This is the second in a series of koans centred on the natural world. The koan is Case 37 in the Mumonkan, Zhaozhou's Cypress Tree in the Courtyard.Sources: Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek by Annie Dillard and Two Zen Classics by Katsuki Sekida.

This is the second in a series of koans centred on the natural world. The koan is Case 37 in the Mumonkan, Zhaozhou's Cypress Tree in the Courtyard. Sources: Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek by Annie Dillard and Two Zen Classics by Katsuki Sekida.

2025-11-04 Nature Koans 2: The Cypress Tree in the Courtyard

Sensei Richard von Sturmer has a long history in Zen: from 1993 to 2003 he lived and worked at the Rochester Zen Center, a Buddhist community in upstate New York, then in 2004, back in New Zealand, he co-founded the Auckland Zen Centre along with Roshi Amala Wrightson. In 2024 he was sanctioned as a Zen teacher. He has given many talks at the Centre, and some of them are collected here. Richard-sensei is also a writer and poet. Seven collections of his writing have been published including: A Network of Dissolving Threads (1991), Suchness: Zen Poetry and Prose (2005), Book of Equanimity Verses (2013), This Explains Everything (2016), Postcard Stories (2019), Resonating Distances (2022) and Walking With Rocks, Dreaming With Rivers : My Year In The Waikato (2023).

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2025-11-04 Nature Koans 2: The Cypress Tree in the Courtyard

2025-11-04 Nature Koans 2: The Cypress Tree in the Courtyard