Here is a photo following our Jukai ceremony last November during a sesshin at Providence Zen Center. I’ve included a few other photos from that retreat, including one of the altar memorial card for my mom, who had passed away just a few weeks earlier.
I gave this talk at Full Moon Zen’s Zazenkai on January 31, 2026. A recording follows the text.
A phrase from our Oryoki meal chant popped into my head the other day: “This meal of ten benefits nourishes us in our practice. Its rewards are boundless, filling us with ease and joy.” I chuckled as I thought about my experience of Oryoki practice during my first many sesshins. That line always stung. I was feeling anything but ease and joy as I tried to observe all our minute meal forms while my knees, ankles, and back ached and my mind was racing.
Dōgen repeats this phrase at the end of his short essay “Rules for Zazen.” He tells us zazen “is the great dharma gate of ease and joy.” I can hear his novice monks groaning, “Yeah, right.”
Some of us have been dealing with some pretty tough stuff lately, myself included. Even those of us who haven’t lost a loved one, separated from a partner, had surgery, or dealt recently with some other major challenge may be feeling there isn’t much ease and joy going around generally these days. Many of us are feeling the weight of the world. There are immigration raids and shootings, an affordability crisis, wars and threats of new ones.
So what’s all this talk of the Zen path being about “ease and joy”? Where is the ease and joy? Where do we find it? How does a path that includes sitting uncomfortably for hours on end and eating in silence while performing tedious rituals help us find it?
I don’t intend to “Zen out” by pretending this path is all bliss all the time, or that it leads to blissful feelings all the time. Life is hard. In some ways, Zen confronts us with and amplifies this reality.
The notion of ease in Zen isn’t about reaching a place where life is without difficulty. It’s not really about external circumstances, or what we can’t control. It’s about our own perspective and disposition. A better perspective and disposition certainly can help improve our circumstances, but not entirely or mechanistically. There are causes and conditions beyond our immediate influence.
Ease is about how we meet things. About our capacity to be present to challenging circumstances with openness and curiosity. Without being reactive and making them worse. This tends to be harder to pull off in contexts that feel stressful. For some of us, that means speaking or other activities when we’re being observed by others. For some, it’s the realm of intimate relationship. For some, it’s moments that limit our agency, like having to keep a commitment we made earlier but don’t want to keep now.
Zen can help us experience more ease in this sense. We become better a coping with the small challenges practice presents, and so we become better at coping with other challenges. We relax our grip on our sense of self—which, in case you hadn’t noticed, is the central character in all our dramas. We learn to be nakedly present to what is; what’s arising moment by moment. Less anxious, or less reactive as anxiety arises.
Joy in Zen isn’t an amped-up, exuberant state. Zen has nothing against exuberance, but a constant, elevated mood is not the goal. We might even say that happiness as we tend to talk about it in the West is not the goal of Zen practice. Again, Zen has nothing against feeling very happy. But, honestly, who among us is in an elevated mood all the time, never frustrated or upset? That’s not a realistic goal, nor would a constantly elevated mood be a mark of maturity, of an integrated self. Psychologists see that sort of presentation as a defense mechanism against less pleasant feelings, like anger or shame, one might have a harder time integrating.
A better synonym for joy in the Zen sense might be contentment, which is really about an abiding sense of appreciation for our life as a whole and each thing in it. Even the difficult things. If we look closely and are honest, there often are past, present, and possible future blessings mixed into challenging experiences. We need to allow ourselves to feel the hard stuff: sadness, grief, and the like. Let it move through us. But let’s not miss the diamonds in the rough either. A baseline experience of joy is about noticing small things and diamonds in the rough.
Zen practice can help us experience more joy in this sense. Our friend Bob Waldinger had his first, big opening during Oryoki practice deep into a sesshin. He’d been experiencing all the discomfort and hardship most of us experience in the early days of Zen practice, and even beyond the early days. At one point during the meal he became totally aware of and present to a single grain of rice in his bowl. Bob, the grain of rice, and all things merged in that instant. Total presence. Total appreciation. Total joy.
So perhaps when we hear that our simple meal and fussy, difficult way of eating, or our long hours sitting still are dharma gates of ease and joy, we can recalibrate a bit. We can think of Zen as a path of presence to and contentment with what is; as an invitation and opportunity to meet what is differently than we otherwise might.
We are confronted with what is here, now, whether we like it or not. We have no choice in the matter presently. Our only choice is about how we receive and respond to it.
I gave this talk on January 15, 2026. A recording follows the text.
This is Case 27 in The Blue Cliff Record:
A monk asked Yun Men, “How is it when the tree withers and the leaves fall?”
Yun Men said, “Body exposed in the golden wind.”
I had a mysterious dream thirty-five years ago. I didn’t understand it until earlier this week. It’s hung about me all these years like a koan.
I was living in Berlin, Germany. I had traveled south to the Black Forest in Bavaria to attend a retreat with Sogyal Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher.
One night there I dreamt of an important friend meditating serenely. She and I had been very close years earlier. I hesitate to add this detail, because it was not an erotic dream, but my friend was not fully dressed. (For the record and for what it’s worth, I had never seen her like this.) Now I understand that both our close friendship and her naturally exposed state in this dream are important details.
A strange word accompanied this image of my friend meditating: Bekommweg.
That was the whole dream. The image of my friend meditating and this word.
