Why Does it Come to This? / I Vow to Free – A Talk Given by Lee Shields, October 11, 2020
After the sittings on Friday mornings, the koan that has been shared recently is case 98 from The Record of Tung-shan (Dongshan) that goes like this: One time when the Master was washing his bowls, he saw two birds contending over a frog. A monk who also saw this asked, “Why does it come to that?” The Master replied, “It’s only for your benefit, Acarya.” Before sitting on Wednesday evenings, we have taken up the translations of the first of the Four Infinite vows, also known as the Bodhisattva Vows. The Mountain Lamp version is: All beings beyond number, I vow to free. Aitken Roshi’s...
Read MoreDahui, Swampland Flowers: 9 Enlightenment and Delusion (a talk by Lee Shields, September 7, 2020)
Dahui, Swampland Flowers: 9 Enlightenment and Delusion In the last paragraph of lecture 9 of the Swampland Flowers, Dahui directed us with the following: If you want to cut directly through, don’t entertain doubts about buddhas and ancestral teachers, or doubts about birth and death – just always let go and make your heart empty and open. When things come up, then deal with them according to the occasion. Be like the stillness of the water, like the clarity of a mirror, (so that) whether good or bad, beautiful or ugly approach, you don’t make the slightest move to avoid them. (Then) you will...
Read MoreZen Practice-at-home intensive with Jack Duffy (September 5-12, 2020)
Registration is now available for the Zen Practice-at-home intensive with Jack Duffy. Dates: From 5:30pm Saturday September 5, 2020 through 1:15pm Saturday September 12, 2020 Register
Read MoreThis Moment – A Talk by Madelon Bolling – June 14, 2020
A monk asked, “What is the essential meaning of Buddhism?” Mazu said, “What is the meaning of this moment?” (Ferguson, p. 76) Our world has changed so radically that ordinary routines don’t work any more or are not available. Like any other living thing, when the old ways don’t work, we try to meet our needs in new ways. Deprived of overhead light, an upright tree will begin reaching sideways, growing a new shape. We talk a lot about sudden radical change and unpredictability under the current threats of death, destruction, disease, and disorder. We talk about how this maps on to...
Read MoreSeparate and Not Separate Are Consistent – Leland Shields, May 10, 2020, Zoom Zenkai
In the apparent but misleading dichotomy of practice, there is one breath, all else falling away. Yet in one breath, there is context – fast, chest heaving after running for a bus; ragged, with congestion; tortured, when in respiratory distress. Each is one breath. We cannot deny this breath, that is only obscured by our descriptions. In these days, we cannot deny this breath is connected to all things, through the illness of exposure, or through the health arising from our shared care through isolation and hygiene. I am not the first to observe that the contagion of pandemic baldly exposes...
Read MoreEncouragement for Windblown Plum Home-Based Intensive — a talk by Leland Shields, April 5, 2020
The phrase, “never apart from this very place” takes on new relevance as we are in lockdown for Covid-19, each practicing in our own homes, our own quiet rooms. This week is a chance to truly bring practice home, to the place before we were born, and to the home in which we sleep, cook, clean, and many of us now work. This bizarre practice, assisted by the technology that has existed for only moments within the span of the Buddha-Dharma, is not a backup or compromise. It is the only practice. It is sesshin, without need to parse definitions of the word, “sesshin,” affording us the benefit of...
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