With all the perseverance I can muster, I attempt to wholeheartedly embrace my karmic ties, My children most of all, affected by my choices. Uncertainty about my choices hits me unexpectedly. Misgivings about how I have parented leads to irresolution. Doubt leads to remorse, regret deepens. Yet my sorrow leads to tenderheartedness. It isn’t a contradiction. Not one or the other. Not black and white, but all of […]
In this series you will be introduced to Zen Buddhist teachings and zazen (meditation). Through your own experience, you will gain some understanding of how establishing a meditation practice can change your life. Each week, we will build on the week before, deepening our experience together. Upon his enlightenment, Buddha was seated in meditation. Zen […]
Seasons changing, Winter is here. Past is gone, future is not here. Attempting a measure of life’s seasons. Going within and reflecting, As these feelings appear Before me each New Year. What yardstick can measure the depths of being? Deeper than any construct could measure. Winter is here. Can’t change yesterday and tomorrow, who knows! As I am gazing into the […]
This Sunday November 29, 2015 at our normal Sunday Evening Zazen and once a month thereafter we will chant the 16 Bodhisattva Precepts. The sixteen bodhisattva precepts are a set of vows of ethical conduct taken many times in a Zen practitioner’s life. They derive originally from the vinaya, monastic vows taken on ordination during the […]
Both Sufism and Zen inform my spirituality. You can read more in my BIO. This essay, “Sufism & Zen” posted by James Ishmael Ford in www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind, is taken from a collection of Nyogen Senzaki Sensei’s lectures and writings which was published in Japan in 1936 as ON ZEN MEDITATION by the Rinzai priest Nanshin Okamoto. It describes the […]