So, to begin our meditation – let’s start by letting go of our social identity. We do that by focusing on sensations, feelings. We can’t really feel age, or gender. They are just concepts. However, because we identify with concepts, we can feel hurt if someone insults aspects of our social identity. However, for the purpose of this meditation let’s leave these identities behind us. Let us de-identify from these constructs by just bringing our attention to our direct experience. Right now.

This talk was inspired by a recent conversation with an OzZen member. In this conversation the person was concerned with their inability to forgive someone who had hurt them it was a kind of betrayal. Now, my Buddhist friend felt that this was inadequate from a Buddhist perspective, that is, from a Buddhist perspective one should not feel hurt and one should be able to forgive. It is these assumptions that I think it is helpful to question.

Bring awareness to our intention and settle into our posture. We don’t sit to become Buddhas, we sit because we are already Buddha. When resistance arises we sit with he resistance. Allow the self to settle into the self. Trust in your Zazen, allow zazen to do zazen.

In this talk I am going to continue the exploration of the psychological and interpersonal-neurobiological aspects of Zen practice. Given the limitation of time, this will of necessity be a simplified account. In a way, I am basically providing a sketch of how I see our relationship to Zazen playing a similar function to our experience of an intimate relationship to potentiate our experience self.

In this talk I begin exploring the psychological and neurobiological aspects of Zen practice. This talk focuses on understanding the relationship between the personal self and the universal self and concludes that they meet through the experience of intimacy.

The 13th century Zen Master Dogen grew up with the teaching of original enlightenment – enlightenment is inherent in all beings from the beginning – not something that is achieved through effort. We might say it is a Holy world. Original dwelling place is another metaphor that has been used to point towards this ultimate reality that is always going to be impossible to pin down in words.

The dilemma which Dogen struggled with as a young monk was, if we are all originally enlightened, why sit? This was Dogen’s personal koan. Another similar question is, if we are all originally at home, then why do we not experience this? Why do we fail to experience this ultimate security? In the existential sense, we fail to dwell. We fail to feel at home in the world.

In this talk I am going to respond to these questions by making a distinction between our ESSENTIAL OR ORGINAL dwelling place and EXISTENTIAL dwelling, which consists in realising or understanding our ESSENTIAL dwelling. This distinction I have taken from the work of Professor Julian Young, who is a specialist in European Philosophy. This realisation in Zen of existential dwelling (being at home in the world) is brought forth through the regular practice of Zazen.

In part one, I will present dukkha as a form of homelessness and alienation in the world. In part two, I will suggest that Zazen is the return home, what Dogen metaphorically referred to as “taking the backward step”.

This talk explores the existential and communal aspects of Zen practice. In particular, it focuses on interpersonal isolation, intrapersonal isolation and existential isolation. Zazen can be understood as a practice that builds our capacity to experience the intimacy of self, others, and the world by sitting alone together.

Caught in a self-centred dream, only suffering

Holding to self-centred thoughts, exactly the dream.

Each moment, life as it is, the only teacher

Being just this moment, compassion’s way.

The practice principles are regularly recited in Ordinary Mind Zen Centres around the world. They are a re-working of the classic statements of The Four Noble Truths. In this talk I interpret the principles as encourage to let go of our self-centred reactivity and embrace the whole of life, both its delights and it tragedies.

“Come in”, she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”.

In this talk I explore the meaning of salvation in Zen, in the context of a world stunned by the effects of disease and death. It begins with an overview of how both religions and relationships have been the main “shelters” of salvation for human beings since the dawn of time. So, what does Zen offer? I conclude that Zen does not promise us salvation by means of an escape from disease, old age and death, whether that be by transcending death by being reborn into a Buddhist Paradise or by realising our true nature as the unborn and undying Spirit.

After over 30 years of engagement in this practice, I would say the salvation Zen offers is simply an embrace of disease, old age and death. The path of salvation in Zen is to live mindfully knowing our time on this earth is limited. This doesn’t mean we have to convert to a religion. It just means we must live our lives, as my teacher recently said, as if everything matters.

This talk explores the relationship between growing up and waking up. It commences with a reading of the first five verses of the poem Intimations of Immortality by William Wordsworth. I then discuss the distinction made by my teacher Barry Magid between a “top-down practice” and a “bottom-up practice” and outline some of the pitfalls of a top-down practice. It was Jack Engler who coined the phrase you have to “be somebody before you can be nobody”. I then weave together developmental psychology and trauma theory and how the process of waking up is an inherent potential in human development because it is our true nature. However, existential anxiety and developmental trauma often distort into a self-centred self which has anxiety at its core. This is contrasted with a life-centred self, characterised by openness to others and the world. The talk finished by stressing that it is better to integrate the self-centred self into the life-centred seld prior to integrating the life-centred self with the formless self of awakening.