Events

RMC Zen Online: Discipline and Zen seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly. Images of shaved head monk sitting ramrod straight, not moving, inside or out, were certainly in my mind when I heard about Zen. Also there are stories about encounters between Zen Masters and the world that reinforce the image.

RMC Zen online: I want to add that I did not hear what preceded this koan—that it was Yunmen responding to a student, who
asked, “What is meditating and just seeing things as they are?”  “A coin lost in the river is found in the river,” said Yunmen.  

RMC Zen Online- The experience of putting down the burden we carry is one of relief. The greater the burden, the greater the relief. The diminishing of the burden that we have carried for a long time can bring tears of joy.

Register to attend; My response to someone reporting their disappointment about troubling thoughts not going away is often to ask, “Where are they going to go to?” I might as easily asked, “Where do they come from?” The answer to either question is the same, “nowhere”

RMC Zen Online – When we know what is true for ourselves, it doesn’t matter where it came from, it comes from us and then we are not misspeaking.

RMC Zen Online: That we perceive a wall between us and others is the fundamental delusion that causes us difficulty. Perhaps Yunmen is bringing our attention to that fact. If there is no wall, my neighbor’s light is my light because my neighbor is me.

Register PZI Zen Online: I noticed I found myself gravitating towards children. Something about the way an infant or toddler reaches, apparently just for the sake of reaching, that felt more in the spirit of what Yunmen was saying about reaching. The questioner is asking about reaching the light, and Yunmen tells him to forget about the light. Forget about having an object of your reaching, just reach!

PZI Zen Online: Register – Spending time with this koan recently, a few things occurred to me. First, I took it as an invitation to relax.What’s wrong with being a non-attained Buddha? What’s wrong with being who I am, now, in this moment? Nothing, really. And yet…

RMC Zen Online- Recently I called a friend and confessed having difficulty with an unsolvable problem. This is a habit—to see my problem as unsolvable, and to see it as “a problem.” (And here I am, at it again.) In response, my friend read me Shitou’s Song of the Grass-Roof Hermitage (a Chan ancestor.) Hearing it was an immediate balm!

RMC Zen Online- Not thinking our way to becoming awake, but becoming awake to our thinking. Waking up and smelling the roses.