In this final talk of the Spring Practice Period Sesshin, Sensei Ryotan and Sensei Shinzan bring the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures to their close with the tenth stage — Entering the Marketplace — the return to ordinary life, barefoot and unadorned, carrying what was glimpsed back into the world. Ryotan traces the inner movement this stage points to: the small self receding as the larger self comes…

Source

In this fifth-day talk, offered during the Spring Practice Period Sesshin, Senko and Sensei Monshin explore the ninth ox-herding picture, Returning to the Source — the stage where effort ceases and life simply flows. Drawing on Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, the Xin Xin Ming, and the Song of the Grass Hut, Monshin traces the difference between striving and ease, and how returning to the source is not…

Source

In this third-day talk, offered during the Spring Practice Period Sesshin, Sensei Ryotan takes up the habit of self-judgment — that familiar contraction after a mistake, the script of not being good enough, and the perfectionism that keeps us small. Framing her teaching through the Lotus Sutra’s Never-Disparaging Bodhisattva, who bows to every being’s capacity for awakening even as rocks and…

Source

During the second day of the Spring Practice Period Sesshin, Senko takes up the koan of relaxed effort — how effort and ease, far from being opposed, are expressed in the same movement. Drawing on Seung Sahn’s story of a bear who, long after escaping his circus cage, keeps turning somersaults in the mountains hoping to be fed, Senko asks us to look honestly at the conditioning we carry into…

Source

In this first formal talk of the Spring Practice Period Sesshin, Sensei Monshin takes up virya — the Sanskrit term for joyful effort — as the essential energy of practice. What does it mean to sit day after day with the whole catastrophe of the mind: the boredom, the fear, the stories we tell about ourselves? Drawing on the ox-herding pictures’ imagery of taming, she explores the difference…

Source

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, offered during the fourth day of Upaya’s Spring Practice Period sesshin, Sensei Shinzan guides us through the seventh and eighth stages of the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures — two of the most profound moments in the Zen map of awakening. The seventh stage, Forgetting the Ox, marks the end of the seeker: grasping falls away, the division between practice and life…

Source

In this Zazenkai Day talk during Upaya’s Spring Practice Period, Sensei Shinzan surveys the first six pictures of the ox herding series, from the first pull toward practice to the hard won ease of riding the ox home. He then turns to a recent question a student brought to him: how do I know if I’m practicing correctly, and when is rest just laziness? Shinzan answers through an encounter between…

Source

In this Zazenkai day dharma talk during the Spring Practice Period, Sensei Ryotan takes up the first two ox-herding images — Searching for the Ox and Finding Traces of the Ox, presenting these images as metaphors for understanding how practice begins and what sustains it. She frames the ox-herding series around a central insight: practice is not about “getting free of the world,” but about “being…

Source

In this second session of Upaya’s Spring Practice Period, Senseis Shinzan, Monshin, and Ryotan, and Hoshi Senko introduce the text that anchors this practice period — The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures: Our Journey of Awakening — its origins, images, and themes. The ox-herding metaphor traces back to the Buddha’s teachings on mindful practice, traveling through India and China before becoming…

Source

In this opening session of Upaya’s Spring Practice Period, Senseis Ryotan, Monshin, and Shinzan, and Hoshi Senko welcome residents, guests, and the Cloud Sangha into a month of shared practice. Drawing on the 12th-century ox-herding series and John Daido Loori’s Riding the Ox Home as the program’s central text, the teachers frame the ten pictures not as a linear progression but as a spiral…

Source