Bekommweg is not a real German word. It’s a mashup of two other words. Bekommen means “to receive.” “Weg” means way and also “away.” “Wegwerfen” means to throw away. This sense of throwing away, or casting away, was how I understood the “weg” in “bekommweg” when I woke from my dream.
It’s this strange word that has hovered like a koan all these years. What did it mean?
It finally came to me a few days ago. I was ready to receive its meaning.
It means receiving by letting go. Translated literally, bekommweg would be something like receive-away. We also could translate it as the receiving way, or the path of receiving, but receiving by letting go best captures the sense of the message encoded in my dream.
This is the only way we can receive. Receiving by letting go is what our Zen practice and teachings are all about.
This is zazen. We sit openly, receiving everything, holding nothing. We sit intimately, deeply connected to ourselves and all else. We sit completely exposed.
This is non-attachment, which is the only sensible and sustainable orientation to experience in a world of constant change; an existence marked by impermanence.
Non-attachment is not indifference or distance. It’s total presence. It’s non-separation. It’s meeting everything and everyone as subject, as the center of the universe—a universe of which we also are center. Non-attachment is the antithesis of meeting another as an object to which we conceivably could attach.
This is the only path of true intimacy in relationship. We can’t genuinely be intimate with someone we objectify. Someone we try to possess or control, however subtly and whether we experience ourselves as needing to control from above or from below. Nor can we genuinely be intimate if we’re trying to be too possessed or in control of ourselves in the relationship; if we’re too bounded. Intimacy requires vulnerability, exposure, relinquishment of control, real peer-to-peer engagement. No above or below. Boundaries, but not impenetrable boundaries through which nothing truly affecting can come or go.
We must let go to experience intimacy, to receive it.
Sometimes what we must let go of is entirely intangible. A belief, a desire, a feeling, or a personal tendency that no longer serves us or others we care about. We must change in place, so to speak. We let go of something inside us to make way for the uncontainable—what’s truly alive, what’s real—rather than the golden calf or piece of shit conjured by our imagination.
Sometimes we must let go of something tangible, maybe even before we have fully let go of our beliefs, desires, or feelings about it. Maybe we must let go of an object we cherished, money we’ve lost, an opportunity, a role, a loved one who has passed, a child who has left the nest or should, a relationship.
We must learn to let go of both the tangible and the intangible. Letting go means truly letting go. Accepting what comes. Even if it’s a parting.
Life is a continuous parting. Letting go of what was to make way for what’s actually here or what’s arriving. The only way truly to be here, receiving all life has to offer, is to reconcile ourselves to letting go.
It’s the only way to be intimate with life.
Time passes swiftly, even when we wish it didn’t. Imagine if we could grab onto time as it’s passing, like grabbing a rope being dragged over the ground by a wild horse on the run. We latch onto the rope at some moment in time to try to obtain or freeze-frame some state or situation we favor, and then we find ourselves being dragged across the ground, in agony but holding on for dear life, afraid to let go.
Holding onto experience is impossible. We only make ourselves and others miserable if we try to contain or control the uncontainable. If we try to make anything or anyone conform to our self-serving, idealized notion of it or them.
The tree withers. It doesn’t resist its withering. It lets go of its leaves. Releases them to the golden wind that’s bending its branches and peeling its bark.
This all may sound a bit stoic, but we simply can’t receive by holding on. We can’t receive if our hands are full or clenched into fists.
We can’t receive if we won’t let go of our complaints, grudges, and fixed views about others. If we keep them imprisoned on the other side of a stone wall as they grow and change beyond the barriers we erect, which limit our field of vision. We might need to change ourselves. We must at least step out from behind our wall; be present to perceive and receive them.
Our bodies are forever changing, circumstances are changing, those around us are changing, our relationships with others are changing. We can’t hold onto what was, nor what never was that we have imagined or wished for. We can only ever welcome what is and what’s to come.
Whatever may come, we must let go to receive it.
I’ll close by rereading the poem “Lucky” by the Buddhist nun Bhadra that we chanted during our liturgy:
You always considered yourself lucky
because things seemed to work out
the way you wanted.
Now luck has a different meaning.
Lucky to be walking a Path that finds peace—in the arising and passing
away of each present moment.
Regardless of how things work out—
or don’t.
I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit today. A recording follows the talk.
This morning let’s return to a koan I’ve focused us on twice recently. Here are the first few lines of Case 19 in The Gateless Gate:
Chao-chou asked Nan-ch’üan, “What is the Tao?”
Nan-ch’üan said, “Ordinary Mind is the Tao.”
Chao-chou asked, “Should I try to direct myself toward it?”
Nan-ch’üan said, “If you try to direct yourself you betray your own practice.”
What is this ordinary mind we bring to practice? This mind that both seeks and is the Way?
Well, for Chao-chou at this pivotal moment in his journey, as for many of us, it’s a mind that wills itself to seek the Way, not believing it is the Way, despite Nan-ch’üan’s assurances.
It’s a mind that wills itself to seek itself through practice. To meditate. To sit with koans. To seek guidance from teachers.
Chao-chou asks if he should will his mind to move toward his mind, whatever the heck that could mean. The dog chases its tail.
We find Zen teachers through the ages doggedly insisting this is it. Just this. Ordinary mind is the Way. The Great Way is not difficult. Just avoid picking and choosing, including not choosing against our picking-and-choosing mind.
This all seems quite paradoxical from the perspective of the Way-seeking mind. We tend to come to Zen practice both enamored with and imprisoned by our will; both seeking to amplify it in some sense and yet wanting to be released from its grip and to transcend it. We make an effort to practice Zen but are told it’s ultimately about no effort.
