These are questions many practitioners also have asked when confronted with yet another initiation requiring the fulfillment of new vows. Or the thought of a complex visualization one is asked to engage in with meditation practice. With the many offshoots of Buddhism have appeared many new requirements, retreats, and prostrations.

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There are difficulties that rely on the faithfulness of the translators themselves and then the emphasis contemporary schools place on different aspects of Buddhism that create the unique flavor of each school.

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In times like these where anger, greed, and delusion seem to have total sway over people’s consciousness, it is quite a reach to feel sincerely that all beings are in the process of becoming buddhas. The ultimate stretch of our faith in the Way is just this. However, the process is right in our own laps.

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The lovely paradox of right intention in practice....who is not mystified by Great Enlightenment?  And yet we are advised, the more we seek it, the more illusive it becomes.  So, out of the corner of our consciousness, we peek from time to time, wondering, even so, where, exactly, and when is this Great Enlightenment?  The maxim we hear in practice "Great effort, no goal" approximates the attitude of right intention.  What a generous discourse on Great Enlightenment Dogen shares with us!

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No matter how many years we have practiced, or if we are just discovering a way to practice, we can maintain beginner's mind. Beginner's mind is that state before we know too much, before we can explain principles to anyone else, where everything is fresh and unexplored and full of wonder.

Being a passive participant easily leads to a mindless outcome, and that is not the good kind of mindless we look at in practice. 

How often in practice have we wondered how best to essentialize what we are studying?  When one tries to “explain” what Buddhism or Zen is to someone, one can get tangled up in concepts that only serve to complicate the heart of the teaching.

Like so many of the early teachers of Zen and meditation, there is an outline of preparing oneself for meditation, but there is seldom too much direction about what exactly it IS you are entering into.