One Bright Pearl

Rohatsu Sesshin is upon us here at Sanshinji. We will begin by having dinner together at 6:00pm and then meet again at 7:30pm for Okumura Roshi’s orientation talk. When he finishes sharing his words of encouragement, we will turn and face the wall, as the Buddha did all those years ago.
We sit a classic Uchiyama [...]

There was a time when I was doing the ‘done in a city of broken dreams filled with the sound of coming down. So I kinda like this song in a “just like me” way.  Just like me, you don’t wish to suffer, or be the cause of another’s suffering. Just like me, you wish [...]

hanging in the abyss
space hammers space
one moment eternal
echoes through time
.

Dogen instructed,1
Students of the Way, do not worry about food and clothing. Just maintain the Buddha’s precepts and do not engage in worldly affairs. The Buddha said to use abandoned rags for clothing and beg for food. In what age will these two things ever be exhausted? Do not forget the swiftness of impermanence nor [...]

From a travellers perspective, new directions are all I see.
It has been awhile since I posted here. Everything keeps changin’. Slowing me down, speeding time up. Discombobulated, maybe. Yet, it is a good day today.
I woke up at home… yes, at home. Not living on the road, at least for now. Kris and I moved [...]

I have always loved the poems of Han Shan. One of my favorite is number 26 -

Since I came to Cold Mountain
how many thousand years have passed?
Accepting my fate I fled to the woods,
to dwell and gaze in freedom.
No one visits the cliffs
forever hidden by clouds.
Soft grass serves as a mattress,
my quilt is the dark [...]

Total dynamic function, or Zenki, is our life.
What does this mean? Who am I? What is this!? I ask myself these questions regularly. I remain curious, letting go of what I think.
With no inside or outside, no second person, it is radically different than what I think. And yet, this thinking is not outside of [...]

one
drop
splash!

What are we doing? Are we waking up, or captivated by our dream? Just what is the dream?
The dream is everything you think. What I am writing right now is nothing but the dream, but as an old teacher once told me, there is a difference between a high order dream and a low order [...]

A large, spacious room, unfolded before me. It seemed to be part of a rustic lodge, with beautiful blonde ash woodwork, framing a grand window, that looked out upon a natural mountain vista.
Outside the window, a herd of ancient buffalo, or perhaps muskox, munched placidly in a high alpine meadow. I noticed that their coats [...]