There really isn’t a word used in Japanese Zen that precisely equates to our Western concept of will. But there are three other words used in Zen that are very interesting for our purposes.
There’s Daifunshi, which gets translated as Great Determination in the Three Great Essentials, the Three Pillars of Zen: Great Doubt, Great Faith, and Great Determination. Daifunshi connotes fierceness, heat and energy, urgency, almost indignation. This is the spirit, the drive with which many of us take up practice. It’s seen as a virtue, particularly early on when Zen practice can be rough sledding, as we say in Colorado.
Then there’s kokorozashi. Kokoro means heart-mind; our whole being. Zashi means intention or aspiration. Kokorozashi is the personal intention to commit our whole being to practice. It doesn’t convey that sense of fierceness and urgency. It’s not merely intellectual or emotional either. It’s about orienting of our whole self toward practice.
And then there’s gan. This is a very interesting word. It’s the word that gets translated as “vow,” as in The Four Great Vows. “Beings are numberless, I vow to save them” and so on. But something definitely is lost in this translation. The spirit of gan is transpersonal. It’s about participation in something that transcends us individually and even transcends humanity. Gan is about recognizing and expressing our alignment with—our non-separation from—the universe, the Absolute, Oneness, Interbeing.
The experiential arc of Zen practice is a progression from daifunshi to kokorozashi to gan. Progressively feeling each of these aspirations in our bones—being them.
We ultimately exercise our will to discover it as permeable to, permeating, and subdued by and in something larger than our personal will as we once experienced it. But that mind and the will and willfulness we bring to practice along the way are it, too, we also discover. Nothing is excluded.
“The ego wants to be present at its own funeral,” the Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trungpa was fond of saying. That’s amusing, and poignant, and characteristically quotable, but I’m not sure it’s quite right.
The ego doesn’t die exactly. As our sense of self is pacified, it discovers it can slip through the bars of its prison cell; that the door is unlocked.
To mix metaphors, and koans, and to bring us full circle, we also discover our buffalo tail still gets stuck in those bars. We come to accept that; progressively take things more lightly; even chuckle at how our will gets in the way, as the Way—a way that becomes progressively less fraught and easier to walk as we travel it.
I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen evening talk on December 18, 2025. A recording follows the text.
Tonight, I want to talk about different modes and styles of Zen practice and teaching. I’ll give you the conclusion up front. The point I want to make is that there are different ways we can practice and different strengths students and teachers may have. And it’s all good. The many ways are the Way.
I want to use two koans from the collection Entangling Vines to illustrate this point. I’ll read them and then I’ll say a bit more.
This is Case 78, Mazu’s Moon Viewing:
Once Baizhang Huaihai, Xitang Zhizang, and Nanquan Puyuan were attending Mazu as they viewed the autumn moon. Mazu asked them what they thought of the occasion.
Xitang said, “It’s ideal for a ceremony.”
Baizhang said, “It’s ideal for training.”
Nanquan shook his sleeves and walked away.
Mazu said, “Zhizang has gained the teachings, Huaihai has gained the practice, but Puyuan alone has gone beyond all things.”
This is Case 123, Comparing Three Students of Linji:
In the “Zen Master Huiran of Sansheng Temple” chapter of the Treasury of Bright Light, Juzhou Baotan says:
The disciples Baoshou Zhao, Sansheng Huiran, and Xinghua Cunjiang under Linji were much like the disciples Baizhang Huaihai, Guizong Zhichang, and Nanquan Puyuan under Mazu.
Baizhang resembled Mazu in his strength of character; Guizong resembled Mazu in his depth of talent; and Nanquan resembled Mazu in his greatness of mind. In the same way, Baoshou resembled Linji in his sincerity, Sansheng resembled Linji in his keenness, and Xinghua resembled Linji in his subtlety and depth.
The sincerity of Baoshou is seen in how he applied the staff to the clear blue sky, and in how he struck Rivet-and-Shears Hu. The keenness of Sansheng is seen in his exchange with Yangshan Huiji, and also in the way he struck Xiangyan, pushed over Deshan, and extinguished Linji’s True Dharma Eye. The subtlety and depth of Xinghua is seen in his scattering of pearls in the purple-curtained room, and in the way he waved his hand two times in front of the monk’s face. Though they each gained but a single of the master’s qualities, still Linji’s Zen has lasted a hundred generations. If all his qualities were grasped, how could Linji’s Zen fail to flourish for a thousand or ten thousand generations?
What always troubles me is that if the stick and shout are not applied to the present generation, Linji’s Dharma will decline. Why should there be anything that later generations cannot do if they but make the effort? The problem is that their teachers have not yet fully penetrated Linji’s Dharma. It is like drinking water and knowing for oneself whether it is cold or warm. Xinghua’s stick of incense—this was gained through hardship and effort. Therefore Linji’s Dharma flourishes.
Ceremony and text, meditation and koan practice, and just living one’s life without fussing too much about such things. Going beyond as Puyuan did.
We’re here practicing Zen altogether in part because another religious tradition has similar wisdom around the idea that there are many different modes of practice, and it’s all good. I’m speaking here about contemplative Christianity and the Trappist monastic order specifically. Many of you have met my teacher, Kevin Hunt, who is 91 or so. He’s been a monastic, a Trappist, since his late teens. And, lucky for us, he joined the Trappist order, which is the strictest and most austere monastic order in the world, certainly within a Catholicism, which has most of the monastic orders existing in the world under its roof.
