Appamada

Appamada

By AppamadaReligion & Spirituality
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Appamada episodes

  • 2025-08-31 | Dharma Talk | Practice: What Is It? | Jess
    Koan was from The Gateless Gate: The Classic Book of Zen Koans by Koun Yamada. Case 7: Joshu's Washing the Bowls.
    Reflection questions:
    1) What were you looking for when you first entered the monastery/practice/zen center?
    2) How would you have reacted to this teaching back then?
    3) Do you notice any resistance from you or a part of you to this?
    4) How do you respond to this teaching now? What’s alive in you?
    5) Utilizing this koan, what could this teaching mean for your practice?
    20 min
  • 2025-08-20 I Inquiry I finding yourself in a small room I Josh Gifford
    three poems referenced :
    You Reading This be ready
    ~ William Stafford
    Starting here, what do you want to remember?
    How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
    What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
    sound from outside fills the air?
    Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
    than the breathing respect that you carry
    wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
    for time to show you some better thoughts?
    When you turn around, starting here, lift this
    new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
    all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
    reading or hearing this, keep it for life –
    What can anyone give you greater than now,
    starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
    Shoulders
    ~ Naomi Shihab Nye
    A man crosses the street in rain,
    stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
    because his son is asleep on his shoulder.
    No car must splash him.
    No car drive too near to his shadow.
    This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
    but he’s not marked.
    Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
    HANDLE WITH CARE.
    His ear fills up with breathing.
    He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
    deep inside him.
    We’re not going to be able
    to live in this world
    if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
    with one another.
    The road will only be wide.
    The rain will never stop falling.
    Praying
    ~Mary Oliver
    It doesn’t have to be
    the blue iris, it could be
    weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
    small stones; just
    pay attention, then patch
    a few words together and don’t try
    to make them elaborate, this isn’t
    a contest but the doorway
    into thanks, and a silence in which
    another voice may speak.
    1 hr 3 min
  • 2025-08-12 I Inquiry I It’s the Waiting I Flint Sparks
    “The Maples”
    ~ Marie Howe
    I asked the stand of maples behind the house,
How should I live my life?
    They said, shhh shhh shhh . . .
    How should I live, I asked, and the leaves seemed to ripple and gleam.
    A bird called from a branch in its own tongue,
And from a branch, across the yard, another bird answered.
    A squirrel scrambled up a trunk
then along the length of a branch.
    Stand still, I thought,
See how long you can bear that.
    Try to stand still, if only for a few moments,
drinking light breathing
    Tricycle, July 23, 2025
    Atlantis:
3. Michael's Dream
    Dreamed c. 1993 by Michael;
    written by Mark Doty
    Michael writes to tell me his dream:
    I was helping Randy out of bed,
    supporting him on one side
    with another friend on the other,
    and as we stood him up, he stepped out
    
of the body I was holding and became

    a shining body, brilliant light

    held in the form I first knew him in.
    This is what I imagine will happen,

    the spirit's release. Michael,
    
when we support our friends,

    one of us on either side, our arms
    under the man or woman's arms,

    what is it we're holding? Vessel
    ,
shadow, hurrying light? All those years
    
I made love to a man without thinking
    how little his body had to do with me;

    now, diminished, he's never been so plainly
    
himself—remote and unguarded,
    
an otherness I can't know
    the first thing about. I said,

    You need to drink more water

    or you're going to turn into
    
an old dry leaf. And he said,
    Maybe I want to be an old leaf
    
In the dream Randy's leaping into

    the future, and still here; Michael's holding
    him
    
and releasing at once. Just as Steve's
    holding Jerry, though he's already gone,

    Marie holding John, gone, Maggie holding
    her John, gone, Carlos and Darren
    
holding another Michael, gone,
    and I'm holding Wally, who's going.
    
Where isn't the question,
    
though we think it is;

    we don't even know where the living are,
    in this raddled and unraveling "here."

    What is the body? Rain on a window,
    
a clear movement over whose gaze?
    
Husk, leaf, little boat of paper
    and wood to mark the speed of the stream?
    
Randy and Jerry, Michael and Wally
    
and John: lucky we don't have to know
    
what something is in order to hold it.
    1 hr 1 min

About Appamada

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Appamada is a contemporary center for Zen practice, inquiry, and community, located in Austin, Texas. If you appreciate these offerings, please consider making a contribution to support Appamada with…