Annual Meeting Closing Statement, March 2014
Les Kaye
Zen practice came to the San Francisco peninsula fifty years ago. A Stanford graduate student arranged to have Suzuki-roshi driven to Palo Alto one evening a week for meditation, lecture, and discussion. These meetings rotated between different […]
When we first begin Zen practice, we may feel that zazen is a private activity, something that we do only for our self. So when we reflect on how our sitting is going, we may think “My foot hurts,” “My mind wanders,” “I get sleepy,” “My back hurts […]
In the Genjokoan, Dogen writes:
When you first seek dharma, you imagine you are far from its environs. But dharma is already correctly transmitted; you are immediately your original self.
Dogen is trying to tell us that the dharma – the truth – is already in our hands, already in […]
Zen Master Dogen was the founder of the Soto Zen school in Japan in the thirteenth century. His writings are familiar to all serious Zen students. The first fascicle in his most famous work, the Shobogenzo, concludes with a Chinese Zen teacher instructing his student with insight & […]
Religion, for most people, offers the promise of being “lifted,” of feeling “raised up” to a higher place, by someone or something that has access to such a place. Religious followers carry the belief that a “higher place” truly does exist – a place they feel is more elevated […]
Zen Master Hakuin lived in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He is said to have created the now-famous question: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Hakuin believed that the understanding arising out of practice in everyday life was deeper than the understanding that […]
Having arrived from Asia within the past generation, Zen and Buddhism are still new enough in the West to be considered other-worldly phenomena, remarkable concepts and unusual activities outside the ordinary, like a meteor shower. When we first read and listen to the teachings of these ancient […]
Observing the workings of the human mind, early Buddhist teachers were very much like psychologists, determined to understand how people create their own suffering through desires and attachment to worldly things. They saw how the mind develops feelings of isolation by seeing the world in dualistic ways, rather […]
In ancient China, the emperor’s minister was troubled and so went to visit a renowned Zen master to seek advice. He said, “Master, the people are unruly and difficult to govern. Please give me a word of wisdom to help govern them.” The master picked up his […]
During a Q & A session following a lecture, somebody asked: “What should we do with a mentally ill person?” It was not a medical question, inquiring about therapies and medicines that can be effective treating a troubled individual. It was a religious question, asking us to go […]