The reason we’re lucky is the Trappists have this interesting idea about prayer. Prayer can be anything, and as a Trappist, you have complete freedom to pray as you pray. So if the way you seek the divine, if prayer for you is basketball, then during prayer time you play basketball. That’s not what most people do. But, within reason, however you’re called to the One, to unity, to prayer, it’s respected.
Kevin took up Zen practice early in his journey as his form of prayer. There’s a story there. He was called to silent contemplation, but he kept nodding off in the pew when he’d tried to sit silently to prayer. He’s fall asleep. He stumbled across a book on Zen, saw people sitting cross legged, and figured he’d give that a try. It worked! That was how his initial interest in Zen was sparked. The story goes on, of course.
We might all be doing Zen practice if the Trappist order didn’t have such a permissive tradition or didn’t honor diversity in that way. But we might not be doing it all here together. I may never have become a Zen teacher. In our first koan, Mazu seems to be saying that going beyond his words is better than ritual, better than studying the teachings, better than meditation, better than koan practice. But I don’t really think that’s his point. I think he’s pointing to discovery of the fullness of emptiness, which Puyuan represents, as the ultimate purpose of all of our practices: ritual, studying texts and teachings, introspection practice, and everyday life is practice. Some of us gravitate more towards one dimension of practice than others, but it’s all practice and it’s all good. We can and hopefully will come to know it all as expressions of the fullness of emptiness.
The second koan illustrates, for me, how different people, different students and teachers, have different temperaments and different positive qualities. Different strengths. And that’s okay.
Mazu embodied strength of character, depth of talent, and greatness of mind. Linji embodied some different qualities: keenness, sincerity, subtlety and depth. Each of three students of each of these teachers embodied one of their three qualities. There are rare personalities like Mazu and Linji who have many positive traits rolled up into one. But most of us don’t have multiple superpowers. Each of these students that only had one of superpower went on to become an important teacher in his own right, transmitting the Dharma. The point of the koan is that the Dharma continues and hopefully flourishes through the ages if each of us develops and shares our strengths with others, and if others make themselves receptive to what each of us has to share.
Taken together, these two koans illustrate the reality that it takes a village to practice. They illustrate how we’re all part of and co-constructing that village. Each of us needs different things. We resonate on somewhat different frequencies. None of us can be all things to all people all the time. We need to look to different sources of wisdom and teaching. It takes different types of contributions to make a community. I really encourage all of us to deeply realize this about teachers, in particular. In the Zen tradition, individuals and communities and teachers themselves can get into a lot of trouble if they idolize teachers too much.
Each of us has our strengths and weaknesses; things we’re good at and things we’re less good at; different temperaments. And it’s all good. Together our frequencies can mix in ways that make music or that make that annoying scratchy static sound. It all depends on knowing and accepting and coordinating and appreciating what each of us, and what each of the various forms and elements of practice that make up our tradition, have to offer.
Together we make sangha: community. That’s a really important idea across all the world’s ancient wisdom traditions. Islam has the notion of the Umma, which is kind of our idea of sangha. The Christian tradition talks about the church this way, or the Body of Christ as sangha. In our tradition, we see deeply, we go beyond, by realizing the unity of the three wheels: giver, receiver, and gift.
I gave this talk on November 25, 2025, at our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit. A recording follows the text.
This is case 14 in The Gateless Gate, Nanquan Kills the Cat. Eric, cover your ears. For those of you who haven’t heard this koan, be forewarned. There’s one gruesome bit, particularly if you’re a cat lover like Eric.
Nan-ch’üan found monks of the eastern and western halls arguing about a cat. He held up the cat and said, “Everyone! If you can say something, I will spare this cat. If you can’t say anything, I will cut off its head.” No one could say a word, so Nan-ch’üan cut the cat into two.
That evening, Chao-chou returned from the outside and Nan-ch’üan told him what happened. Chao-chou removed a sandal from his foot, put it on his head and walked out.
Nan-ch’üan said, “If you had been there, the cat would have been spared.”
You’ll be glad to know most subsequent Zen teachers through time maintain that Nanquan just mimicked killing the cat. I guess we’ll never know.
What were the monks of the eastern and western halls arguing about? Something speculative was dividing them, no doubt. Does the cat have Buddha nature or not?
But I want to talk about our internal divisions. About ambivalence. Sometimes we have quarreling eastern and western halls within ourselves. Two impulses or perspectives, each of which seems to have worth, which tug at us, and we experience them as incompatible. Our heart and mind is divided.
From a Zen perspective, it’s the reification, the concretization of this dividedness—our captivation by it, our captivity to it—that kills the cat, not Nanquan’s blade. Nonquan’s cut is an expression of oneness in response to divideness. His blade mends rather than separates.
We find a range of perspectives on ambivalence across cultural, religious, and philosophical traditions. Ambivalence about ambivalence, it seems.
Our English word ambivalence is a mashup of Latin words meaning “both” and “value.” It was invented by a psychologist who treated schizophrenia to describe one characteristic of that condition. But psychology has since cataloged pros and cons of what we might call garden variety ambivalence. In our youth, it can help us maintain emotional distance from a caregiver who isn’t trustworthy or discover our agency and develop independence if and as we become ambivalent about (no longer fused with) a trustworthy caregiver. But it also can cause decision paralysis and inhibit action, keeping us stuck.
