by Domyo | Apr 30, 2025 | Buddhist Teachings, Zen Teachings
This episode is a Teisho, an encouragement talk that’s meant to be listened to while you are sitting quietly. Zen teachers give Teisho during sesshin, and this amounts to a more formal kind of Dharma talk, almost like a meditation. It’s not meant to be educational. I’m curious as to how it will come off if you listen to it while walking or driving or doing something else. Maybe it’ll be cool. But I recommend sitting still if you’re able. Teisho are generally only given during sesshin and not recorded, but I recreated one from the sesshin I led last week for you.
by Domyo | Oct 24, 2024 | Buddhist Texts, Zen Teachings
It’s challenging to make our Dharma practice continuous – maintaining awareness and appropriate conduct each moment of our lives. In his essay Gyoji, or “Continuous Practice,” Zen Master Dogen doesn’t offer practical tips for mindfulness and pure conduct in everyday life, but instead challenges our limited ideas about what practice is. In this episode (part 2), I continue discussing four points I think Dogen makes about Gyoji.
by Domyo | Oct 2, 2024 | Buddhist Texts, Zen Teachings
Our goal in practice is to live in accord with the truth, or the Dharma – not only while sitting in meditation or studying Buddhism, but every moment of our lives. In other words, we strive to make our practice continuous. It can be extremely challenging to maintain mindfulness and good behavior all the time. How can we make our practice more continuous? Not surprisingly, in his essay “Gyoji,” or Continuous Practice, Dogen does not give us practical tips but instead challenges our limited ideas about what practice is.
by Domyo | Jan 9, 2024 | Buddhist Teachings, Zen Teachings
The Two Truths teaching is another classic Chan/Zen description of Reality-with-a-Capital-R. Reality has two aspects, often called relative and absolute. I call them the “dependent dimension” and the “independent dimension.” I describe this teaching and discuss why it is so important to our practice.
by Domyo | Oct 31, 2023 | Buddhist Texts, Zen Teachings
In my second episode reflecting on Dogen’s “Bussho,” or “The Buddha-Nature,” I discuss how Buddha-Nature is a teaching about our existential koan as human beings. I also talk about how Dogen says we have already got Buddha-Nature, and then explore more fully his teaching about “Total Existence.”
by Domyo | Oct 27, 2023 | Buddhist Texts, Zen Teachings
In his essay “Bussho,” or “The Buddha-Nature,” Dogen explores and expands a classic Mahayana Buddhist teaching. I reflect on a few central concepts from the first paragraph.
by Domyo | Feb 27, 2022 | Zen Teachings
Do we think there’s life after death in Soto Zen? I discuss the Soto Zen perspective on consciousness and whether some kind of consciousness continues after our physical death, and where we find meaning if the self is empty of any inherent essence.
by Domyo | Feb 21, 2022 | Buddhist Texts, Zen Teachings
In this episode I explore a teaching from 12th-century Chan master Hongzhi, in which he instructs us to “wander into the center of the circle of wonder.” I propose that the whole of the Dharma can be found by exploring the nature of wonder, and what it is that obstructs wonder.
by Domyo | Oct 11, 2021 | Buddhist Practice, Zen Teachings
Formal Zen koans are short stories or statements by past Chan/Zen masters which have been passed down through the generations for study and contemplation by Zen students. Each koan contains a Dharma teaching, and until you personally experience and digest that teaching, the koan remains a closed gate you need to pass through. On the other side of that gate is greater freedom, wisdom, and compassion. In this episode, I discuss “natural koans,” or Dharma gates that arise in our everyday lives, and how to work with them.
by Domyo | Aug 13, 2021 | Buddhist Teachings, Zen Teachings
The medicine of suchness is life-saving, because even the happiest and most fortunate human life inevitably contains suffering. And sometimes – in our personal lives or in the wider world – we face terrible things that arouse anxiety, depression, fear, despair, or rage. Our climate and ecological emergency is one such terrible thing, bringing us face to face with loss on a scale never before contemplated by human beings. Our Zen practice offers us suchness as a medicine that can alleviate our despair and help us access strength and gratitude.
