in the Cloud

Episode Description: This talk continues with Case 7, “Yakusan Ascends the Rostrum,” exploring Yakusan’s own process of transformation. It begins by reflecting on how revolutionary Zen practice is -- an overturning of how we think things are. Yakusan offers a great example of how to proceed in this revolution: “Sit down and be silent.” Henry discusses how Zen lacks an object to venerate, unlike theistic religions with their deities. For Yakusan, the object of veneration is the sitting itself; and that sitting is also the veneration. In Zen, there is a process to go through rather than some-thing to find. Henry emphasizes that Zen is “neither this nor that;” rather, it is a precise “cutting though of self and world.”

Post Image Credit: Meditation by Frank Winkler, CC0 Public Domain.

Featured Image Credit: Zen Stone Garden, by t_s_l, CCO Public Domain

Episode Description: In this teisho, Henry helps us on our journey of letting go of ourselves by introducing us to great Master Yakusan’s “speciality.” Henry explores the true path of Zen and probes the question: What is this existence? Yakusan’s noble silence in the koan offers an infinite, supreme and endless answer to this question.

Post Image Credit: Anzio by Moyan Brenn, CC BY 2.0.

Featured Image Credit: Zen Stone Garden, by t_s_l, CCO Public Domain

Episode Description: Henry examines this fascinating koan in which a monk asks Master Baso, “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the West?” or, more specifically, what did Bodhidharma really hope we would discover when he brought the Zen meditation school from India to China?  The talk briefly examines the “4 Propositions” and “100 Negations” of Buddhist philosophy, which are mentioned in the koan, and gives us some background on the characters in the case, as it considers the apparently inscrutable meaning of Zen, which ceases to be inscrutable when realized through direct experience. Henry describes how Zen is a “thing that isn't a thing”, a fact that can’t be named, yet at the same time is the very ground of beauty, love and grace.”

Post Image Credit: Courtesy Cherie Manifest.

Featured Image Credit: Zen Stone Garden, by t_s_l, CCO Public Domain

Episode Description: Henry presents this simple koan about the Buddha, Indra and the building of a temple. This talk explores how something as simple as a piece of straw can illuminate infinite abundance, ultimate reality. Henry quotes from Sri Nisargadatta, from the 17th Century English cleric Thomas Traherne, and from Master Bansho to expose what Bansho calls “the fundamental matter.” Henry shows that to clarify who we really are, to see the fundamental point of our practice, is to lose much and gain nothing at all. We must allow all conditioning—cultural, social, religious, familial—to fall away so we may truly see reality. “The best thing that can happen is that we lose everything… the resolution of human life, promised and practiced in Zen, comes through a kind of universal loss.”

Post Image  Credit: Leaves Falling, by Unsplash, CC0 Public Domain

Featured Image  Credit: Ladybird, by PublicDomainPictures, CC0 Public Domain

Episode Description: In this talk, Henry explicates Case 3 in the Book of Equanimity koans, and explores the Buddhist “Middle Way.” This koan shows how Prajnatara’s teaching on sutras, “suchness” and breath exemplifies the Middle Way. (Prajnatara, Bodhidharma’s teacher, may well have been a female master, in spite of what the Zen tradition has said.) Henry describes how a life focused on either desire or self-mortification is profitless. He explores the “excluded middle” between these two extremes, which leads to the great reality of wisdom and peace. Henry concludes the teisho with a brief discussion about zazen breath practice and an exhortation to waste no time.

Post Image and Featured Image Credit: Courtesy Cherie Manifest.