Christianity’s perspective on ambivalence isn’t so spacious and balanced. It generally takes a dim view of ambivalence. The Gospel of Matthew (6:24) tells us, “No one can serve two masters.” Elsewhere (James 1:8) we read that “a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” There’s certainly truth in that. Each of us probably knows someone captive to ambivalence who is unstable in all their ways. Maybe you’ve been there yourself.
In philosophy and literature we get a range of perspectives, but mainly a lot of sympathy for this common human experience and recognition that it often produces tragedy or pathos. Think of Hamlet’s question: “To be or not to be.” His character is ambivalent about so much, including existence itself.
The Zen perspective is something different altogether. From a Zen perspective, there’s no fundamental division, ever. People, cats, objects, perspectives, feelings—each of the 10,000 dharmas—is distinct, but there’s no sense in which anything is separate. There is a fundamental oneness to everything, always, including any of us when our heart and mind feels divided. There’s no place to go when we try to hide, metaphorically anyway. We can’t hide from ourselves; from any part of us. The problem is our mental habit of separating, which generates the constructs that divide and paralyze us. We disintegrate, decompose, not realizing the wholeness we are right now, however we are.
Many of our dilemmas and debates won’t be resolved by more thinking and arguing. Zen prizes activity. Doing. Living into and through obscurity toward daylight. We are form. Emptiness manifest. Doing is form. Doing transforms.
If loving someone or something half-heartedly is all you can manage now, love half-heartedly with all your heart. Will you resist the impulse to say or do something kind, and can you truly be one with kindness, in that moment, as you say or do it, not objectifying that kindness as it comes forth, but opening to it, letting it work on you even as you are the vehicle, the embodied expression of kindness? Something good might be returned to you, and your heart might begin to mend if you are willing to receive it. Or, if you know in your heart of hearts that your heart must break, let it break.
When you are stuck, be fully stuck. Don’t force quick fixes to your stuckness. You probably won’t think your way out of it. Each of us is in a call and response relationship with the other 9,999 Things in this vast robe of liberation—the Universe. We’re the Universe calling to itself. Watch and listen for how the Universe is bidding you to respond. As Carl Jung said, using the language of theism, “Bidden or not bidden, God is present.” Trust your instincts. Respond. Be responsive. Be a part (not be apart). Take part. Participate.
Putting one’s sandal on one’s head was a sign of mourning in ancient China. Chao-chou wasn’t morning the cat. He was mourning his fellow monks’ loss of life. Zen practice came so they could have life, and have it more fully. They didn’t get it.
If you can say a word, I’ll spare the cat.
I’ve said my word. I look forward to yours.
I gave this talk on November 13, 2025, at our Full Moon Zen sesshin at Providence Zen Center. We had a Jukai ceremony the previous night, during which eight of our sangha members received Zen’s sixteen Bodhisattva Precepts. A recording follows the text.
It is wonderful to be here with you. I’m so happy. This feels like something of a reunion. I think we’ve all, if I’m not mistaken, come from out of state. Even Cheryl, who used to live a stone’s throw away. Some of us just traversed one state to get here, but others traversed several, and some even got on the plane. I’m just so happy that we’ve all made an effort to be here together in this beautiful place. I’m always awestruck sitting here and looking out of the windows, whatever the weather’s doing. It’s beautiful. I’m tempted to say we can’t make it any better with our words. But words are it, too.
Our theme for this sesshin is being a Buddha, and I want to explore the practice of living by vow as being Buddha. In our Jukai ceremony last night we said the precepts are not rigid commandments to be blindly followed but instead are a bridge—a bridge between the Buddha nature, the truth at the heart of our existence as we sense it wants to express itself, on the one hand, and the manifestation of its expression in our daily lives, on the other hand.
I know from conversations with each of you, including a couple conversations last night, that some of us grew up in a Christian tradition with the notion of sin. And, if you did, maybe your tradition’s notion of sin; and its ethical principles, like the Ten Commandments designed to discourage sin; and the way people talked about and related to those things, did feel like rigid commandments. Maybe.
But what does this word sin mean, really? It has linguistic roots and it also has a theological gloss or interpretation.
What are the linguistic roots? In both Old English and in precursor languages to German, it’s straightforward. Sin is moral wrongdoing, which was understood in terms of deviation from divine law. It meant deviation from God’s law in this early European context in which the notion of sin began to take shape. The word also conveyed a sense of “being” or “true existence,” suggesting that sin is deviation from truth or being itself. So, linguistically, etymologically, sin also suggests deviation from that which is true; deviating from being or existence itself—or, in Zen terms, we might say not being Buddha, not being oneself, not being one’s highest self.
When the Christian Bible was translated from Greek into Old English, the Greek word that was translated as sin is an archery term that means “missing the mark.” I kind of like that because I used to practice Kyudo, which is Zen archery. The archery reference is lovely, I think. Linguistically, and in theistic terms, sin is deviating from godliness or from ultimate truth. It’s missing the mark.
In our non-theistic Zen idiom, we could think of God as oneness or the Absolute, which all relative things like you and me manifest and express. Missing the mark is thinking speaking or acting in some way that denies or obscures this reality of oneness.
When we speak about the Three Treasures, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha—which are the first three of our sixteen precepts—we sometimes translate Buddha as oneness. To be Buddha—which we can’t help but be, but which is a reality that we’re not always awake to, and which we can awaken to—means to know and to feel this oneness as ourselves, as others, and to live it. It’s to know that we’re distinct, but in no sense separate.
