For this Fusatsu (Renewal of Vows ceremony) Zuisei speaks of sacred space as the ground in which atonement and vow become possible. It is, to borrow Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s words, “A sanctuary in time”—a place and period which is both distinct from and equal to the everyday. A space full of possibility.

Correction: The opening quote, attributed to Charles Chu, is actually by Margaret Gibson.

We are never practicing alone—not in the darkest pit of hell, not in the brightest state of bliss. When we know this, the natural response is to bring forth our buddha ancestors and look at them in veneration. We formally bow and meet them, which is none other than meeting ourselves.

Zuisei and Hojin Sensei speak about the importance of honoring and connecting to our ancestors in spiritual practice. This talk was given at Zen Mountain Monastery’s Annual Women’s Sesshin, Wild Grasses.

Zuisei speaks of that which is beyond ordinary knowing and must be known intimately. As she puts it, devoting our full attention to the breath or a koan can be an act of love. Zazen itself is that act of love, an act rewarded in ways we cannot predict.

In part two of this talk on Gateless Gate 41, Zuisei speaks on the five overarching disturbing emotions: attachment, pride, envy, anger, and ignorance, and the collective journey we are on to wake up to these patterns and remember our innate goodness.

As the Buddha said, all of his teachings were for the purpose of seeing the truth of suffering and its cessation. The way to put at end to suffering is to realize ourselves, but we cannot do it while caught in the storm of strong emotions. So we need to have a way to recognize and deal with them, and this is what so much of practice is about.

“We look out at the world and we see nothing but conflict, nothing but clamor and strife and forces that seem to feed on our discontent. And we think, how can I be at ease in the midst of all this?”

In this talk on Gateless Gate 41, Zuisei speaks on waking up to the state of our minds and the ongoing journey of cultivating ease and peace in the midst of all that life brings us.

In the third talk in a series on the Three Essentials of Zen, Zuisei speaks on the third essential: Great Determination.

Zuisei explains that Determination is not an obsessive nor heroic quality, but rather, it is our humble, steadfast commitment to waking up— through the good, bad, and mundane.

“[Great Determination] knows what it is capable of. It knows— without even knowing how we know— that this path is not only walkable, but that we will do it, that we are doing it.”

Great Doubt is one of the Three Essentials of Zen practice — wherein doubt is not flaky nor pessimistic, but rather a commitment to an ongoing investigation of: what’s really going on here?

In this dharma talk, Zuisei explores doubt and how the cultivation of this quality leads us to a deeper understanding of the way things are.

In this first talk in a series on the Three Essentials of Zen, Zuisei speaks on the first essential: great faith, discussing the four stages of faith and the role that they play as we commit to the dharma.

To have faith is to trust, and to let that trust guide us along our path as it unfolds. It is believing in our goodness, in the teachings, and in our communities—trusting that they will support us in the process of awakening.

When we practice working with our minds, we quickly discover the immense impacts our thoughts have on our lived reality. And when we look at this using the framework of the Buddhist perspective, we come to understand the relationship between mind and reality even more profoundly: that reality itself is really just the minds’ projection.

In this talk, Zuisei reflects on Gateless Gate, 26: Two Monks Roll Up the Blinds. Zuisei draws on the power that the classical Buddhist teachings have to help us understand the depths and paradoxes of our experiences.