habit energies.

<Sigh, roll eyes, smile>

But, from down here in the mud and dirt, we’ll also remember who we are. We’ll remember the boundless cookie dough that connects us all. And when we look to our left or look to our right, we’ll see our companions running over — not to rescue or fix us, but to throw themselves down alongside us. To walk with us through the darkness as we remember our light.

Later this year, when our friends step forward to sew their garments and take their vows, they are inviting us into that dirt. They are asking us to help them remember.

So let’s make sure to leave ourselves breadcrumbs; to expand this container of “I”; to call out, “Master! Be aware!” “Yes!”

And, whenever we inevitably find ourselves sitting in the dirt together after a fall, looking up at our Guiding Stars — let’s make damn sure we laugh from the bottom of our bellies, embracing the intimacy of those embarrassing moments, as well as the spiritual friends who help us appreciate our imperfections.

And above all, let’s make sure to let our vows carry us.

Thank you, Bodhisattvas.

The image of Wheat Field with Cypresses is by Vincent van Gogh, 1889.

The Christian world marks the fiftieth day after Easter Sunday. Of course, there are two ways of calculating the date of Easter so there’s some disjunction between East and West, broadly speaking among the Christian calendars.

Here in the West, yesterday was that day. Pentecost.

Within the church it marks the marvelous fable of the holy spirit coming to rest upon a throng of Jesus’ followers who had gathered in Jerusalem for the festival of weeks. Pentecost is usually called the birthday of the Christian church.

I have a favorite trope that I cite from time to time. It goes “the spirit lists (or rests) where it will.” As someone walking the Zen way, I’ve always felt that line captures something of the (if you will) spirit of Zen’s awakening. Awakening has no hard causal associations. Sure there are practices that incline us in that direction. But the moment, the turning, the noticing, well, just like the spirit coming when it and not I want it. Like the bottom falling out of a bucket. Like tongues of fire resting on a crowd.

Most commonly in Christian iconography the spirit is pictured as a dove.

That also works in a more gentle way than as a flame.

Now this, now that.

Read more