I said earlier that, in the Christian tradition, there’s a linguistic root to the notion of sin, but there’s also theologizing about it. Sin is sometimes theologized about in terms of separation; separation from what is ultimately true and real. And here we find a tight connection to Zen. If I had to pick just one word to sum up the Zen Way, it might well be non-separation. Or, to state it positively: oneness, wholeness, integration. Thich Nhat Hanh’s word for this was interbeing.
Bernie Glassman, our Dharma great grandfather, in his book about the precepts, really summed it all up by saying that the precepts and all the teachings are about realizing that all is Buddha. Oneness. It’s no surprise that Nancy Mujo Baker titles her book on the precepts, which is the main text for our precepts study group, “Opening to Oneness.”
I’m a big fan of a contemporary philosopher whose name is Terry Warner. He taught at BYU. His “secular” philosophical work is deeply informed by his Christian faith. In one of his big philosophical themes, which lies at the intersection of philosophy and psychology, is self-deception. He says we almost always know when we are about to miss the mark, to separate. He says we very often have a flash of clear insight before we transgress or miss the mark, and that we betray the reality of oneness when we act in a way that’s contrary to that higher standard, to hitting the mark. We separate from our Buddha nature. We separate from others. We separate from truth itself or reality in that moment.
Warner is very influenced by Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher and mystic, who distinguished between what he called I-Thou and I-You modes of relating. I-Thou seeing the divinity, or we might call Buddha Nature, in others and in all things. When we’re in an I-You mode, we’re objectifying and instrumentalizing others; making ourselves separate from them. And you know what? We’re also objectifying ourselves when we do this, which is to say separating from our own true nature.
With all that as background, I thought we might just walk through each of the ten Grave Precepts, briefly, one by one, and look at how they encourage us to aim towards wholeness or interbeing; not to separate. Really, all 16 precepts are about non-separation. Each of the three treasure—Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha—is a different way of saying that all is Buddha. They are different angles on the reality of oneness, and we have a context, a community, in which we discover it and make it real. The Three Pure Precepts—ceasing from evil, doing good, and helping others—begin to make that reality of oneness more concrete. They help us think about it more concretely. And the ten Grave Precepts guide us on how to make the reality of Oneness concretely manifest in our daily lives.
Recognizing that I am not separate from all that is, I vow to take up the way of non-killing.
There you have it. In classic Zen fashion, we get right to the heart of the matter. Have you ever wished that someone or something would just go away? Even die. That is the pretense of separateness in the extreme. That is the most forceful desire to separate imaginable. Dogen’s version of this first precept on non-killing, which I just read, appropriately opens with the statement, “Recognizing that I am not separate from all that is . . .”.
Being satisfied with what I have, I vow to take up the way of not stealing.
Me, my, mine. My need, my thing. Being unsatisfied with what I have is separation. Appreciating what I have, working to satisfy my reasonable wants and my true needs such that others’ reasonable wants and true needs are respected and satisfied alongside mine: This is appreciating what I have; non-stealing. Getting what I want and need in a way that doesn’t separate myself from others, or me from the recognition of what’s sufficient, is to take up the way of non-stealing.
Honoring mutuality and respect and commitment, I vow to take up the way of not misusing sex.
Sex, needless to say, is a domain in which we see people instrumentalizing others, objectifying others, and so objectifying myself. What a shame; such a squandered opportunity to hold and conduct ourselves in a way that honors Oneness. Such wonderful potential to express beautifully the reality of Oneness. Such a shame when sex is not approached that way.
Listening and speaking from the heart, I vow to take up the way of not speaking falsely.
To speak falsely—saying things we know not to be true or even being reckless about the truth—is to separate from truth. Speaking carelessly is to separate from the truth and to separate ourselves from others. I love the way this Dogen’s version of this precept opens with “Listening and speaking from the heart.” When we’re doing that, we’re being present, present to others in this speech act, in this speech communion. It’s another way to express non-separation. Another word for this is presence. When we truly are present to ourselves and others, we’re not separate. We’re manifesting the reality of Oneness.
Cultivating a mind that sees clearly, I vow to take up the way of not intoxicating mind and body.
Intoxicants of all varieties—anything we might overvalue, including work, TV, and Instagram, not just drugs and alcohol—can be a way of separating from our own lives and from others. Not being present, truly present. I drink wine. I enjoy it. And, with a nod towards Terry Warner’s idea of self-deception, it’s my practice to pay attention to that first impulse to have a glass of wine. What’s it about? Sometimes when it arises, I recognize it as a desire to separate from something that’s been difficult; that I don’t like about the day or about my experience presently. That doesn’t mean I don’t have the glass of wine necessarily, but I’ll do my best to shift into another mode around it if I do. At other times that glass of wine is so much about enjoying the company of others; communing; non-separation. Lovely.
Unconditionally accepting what each moment has to offer, I vow to take up the way of not finding fault in or with others.
“Unconditionally accepting what each moment has to offer”: right there, presence, non-separation. I don’t think too much more needs to be said about this one. This is just so common, isn’t it? Speaking for myself alone, I can and often tend towards separating myself from others in this way. Blame. Being blind to my own contributions to some difficulty.
Meeting others on equal ground, I vow to take up the way of not elevating myself at the expense of others.
In some ways, this is my favorite precept. It’s the hardest one in so many ways. It’s as if we needed a precept just to say, “It’s all about non-separation.” Elevating myself at the expense of others is the very move of the separation we’re talking about.
