When we play wholeheartedly, we engage the world with energy, joy, lightheartedness, and enthusiasm, welcoming challenge and enjoying our activity for its own sake. We rarely have the same attitude toward our work, responsibilities, difficulties, or even our Buddhist practice. What if we did? Zen Master Hongzhi suggests a playful attitude might actually be an enlightened one.
Uchiyama Roshi’s Opening the Hand of Thought is a great book for the beginner as well as the advanced practitioner of Zen. Uchiyama manages to balance philosophical discussion of the most challenging Zen topics – the nature of zazen, and awakening to universal self – with a compassionate, down-to-earth, creative (and sometimes humorous) style that makes you think, “I just might get it this time!”
This book is a treasure in that it collects in one place the essential subjects and themes of Kyogen Carlson’s teaching, which remains faithful to his Soto Zen lineage through Roshi Jiyu Kennett but reflects Kyogen’s ability to express the Dharma in a down-to-earth, inviting, but nonetheless challenging way.
In this episode I review Issho Fujita’s Polishing a Tile. This is far and away my favorite book on zazen of all time, and it covers other essential aspects of Zen practice as well. This book isn’t available as a hard copy, although I wish it was! However, you can access a pdf online in a number of places.
How can practice help us deal with the strong negative emotions we experience in difficult times, such as anger, hatred, fear, or despair? Fortunately, Buddhist practice is a powerful way to decrease our pain, agitation, reactivity, and preoccupation no matter what difficulties we’re facing, whether the challenges are in our personal lives or out in the world. I talk about nine benefits of Buddhist practice that are especially helpful when you’re facing difficult times.
In the last episode, I talked about the new phenomenon of a virtual space for practice, including its merits and benefits. In this episode, I talk about the merits of practicing in a “Dirt Zendo” – a physical practice space, in-the-flesh. I then describe, at Bright Way Zen, we are attempting to create a sense of Sangha that connects and includes anyone who practices with us, regardless of whether they participate in-the-flesh, online (in our Cloud Zendo), or both.
Since COVID lockdown, Buddhist communities have greatly expanded their online practice opportunities. Virtual spaces are surprisingly effective for practice and building a sense of Sangha. Many Buddhist and Zen centers are now facing the prospect of permanently including options for virtual participation, which brings many opportunities but also many challenges. I discuss how the virtual and physical practice spaces look at my Zen center, and how we structure hybrid meetings. Then I talk about the merits of what we call the “Cloud Zendo.” In my next episode, I’ll discuss the merits of a good old-fashioned physical practice space, which we call the “Dirt Zendo,” and the ways my Zen center is trying to integrate and care for both of our Zendos and create a sense of being one Sangha.
In order to find motivation for diligent practice, it can help to identify and connect with what you love more than anything else in the whole world. What love makes your life worth living? Love for your children, grandchildren, animals, nature, music, beauty, justice, knowledge? What or who arouses an unconditional sense of affinity and inspiration in the core of your being? Then practice for the subject of your love, because practice makes you better able to access, express, and manifest your love.
This is my second episode on one of the central teachings of Mahayana Buddhism, that all beings have Buddha-Nature (buddhata). In the first episode I discussed the view of human nature in original Buddhism and why the teaching of Buddha-Nature may have arisen in response to it. Then I talked about the beauty of the Buddha-Nature teaching along with some of its potential pitfalls. In this episode I discuss more about what Buddha-Nature is and is not, how we can benefit from this teaching, and in what sense having Buddha-Nature is a good thing even before you awaken to it.
One of the central teachings of Mahayana Buddhism is that all beings have Buddha-Nature (buddhata). Awakening to this Buddha-Nature allows one to attain unsurpassed enlightenment, so it is clearly pure, good, and redemptive. But what is Buddha-Nature? Sometimes it is presented as our potential for awakening. Sometimes it is associated with our bodhi-mind – that which causes us to seek the Buddha Way. Not surprisingly, the teaching of buddhata is difficult to grasp. Even so, we can have a sense of it, and this offers an experience of personal redemption and deep faith in the Dharma.
Reality has two dimensions. Along the dependent dimension, our world is unequivocally full of greed, hate, delusion, and suffering, and any moral person should feel compelled to do something to make things better. Along the independent dimension, things are just as they are, and when we don’t impose our expectations and preconceived notions on the world, it’s a miracle anything exists at all. The two dimensions do not conflict with one another but are simultaneously true. The challenge is to be awake to, and live in harmony with, both dimensions, without clinging to either one.
This is episode is the fifth and final installment – at least for now – of the story of my spiritual journey. I share a few more of what I call “enlightenments” – pivotal and personal insights I experienced along the path of practice that ultimately helped me find what I was looking for from the beginning.
