“…whether or not you have dedicated your practice to responding to the world’s pain with understanding and action, I bow to you. To see and respond fully to the needs of the life around you is your birthright too….”

Buddha bows to Buddha.

“…I think Zen is pointless unless it is a living Zen, unless the teachings makes sense to you in your life; so you test the teachings against your experience, and vice versa. Obviously, for that to happen, we need to know what Zen is. Not what we think it is, or in how we create our own versions, but what it is….”

“…Skillfully, decisively, lovingly. To me that is spiritual practice, Monk or not, Zen or something else. I don’t need eyes because it doesn’t matter who needs help, but I’d at least like to practice seeing as much as I can while I can…”

“…People have been posting his quotes and song lyrics on social media, all leading to the expected threads of vitriol and threats. He faces them all, pointing out that there are even worse examples than those chosen by the Twitter (now X) univers…”

March 22 was the 10th anniversary of my ordination. I planned to post this on the actual anniversary, but I’ve been sick for five weeks with a viral infection that is still with me, so motivation and energy have been close to nil.

…A person in need is a transmission beyond the scriptures,
With no use for words or letters,
Who points directly at you
At your buddha nature which seeks to help all beings.

“…knowing that things are broken while they are temporarily whole can be one key to inspiring compassion, equanimity, and can reduce our attachments enough to send us further outside ourselves, toward helping other people, as well as to our own creative life. When there is less “stuff’ between you and your heart, everyone can share in its siz….”

…The important theme is Impermanence. The fragility of our brief lives, the absurdity of trying to hold on to what, in many ways, is already dust….

…Does the universality of death cure grief any quicker than other methods? Grief or any suffering sure does break one’s heart, making it more vulnerable and perhaps more open to avenues of healing. But does it render grief a useful meditation on the intangible and fleeting?  Maybe, eventually. But in any scenario, there is no way around the anguishing work, if true healing is to com…

Zen Master Yunmen was notorious for forbidding his students to write down any of his teachings. One time he caught a monk jotting down his talk and he attacked him saying “So you don’t trust yourself and now you want to remember what I’m thinking, huh?”

….Outside of myself, or emerging, I’m interested in the wider world, in how things work, how things live and die, how to make what needs to be made. I used up a lot of energy when younger and healthier on “experience” for my writing, on the mind and on trying to swim through my wounds with no tools for dealing with them. Now, with limited energy and shaky health, I’ve become interested in the tactile, the practical, the lives, all lives, that are and always have been just like me….

We can be cruel about Karma, blaming the unfortunate or sick or disabled for past actions which caused their present state. Applying this insensitivity to an individual makes it easier to paint your strokes more broadly, blaming entire groups for their own misfortune, undeserving of compassion, even if you believe their transgressions happened eons ago.

You must have lived an intense life to have both been known as “The Harmless One,” ( Ahimsaka) and “Finger Necklace” (Aguilmala), but such is the case with today’s Bodhisattva, from the Theravada tradition.