Using all the ingredients of my life, I vow to take up the way of not sparing the Dharma assets.
We can steal, take things from others, and we can also hoard what we have: our time, our capabilities, our talents, our resources. We can refuse to participate fully in the circle of life; in making the circle of life a virtuous circle. The circular economy, so to speak. By withholding our love. Withholding our truth; what we know to be true; not speaking up about our reasonable needs. When we’re doing that, we’re often actually elevating ourselves above others. We’re denying others the opportunity to meet us and to meet our needs, which they might want to do. Even if they don’t want to do it, they might need to learn to do it for there to be a virtuous cycle.
Transforming suffering into wisdom, I vow to take up the way of not harboring ill will.
Anger. Anger is all about separation. In the version of the Four Vows we chant, we use the word hatred. In other translations, you’ll see that word as anger. I think hatred really makes a point. It’s about aversion. Aversion is about wanting to separate from something. It’s a helpful, adaptive impulse on some level. There are things we don’t perpetually want to abide; that we want to work skillfully, and perhaps collaboratively, to change. Yet that impulse can be taken too far when it manifests as outwardly expressed anger, even hatred. That can lead to missing the mark on other precepts we’ve looked at. Anger-driven killing is the most extreme example of that.
Honoring my life as an instrument of the Great Way, I vow to take up the way of not defaming the Three Treasures.
Well, this is just another way of saying everything we’ve said so far. We’re pointing back to Oneness. Non-separation. Separation is a fraud. Indulging in it is a pretense. It’s a story. It’s impossible. The precepts remind us of this truth and help guide us towards living in truth, living this truth.
So, we can see the precepts as a little instruction manual for how to be a Buddha. If we’re living our vows and living them from the right mindset and heartset, we are likely to be showing up as Buddha, not separating from our Buddha nature. We tend to think of other practices, like zazen and koans, as the centerpiece of our practice. Thy really are not the centerpiece of our practice. They’re all just ways to help us learn to show up as Buddha; to hit the mark. They are supportive of the heart of our practice, which truly is the precepts.
Realizing, manifesting, living by them. This is being Buddha.
I gave this talk on October 2, 2025. A recording follows the text.
This is Case 42 in The Gateless Gate:
Once Manjushri went to a place where many Buddhas had assembled with the World-Honored One. When he arrived, all the buddhas had returned to their original dwelling place. Only a young woman remained, seated in samadhi, near the Buddha’s seat.
Manjushri addressed the Buddha and asked, “How can the young woman get near the Buddha’s seat when I cannot?”
The Buddha replied to Manjushri, “Awaken this young woman from her samadhi and ask her yourself!” Manjushri walked around the young woman three times, snapped his fingers once, took her to the Brahma Heaven and exerted all his supernatural powers but he could not bring her out.
The World-Honored One said, “Even a hundred-thousand Manjushris cannot awaken her. Down below, past twelve hundred million lands, as innumerable as sands of the Ganges, lives the Bodhisattva of Delusive Wisdom. He will be able to bring her out of her samadhi.”
Instantly the Bodhisattva of Delusive Wisdom emerged from the earth and made bows before the World-Honored One who gave him his imperial order. Delusive Wisdom stepped before the young woman, snapped his fingers once and at this she came out of samadhi.
Here’s Yunmen’s verse:
One can bring her out, the other cannot;
both of them are free.
A god mask; a devil mask –
the failure is an elegant performance.
When I decided to talk tonight about the two major virtues Zen foregrounds, wisdom and compassion, and about the relationship between them, I went looking for a koan that would provide a good starting point. I read all the koans featuring Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, and landed on this one. It’s a doozy. I think it works for my purposes. We’ll see what you think when we get to the dialogue after the talk.
You may have noticed that many zendos have at least one image of Manjushri. In the monastery zendo we use on sesshin at Providence Zen Center, you will find him in the lower right of the colorful mural behind the large Buddha statute on the altar. Manjushri is depicted holding a sword, which symbolizes prajna: discriminating wisdom that cuts through delusion, ignorance, and false distinctions. Buddhism regards ignorance and conceptual confusion as the root of suffering.
What are we confused about? The nature of our own existence. We think of ourselves, and we feel, separate, rather than interconnected; woven together as one fabric. Manjushri’s sword severs false views. It cuts the root of our suffering.
We often also find images of Avalokiteshvara, also known as Kanzeon, the Bodhisattva of compassion, in meditation halls. She is carved into the front panel of the altar in the monastery zendo at PZC. Their Kwan Um School of Korean Zen is named after her, so you find her everywhere there. The white porcelain statue of a woman with many arms and hands—it’s supposed to be 1,000—is Avalokiteshvara.
In the carving on the front panel of the altar, a massive Avalokiteshvara—aka Kanzeon or Kwan Um—sits on the shore beside rough waters in which a tiny human is thrashing about. Drowning, he reaches out to Avalokiteshvara, who saves him. That human is you or me. The 1,000 hands on that white porcelain statute of Avalokiteshvara nearby are there to sense our needs and to reach out to save all of us.
We tend to dualize thought and feeling, mind and heart, in Western culture. Wisdom is associated with the mind, which we tend to associate with directed thought, so the idea of wisdom takes on a rational, analytical character. It’s solely a product of reasoning. Feeling is associated with the heart, and the heart is associated with emotion, which we tend to regard as irrational.
