Posted inDogen, Henry's Messages, Koans

Message from Henry: Enter Practice

April 10, 2018

Perhaps with the disenchantment of old formal religious institutions many of us are left with a reflex toward the sacred … without having … frame of reference … Enter Practice. 

Koans are ingenious teaching devices. You can’t “get” them but by radical shifts in perspective. As a means of spiritual training they are superb: they give us one aspiration after another; they gauge our clarity; they scour and scrape the mud-encrusted windshield of our vision. And they do all this, often in just a syllable or two.

***

Perhaps with the disenchantment of old formal religious institutions many of us are left with a reflex toward the sacred, the numinous, the ineffable, without having an immediate frame of reference by which to interpret what the impulse is, or what to do with it. Enter Practice. 

***

This ancient Zen line combines the teachings of Dogen with those of the Tang Dynasty masters of China, helping to nurture and sustain people of compassion and energy. The teaching emphasizes the living out of Zen’s awakening in ordinary lives of service, peace and love.

Various teaching lines in the US derive from this lineage, but for the first time ever, the lineage that has been the source for the teachings of various teachers, such as Kapleau, Aitken and Maezumi Roshi’s, is now establishing itself directly in the US  – at Mountain Cloud. How important this is for the West only time will tell.

 

Message from Henry is from our April 9, 2018 Newsletter
Image: Monastery Cloister by Tama66,  Public Domain CC0 1.0
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