How is Buddhism Being Maintained Here? — a talk by Leland Shields (September 17, 2025)
Listen to the talk Blue Cliff Record Case 35: [Manjusri] “Three Three” [Manjusri] asked [Wu Cho], “Have you come from near or far?” “From the South,” replied [Wu Cho] (the south of China). “How is southern Buddhism being maintained?” asked [Manjusri]. [Wu Cho] replied, “In this corrupt age of the dharma, priests are venerating the precepts a little.” [Manjusri]asked, “How many are there?” “Three hundred here, five hundred there,” replied [Wu Cho]. How is Buddhism being maintained here?” [Manjusri]said, “Ordinary people and saints live...
read moreNothing in The World — a talk by Leland Shields (September 16, 2025)
Listen to the talk Blue Cliff Record 37 Panshan’s Three Worlds – No Dharma Panshan gave words of instruction saying, “In the three worlds there is no Dharma. Where shall we search for the mind?” (translation: Aitken- Foster) We are settling into the sesshin schedule, the ritual, and zazen. What better place to be on this day, than here with Panshan. In his translation of the koan, Nelson Foster added a note, saying that in Buddhism, there are several meanings to the phrase, “The three worlds”: the worlds of delusion – greed,...
read moreBuddha-nature: A Talk by Madelon Bolling (September 15, 2025)
“If all sentient beings possess the buddha-nature . . . then why must people develop the aspiration for awakening and vigorously engage in austerities in order to realize this truth?” Dogen “[A]wakening is the paradigm of total, unreserved, and artless self-surrender.” C. W. Huntington Jr. “A Pathless Land” Tricycle magazine Aug. 31, 2025 Buddhist traditions claim that the nature of Mind is free, open, and pure awareness. Well, that’s capital “M” Mind, whereas what I’m using now is mostly small “m” mind. I always wondered how we get from...
read more“No Body” Breaks a Toe — A talk by Leland Shields (September 14, 2025)
Listen to the talk A monk was walking along a path, chanting the Heart Sutra. He accidentally kicked a stone, broke his toe and shouted out in pain. As he did so, the line in the Heart Sutra spontaneously came to mind, “no body.” With this, body and mind dropped away. The related passage from the Heart Sutra is this one: Therefore in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, perception, mental reaction, consciousness; no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind, no color, sound, scent, taste, touch, thought; no seeing and so on to no thinking; no...
read morePut 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...
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...
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...
read moreFully Engaging Body and Mind — A Talk by Madelon Bolling (May 11, 2025)
There is a reality even prior to heaven and earth; Indeed, it has no form, much less a name; Eyes fail to see it; it has no voice for ears to detect. To call it Mind or Buddha violates its nature, For it then becomes like a visionary flower in the air. It is not Mind, nor Buddha; Absolutely quiet and yet illuminating in a mysterious way, It allows itself to be perceived only by the clear-eyed. It is Dharma, truly beyond form and sound; It is Tao, having nothing to do with words. (Dai-O Kokushi: On Zen) PSC We do not exist as separate...
read moreTalks from Twining Branches Sesshin, March 2025
Crack! Stone on Bamboo Pai-chang’s Fox He Just Acted as He Was
read morePai-chang’s Fox — A talk by Leland Shields — March 2025
Case 2 in the Gateless Barrier: Once when Pai-chang gave a series of talks, a certain old man was always there listening together with the monks. When they left, he would leave too. One day, however, he remained behind. Pai-chang asked him, “Who are you, standing here before me?” The old man replied, “I am not a human being. In the far distant past, in the time of Kāśyapa Buddha, I was head priest at this mountain. One day a monk asked me, ‘Does an enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect or not?’ I replied, ‘Such a person...
read more