Zenways Dharma Talks

Julian Daizan Skinner answers a question from the sangha relating to sex and zen

Julian Daizan Skinner interviews Dr Elena Antonova. Elena is a Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience based at Kings College, London.

Daizan Roshi describes what the Dragon Staff Assembly is and how you can become part of it through your practice.

It’s perfectly possible to meditate completely alone and do well, but an essential nutrient can get missed if that is all we have - relationships with others. The Buddha’s attendant Ananda once remarked to him ”I’ve been thinking that community, Sangha, is half the spiritual life”; the Buddha replied "don’t say that Ananda, the *whole* of the spiritual life is within community, within Sangha”. In this talk Daizan Roshi explains about how we can use our relationships with others, particularly the more challenging ones (what he refers to as our troublesome Buddhas), to enrich and deepen our practice.

Daizan Roshi talks about the Samajivina Sutta, a short account of the Buddha talking to the couple Nakulapita and Nakulamata (father and mother of Nakula). Via this wonderful, succinct teaching on love and living together, Daizan unpacks some of the qualities and virtues that couples need to cultivate in order to stay in tune with each other over the decades of their relationship.

In Zen we can divide our motivations and way of practice into two broad categories: ‘Bompu’ Zen which is practice with the view or the intention of problem solving (like finding a way to deal with our stress, finding a way to sleep better, increasing our creativity, etc). Then there’s another category called ‘Kensho’ Zen. Kensho means to know your true nature and this is practice with the intention of finding out that there never was a problem in the first place. In this talk, Daizan Roshi explains a little about the distinction and gets us to experience Kensho Zen by “siting like a fool” with nowhere to go, no self-improvement plans, no intention really to do anything other than just be here.

We live in an age of unprecedented freedom, safety and availability of knowledge. With that comes a level of responsibility to make the most of this opportunity. In this talk Daizan talks about how you can best establish your daily meditation practice through a commitment of 100 consecutive days. He then stresses how important it is to continue after this, and discusses some things you can do to help support this.

One day a new monk came to Zen master Joshu and said “I am a new trainee in the temple, can you give me some teaching?” Master Joshu said, “Have you eaten?” and the monk said “yes”, Joshu replied “then wash your bowl”. In this talk, Daizan Roshi explains some of the ways that this famous but very simple little interchange can be looked at, in terms of digesting and cleaning the ’stuff’ accumulated in our life, and how it can nourish us. He goes on to discuss some of these views in relation to the life story of his Zen teacher in Japan, Shinzan Roshi.

Zen divides the body into three zones: the neck upwards, which is the zone of awareness; the area from the neck to the navel, which is to do with connection; and the zone from the navel downwards, which is all about personal power. In this talk Daizan Roshi discusses the 2nd zone, which within Western culture isn’t terribly well understood and not discussed so much in Zen. He talks about finding a “smile in the heart” as a way of cultivating a positive, loving relationship with ourselves, with others, with organisations and within the broader sphere of our life in general.

Daizan talks about our innate human impulse to wake up - to understand the truth of who we are and how the universe is. In Buddhism this is called Bodhicitta, or in Japanese Bodaishin. Like each blade of grass has to push aside something like half a ton of earth to reach the sunlight, we are all powered by an energy greater than ourselves towards greater aliveness and awakeness. But how this manifests is unique to each of us.