Podcasts
Read More
An Appropriate Response
‘What is the work of the Buddha’s whole life? An appropriate response.’ Gillian Coote, roshi explores Case 14 of the Blue Cliff Record. Day 5, Spring Sesshin 2017
Podcasts
Read More
Why Are We Here?
Gillian Coote, roshi explores the first koan in ‘The Gateless Barrier’ of the Wu-Men Kuan – Mu. Day 1, Spring Sesshin 2017
Essay
Read More
Sangha relations: Kodoji Family Picnic Weekend
There is a ‘precious heart-to-heart connection sangha members experience’. SANGHA Gillian Coote, Roshi recently reminded us at the AGM: ‘In this time of increasingly virtual relationships, the importance of face-to-face communication in handing on the live coal of the Dharma, as Robert Aitken Roshi did, is ever-greater. Turning up for sangha
Podcasts
Read More
Ordinary Mind is the Tao
How can I find my way in the Dharma? How shall I proceed? This is the gist of the sincere questions Chao chou put to his teacher, Nan Ch’uan. Their dialogue—found in case 19 of the Wu Men Kuan– is most instructive and illuminating, not to say evergreen. Ordinary mind is the
Podcasts
Read More
Shikoku Pilgrimage
Zen student Janet Selby takes us on a journey to Japan to walk from temple to temple on the Island of Shikoku. She describes what it’s like to take every step as it comes and enjoy not knowing what may lie ahead. Along the way she draws the landscape, people
Podcasts
Read More
Riley Lee shakuhachi concert
Riley Lee is one of the world’s foremost performers, composers and teachers of the shakuhachi, an end blown bamboo flute. The shakuhachi has been used by some Zen sects as part of their meditative practice, calling it suizen (“blowing meditation”). In the shakuhachi tradition a collection of original pieces of
Essay
Read More
Every Time You Breathe In, Thank A Tree – Gillian Coote
At our recent samu at Gorricks Run, I asked Heath and Fleur (Nick and Jo’s children), whether trees breathed. They weren’t too sure, so we embarked on an experiment. We picked some leaves and put them in a glass of water, weighing them down with a little rock. We had
Essay
Read More
Frankland River Forest – 41A & B* – Diana Levy
It was war and the giants fell despatched by a scadgett, take this coupe and make of it a timber soup says the Forestry, so a yellow machine with a saw and a claw tracks its way to 41A, and the man inside with a job and a plan cuts
Essay
Read More
‘Not Knowing’ & ‘Destitute Mind’: Two teahouses of Nanzenji temple – Allan Marett
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
Podcasts
Read More
Why Zen & a World in Crisis Need Each Other – David Loy
The highest ideal of the Western tradition has been to restructure our societies so that they are more socially just. The most important goal for Buddhism is to awaken and put an end to dukkha “suffering” due to the delusion of a separate self. Today it has become obvious that we need both: not just because