Once again I find myself writing out of the experience of pilgrimage to Shikoku. Like sesshin, pilgrimage has the capacity to shake up our lives: as we drop the regular routines and the concerns of our everyday lives and entering into a sustained period of practice, we create space for necessary truths to emerge. Quite often these openings happen during
The opening paragraph in a much loved text Faith in Mind by the Third Zen Patriarch, Seng T’Sang, are very affirming and have direct implications for our practice. The Supreme Way is not difficult it simply avoids picking and choosing. When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised, Make the smallest distinction however and heaven
‘Encouraging Words from the Teacher’ was published in the June/July 2017 Newsletter: An oft told story in these parts—and recently told at the autumn sesshin– is that concerning Hsueh-feng, snowed in with his dharma brother and mentor Yen-tou at a place called Turtle Mountain. While Yen-t’ou snoozed, Hsueh-feng spent most of the time doing zazen. “What are you doing sitting like a
Chapelle du Rosarie: Questions of Resurrection and Rebirth An essay by Subhana Barzaghi, first published in Mind Moon Circle Spring 2016 edition. – One of my primary reasons for coming to the old historic village of Vence which is located on the slopes of the Côte d’Azur France was to see and to sit in the Chapelle du Rosarie, also
Inside the Brushwood Gate An essay by Gillian Coote, Roshi. First published in Mind Moon Circle, Spring 2016 Yunmen said: Medicine and sickness mutually correspond. The whole world is medicine. What is the self? (1) And at the end of the day in sesshin, we are reminded: Birth and death is the Great Matter. All things pass quickly away.
