Events

Register to attend – The prospect of every day being a good day is attractive. Equanimity in the midst of chaos sounds like a preferred way for things to go. It is not uncommon to think that after awakening everything is going to be fine, no more troubles, no more problems. Attaining Nirvana, paradise, is the goal, right? Depends on what Nirvana means to you.

RMC Zen online – Emily’s line feels very vivid to me, and makes me speculate on what’s the narcotic and what’s the tooth and what’s the soul — am I seeking meditation practice as a narcotic, or maybe the tooth and the soul are using meditation to sit me down for a conversation, or maybe all of the above?  

RMC Zen online – ‘We and everything we perceive are interwoven’ says Shitou. He whispers at my shoulder pointedly: ‘Perceive’.  I do see interweaving everywhere. What about ‘not interwoven’ though? How is that so? Is that the realm of the ME? The place I fall out of the net? But doesn’t something hold me even there?

RMC Zen Online: Even as you struggle with the design of the seamless tomb, that too is your awakening. As one day melts into another and our time in pandemic stretches into the unknown future, that too is the sound of awakening. Can you hear it?

Register PZI Zen ONline – Seeing the face, our original face, facing the vastness, can help us include the cries of the world. When it comes to doing something about those cries, it’s good to know the names of those things that we can do.
 

RMC Zen Online: Though we don’t know exactly what Xuedou’s question was, I believe it had something to do with the difference between hearing and seeing. The solution to the way thought obscurs the natural clarity of our minds is to appreciate that thoughts are part of the natural clarity of our minds.

RMC Zen Online -This is a long koan with plenty of interesting facets to consider. I was recently invited to spend some time with the bit about the old man’s request for a funeral. What was that about? It’s interesting that this was first thing the old man had to say after his long-sought enlightenment. Seemingly, his first concern was to pay respect to who he had been along the way; the unenlightened him. I think there’s a lesson in this.

Register: In a time of pandemic, like now, that sense of uncertainty is heightened and the subsequent energy arising from that can be plowed back into our practice.

Register for Urban Retreat: The image of “the light beyond the light” caught my attention as I read the poem that is the Preface to the Blue Cliff Record, a collection of one hundred koans. It is said that, entering into the Blue Cliff, you will open ‘the eye within eyes’, and living life informed by the Blue Cliff, you yourself become a beacon, ‘the light beyond light’. That being so, you find that whichever of the ten thousand doors you knock on ‘someone will answer. 

RMC Zen Online: A number of people have spoken to me about the way sheltering in place during the pandemic has become a challenge vis-à-vis boredom. Days melting into each other, falling into the rhythm of being at home more, losing track of what day it is often. I’ve heard reports of Netflix and video game consumption skyrocketing to the point of concern as work was not getting done.