Wise Hope
Lately a Mountains dharma buddy has been signing her email “Towards wise hope”, and it made me consider how Wise Hope is a wonderful paramita for modern times. The phrase comes to us from the writings of Joan Halifax in which she explores suffering from the Buddhist perspective, and looks
Immanence
Paul Maloney, roshi, explores what is meant by Buddha Nature. The Zen Buddhist view on the human condition can be summarised by the following proposition of Hakuin Zenji, in the conclusion of his Song of Zazen. “This very place is the Lotus Land, this very body the Buddha.” If this
Letting Go
“Greed, hatred and ignorance rise endlessly. I vow to abandon them.” Our vows at first seem to be impossible contradictions but each time, as we say them with trust, the impossible finds some translation into our daily life. I find the word “abandon” interesting. It’s possible to imagine the valiant
Engaged Buddhism
A tribute to Peacemaker Bernie Glassman, roshi Perhaps more than ever before, we need to take wise action in our fractured world with its global problems of climate change, rise in natural disasters, refugee crisis, economic and political instability. Wise action requires both an inner and outer revolution, not just
All Moments are the Time Being
‘The reason you do not clearly understand the time-being is that you think of time only as passing. In essence, all things in the entire world are linked with one another as moments. Because all moments are the time-being, they are your time-being.‘ Dogen Time can measured in seconds, minutes,
Who is this ‘I’?
All the harmful karma ever created by me since of old On account of my beginningless greed, hatred and ignorance Born of my body, speech and thought I now acknowledge openly and fully In the Purification gatha which opens our sutra service the “I” is salient and crucial. Let’s
The Heart of Practice
Upon his Awakening, the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni said, “Wonderful, wonderful, now I realize that all beings are buddha, only their ignorance and attachments prevent them from realizing this fact.” The term Buddha means “one who is awake,” and it is this experience that is the very heart of
Perfection
There’s a saying in English “Practice makes perfect”, but in our Zen practice we actually drop ideas of perfection and non-perfection. We practice just to practice, without any gaining idea. I make this point because it’s so easy to get caught up in the emotion of “that was a good