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Treeleaf Zen

.The two Buddhist perspectives mentioned yesterday, while seemingly contradictory, each dissolve the frictions between ourselves and the world … our experience of the disagreeable, conflict, things bumping one into the other, life not going quite as we would wish … First, if the sense of a separate self softens, or is fully dropped, what ‘separate…

.Two Buddhist perspectives on Reality, seemingly contradictory at first glance, are absolutely vital to understanding our True Nature: First, you — and every other object in the universe that the mind identifies as having separate self-identity — are not so, do not truly exist in such way, are mental illusions created by our assigning labels…

.Today was to be a father/son sit, quietly facing the kitchen wall. It was quiet sometimes. The emergency ‘potty’ break in the middle was an unexpected part (our refrigerator led the Zazen for awhile). . Press on arrow for ‘play’ .

‘Zazen in a truck’. It should have been ‘sleeping in a truck’, but I didn’t fall asleep after all. Falling asleep during Zazen is no shame or waste of time (nothing about Zen Practice involves shame or any waste) … at least if just once in awhile. (Every time would be a big waste and…

. It’s traditional in Japan to have a Shinto Priest come out and ‘appease the spirits (Kami)’ when starting big construction like we are at Treeleaf. My wife insisted. . I don’t know so much about appeasing the spirits, but I do know about appeasing my wife. So, we had it done. You can see…

Today, I am joined for Zazen by my 14-year-old nephew. It is his first time for Zazen (I didn’t make him do it. He volunteered. Really.) I just told him that, for the time we are sitting, don’t think about school, his parents, his iPod, his Gameboy, comic books, cars, baseball and, of course, girls.…

I find the places for our sit-a-longs each day, mostly because there is an internet connection there (they take some hunting to find) or because it connects in some way to the theme of the sitting. But I don’t choose places because they are exciting or interesting. In fact, my point in sitting in different…

I went today to a special exhibit at the National History Museum called ‘Let’s Zen’ … old temple stuff, statues, portraits of great masters …. (LOOK HERE)Let’s Zen … beautiful. But my practice is not really about that. Then I came out to the streets of Tokyo … loud, busy, colorful, crowded. … distracting. But…

.‘Genjo Koan‘ is also the title of one of the most famous sections of Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo. The phrase has been translated many ways. Nishijima Roshi rendered these words as “The Realized Universe.” Prof. Reiho Masunaga called it “the Koan expressed in daily life.” Shohaku Okamura Roshi wrote: My understanding of the title “Genjo-koan” is…

.Just sitting, in the universe as-it-is … untouched by restrictions, hindrances, obstructions or distractions … That means all obstructions of any kind, both humankind and nature’s beauty or ugliness. What is called sitting-Zen is not learning Zen meditation. It is just a peaceful and effortless gate to reality. It is practice-and-experience which perfectly realizes the…
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