At our Saturday Zazenkai Joshin Sensei goes back to the fundamentals. Zen makes things simple. When the bell rings, get up… When it’s time to chant, put your hands together… Dropping everything we know, to show up fully for what is here. In the words of Zen master Mr. Rogers, “Just you being you.” Joshin […]

In this talk Shinryu Sensei asks us “How was your Zazen?” He then describes his own experience on the day of this talk: Blurry thoughts, a slight pain, wondering about where the light in the room was coming from. He then investigates the metaphor of the mirror that is often used to describe our Zen […]

Here Roshi talks generally about koans, and asks us to let the old Chinese stories enter into our concousness where we can ask ourselves how the koan can serve us now. Instead of looking for the “true meaning,” we can experience the koan as a way of looking at reality in fresh way. She then […]

Ryotan Sensei starts this Zazenkai talk with a fond fairwell to long-time practitioner Al Jones who died recently, and a fond welcome to three new practitioners who are to become formal students. Ryotan was asked by a publisher to verify some pithy “Zen” slogans from the internet. Although the slogans were not untrue, they do […]

Myoko Sensei starts this talk with an appreciation of the Zendo on a Sunday morning. She mentions an exhibit by a friend of surrealist art, and how it captures a sense of strangeness and familiarity. This leads to Myoko’s own struggle with time. Finding time, running out of time, not having enough time, and a […]

In this Zazenkai Dharma talk Kaku looks deeply into Dogen’s essay “On the Endeavor of the Way” and see it as Dogen’s direct expression of his central question; If we are perfect and complete, lacking nothing, why do we need to practice? Kaku then puts the question to us. What is your own driving spiritual […]

What Are They?

In this talk Shinryu Sensei returns to the subject of 18th century abolitionist and radical dissident Benjamin Lay. Shinryu classifies Lay as an “antinomian,” those who challenge and live outside authoritarian institutions. He then invokes the long tradition of Zen antinomianism in Japan and China, and as an example reads a few poems by the Japanese fifteenth […]

Musho comments on our study text “Dotoku” by Dogen Zenji. Musho relates his life long experience of True Expression as a visual artist and discusses the Zen koan, “Zuigan Calls Master.”

The life of Buddha is our own.