Put it All Down: A Talk by Madelon Bolling (August 2025)
Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn always told us: Put it all down. And: Only go straight, don’t know. Dahui Zong-gau has been quoted as saying: If you truly wish to practice, just let go of everything. Know nothing, understand nothing. (Attributed to Dahui, loc inconnu). And then in Andy Ferguson’s Zen’s Chinese Heritage: The Masters and Their Teachings, we find: Zen master Shishuang entered the hall and addressed the monks, saying, Each of you has what is fundamental. There’s no point in searching for it. It’s not to be found in right or wrong, nor in anything you can talk about....
Read MoreZenkai (October 12, 2025) with Guest dharma talk by Carlos Abusaid Elias – In Person and Zoom
Please join us for a special opportunity this zenkai to hear a talk by our dharma brother, Carlos. Many of us know and have practiced with Carlos for years. In December 2022, on the last day of the 8-day Winter Bones Intensive, Carlos Abusaid Elias received transmission as an apprentice teacher in the Diamond Sangha and Mountain Lamp lineages. He trained extensively at Mountain Lamp for many years, participating in all activities and practices. And before taking up the zen path, he trained in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition as well. Three Treasures Sangha will hold this event in-person at our...
Read MoreDrain the tank — a talk by Leland Shields (July 12, 2025)
Dogen; Zazen Universally Recommended …Therefore, stop your intellectual exercise of investigating words and chasing after talk; study the reverse way, turn the light and shine it back. Body and mind will drop away of themselves, and your original face will appear. If you want such an experience, exert yourselves urgently… (Version by Robert Aitken, based on the translation by Carl Bielefeldt, Dōgen’s Manuals of Zen Meditation, 1988.) With breath, mu, hearing, we give ourselves over. Exhale, while sitting upright, back straight and chest open. Inhale. Giving ourselves over to this...
Read MoreZenkai (August 10, 2025) with Madelon – In Person and Zoom
Three Treasures Sangha will hold this event in-person at our Dharma Gate facility and live by Zoom. Registration information (for in-person) and current Covid-19 Guidelines are posted below the schedule. Guidelines are likely to change before the event, so check again as the date gets closer. If you are able, please join all or part of this opportunity for intensive practice with others. Zoom Link: Send email to ttssangha@gmail.com. If this will be your first event with TTS, we will arrange for an...
Read MorePractice and Teaching – TTS and the Diamond Sangha — a talk by Leland Shields, June 8, 2025
Practice and Teaching – TTS and the Diamond Sangha Diamond Sangha Teachers Meeting, Ring of Bone, 2025 Leland Shields, June 8, 2025 I saw myself a ring of bone in the clear stream of all of it and vowed, always to be open to it that all of it might flow through and then heard “ring of bone” where ring is what a bell does – Lew Welch (1926-1971) Today I’d like to talk about the meeting of American Diamond Sangha teachers that I attended at the Ring of Bone Zendo in the rural foothills of the Sierra Nevada, northeast of Sacramento. The poem I read a moment ago is a...
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