Teachings
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Teisho: Case 52, Book of Equanimity: Sozan’s Dharma Body
March 9, 20172 min read
Case 52: Sôzan asked Elder Toku, “The true Dharma-body of Buddha is like the empty sky. It manifests its form corresponding to things – just like the moon on the water. How do you explain the principle of this corresponding?” Toku said, “It is like a donkey looking into a well.” Sôzan said, “You put it in a nice way, but you were able to say only eighty percent.” Toku said, “How about you, Master?” Sôzan...
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The Suffering of Self, Part 3 of 4, by David Loy
March 4, 20174 min read
Most fundamentally, Buddhism is about awakening, which means realizing something about the constructedness of the sense of self and the nothing at its core. Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Suffering of Self. How does our repressed sense of unreality return to consciousness? As a feeling that there is something missing or lacking in my life. What is it that’s lacking? How I understand that depends upon the kind of person I am, and the...
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Teisho: A Talk on Jesus
March 2, 20171 min read
Description: In this Christmas-time episode, Henry gives a talk on Jesus, departing from his traditional koan-centered teisho. Henry starts by introducing Thomas Merton’s phrase “Virgin Time”... which could also be translated as “new time.” In a non-orthodox interpretation, Henry asks could it be that Jesus’ birth represents this “new time,” where all previous ordering and conditioning is pushed back, a space of... possibility, potential, and hope, just because Jesus has come into the world. Henry:...
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Is this Meditation?
February 27, 20171 min read
Don’t let awareness be totally absorbed by the content of the mind .... Be aware of the space around thinking, feeling, sensing... Is this ‘meditation”? Photo and poem by Rosa Bellino
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The Suffering of Self, Part 2 of 4, by David Loy
February 25, 20174 min read
A lot of social interaction is about reassuring each other and ourselves that we’re all really okay even though inside we feel that we’re not. Read Part 1 of The Suffering of Self But why is a constructed sense of self so uncomfortable? “My” sense of self is composed of mostly habitual ways of perceiving, feeling, thinking and acting. That’s all. Those impermanent processes interact with other and give rise to a conditioned sense of being...
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Teisho: Case 51, Book of Equanimity, Hogen’s By Boat or Land
February 23, 20172 min read
"The Dharma is rarely encountered, even in hundreds of millions of ages. Now we see it, hear it, receive and maintain it. May we fully realize the Tathagata’s true meaning." Gatha On Opening the Dharma Description: There is a second birth that occurs, says Henry; a waking from a cocoon of dreams. Case 51 from the Book of Equanimity addresses this birth. Inspired by a line from ‘On Opening the Dharma,’ Henry starts by noting that...
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The Suffering of Self, Part 1 of 4, by David Loy
February 18, 20175 min read
Buddhism isn’t about helping us become well-adjusted. A socially well-adjusted ego-self is still a sick ego-self, for there remains something problematical about it. It is still infected by dukkha. If someone asked you to summarize the teachings of the Buddha, what would you say? For most Buddhists, probably the first thing that would come to mind is the four noble (or “ennobling”) truths: dukkha, its causes, its cessation (better known as nirvana), and the eightfold path that...
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Teisho: Continuation Case 50, Book of Equanimity, Seppo’s What Is This?
February 16, 20172 min read
"If we could all just reside in our real self, we would be infinite.” “They are so imponderable, that you cannot ponder them. So what do you do? You sit, and you swallow the koan, and you wait. All things come to those who wait" ~ Henry Shukman Description: Henry delivers this talk on Rohatsu, the auspicious day of Buddha’s awakening. He states: “Koans can be charming little stories, but are more often interpreted as knots...
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Religion as Umbrella, Religion as Path, by David R Loy
February 11, 20174 min read
For Buddhism, the issue is whether “salvation” is to be achieved by clinging to doctrines and rituals that offer the possibility of a postmortem paradise, or by following a spiritual roadmap that can transform us here and now. In his great book, The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker suggests that religions claiming knowledge of an afterlife create a “vital lie” and attempts to evade death and thus end up crippling us in life. But is religion...
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Teisho: Rohatsu: Case 50, Book of Equanimity, Seppo’s What Is This? (Part 5 of 5)
February 9, 20172 min read
"It’s a series of graces falling like blows on the crown of the head." "... the inevitability of failure in Zen practice—error and mistake are the mulch which allows our humanity to grow ..." ~ Henry Shukman Description: This final teisho of the Rohatsu sesshin follows an early morning ceremony that commemorates Shakymuni’s awakening. Henry notes that each and every koan is a manifestation of Buddha’s awakening. Many koans actually ask some version of the question: If Bodhidharma...
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