Asian cultures don’t dichotomize this way. Heart and mind are one. The Japanese word kokoro is translated as heart-mind. That’s heart-hypen-mind. If you ask the Japanese to indicate where in the body this heart-mind resides, they won’t point to the head or the chest. They’ll point to the belly, which is the center of our body, where our breath in meditation and our nervous system settles—where we have butterflies or not. It’s also where we have gut feelings. We associate the gut with intuitive knowledge, of course; knowledge that we feel.
Let’s return to our koan and its verse. When Manjushri arrives to meet Shakyamuni Buddha, all other Buddhas who had been with him disappear. Manjushri’s wisdom sword cuts through false dichotomies. The many dharmas, the many Buddhas, are one. Form is empty. All is Buddha. There is no Buddha to whom Manjushri can get near because all is one.
But there is a woman lost in samadhi—peaceful, even blissful perhaps, but still feeling separate. She is near the Buddha, but apparently has not yet fully realized, fully known and forgotten, her own Buddha nature. Manjushri can’t reach her.
The Buddha says even 1,000 Manjushris, with their penetrating insight into false distinctions and the emptiness of form, could not reach her. In other words, just approaching her with the idea of Emptiness and Oneness won’t reach her.
But, we learn, there is a Bodhisattva of Delusive Wisdom—a Manjushri that apparently sees form in emptiness, and who can make contact with the Buddha and the 10,000 things. This bodhisattva appears, snaps his fingers, and the woman is released from her spell. Presumably she now realizes that form is emptiness.
This Bodhisattva of Delusive Wisdom is fascinating and illuminating. Here we see wisdom not as a detached observer or witness, somehow above it all, but in the tangled vines with us. Embodied wisdom. Feeling wisdom. Emotional wisdom.
Of course, it must be so. There is no “above”; no separate place or perspective from which we judge our own or others’ experience. Wisdom is embodied and must be embodied. Wisdom is born of experience. There is solid research showing that feeling our feelings, relating to them well, and integrating them helps us make good decisions, as if we need such geeky confirmation of something that should be so obvious. Feeling and thinking are partners.
The Bodhisattva of Delusive Wisdom, Manjushri’s other mask, is Avalokiteshvara—compassion. The heart-mind is in the world of form, of humans with our sense of lack and separation, feeling pain that enables us to recognize others’ pain, hearing and feeling others’ cries, knowing we’re not separate, but also not getting lost in emptiness, able to make contact, able to respond with our 1,000 hands.
Wisdom-and-compassion. We find Zen’s lost coin when we realize wisdom and compassion as its two sides.
I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit today. Here’s the text of the koan I used, with a recording of the talk.
This is Case 19 in The Gateless Gate:
Chao-chou asked Nan-ch’üan, “What is the Tao?”
Nan-ch’üan said, “Ordinary Mind is the Tao.”
Chao-chou asked, “Should I try to direct myself toward it?”
Nan-ch’üan said, “If you try to direct yourself you betray your own practice.”
Chao-chou asked, “How can I know the Tao if I don’t direct myself?”
Nan-ch’üan said, “The Tao is not subject to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion; not knowing is blankness. If you truly reach the genuine Tao, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can this be discussed at the level of affirmation and negation?”
With these words, Chao-chou had sudden realization.
I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen Zazenkai on September 13, 2025. A recording follows the text.
This is Case 19 in The Gateless Gate:
Chao-chou asked Nan-ch’üan, “What is the Tao?”
Nan-ch’üan said, “Ordinary Mind is the Tao.”
Chao-chou asked, “Should I try to direct myself toward it?”
Nan-ch’üan said, “If you try to direct yourself you betray your own practice.”
Chao-chou asked, “How can I know the Tao if I don’t direct myself?”
Nan-ch’üan said, “The Tao is not subject to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion; not knowing is blankness. If you truly reach the genuine Tao, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can this be discussed at the level of affirmation and negation?”
With these words, Chao-chou had sudden realization.
The notion of no self is one of the most perplexing teachings of Buddhism to many people. You and I are so obviously here together, so what could it possibly mean?
Most humans seem to consider themselves rather reflexively to be separate beings. Beings that function and, in some sense, exist independently of other beings and things.
If we think about this for a nanosecond, however, it becomes obvious that we’re not independent at all. We’re interdependent. We depend upon clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and nourishing food to eat. We depend upon other people to help meet needs we cannot meet alone, from healthcare to being and feeling safe and loved. If we had been neglected by others for too long as infants, we would not be together now.
So, we’re definitely not physically independent or separable from our environment and social sphere. Yet, even knowing this, we continue to think of ourselves as having or being a separate self. This perspective, or mental formation, is a default setting in the human operating system. It seems so obviously true that most of us don’t even question it. In fact, we organize everything from most religious thought about this life and what may follow it, to human rights law, to our approaches to therapy around the idea that we’re separate selves and some theory of that self. The notion of separate, solid, possibly eternal selves is baked into our language and almost everything else in our culture. These days, in this part of the world and elsewhere, selves are elevated, amplified, and glorified.
But Buddhism, and certainly Zen Buddhism, questions this default perspective or setting. It even pins much of our personal and collective suffering on it. How and why would it question what seems and feels so intuitively, obviously true to so many of us? Is there substance to this mental formation we call the self? If we go looking for it, can we find a self and fix its boundaries in time and space?
Let’s take a moment to try. Please, just close your eyes and settle in for a moment. Please look for yourself in, or apart from, this physical form we know is dependent upon the air you’ll be breathing and the food you ingested this morning. Can you find the self?
Okay. Let’s return. Did you find it? [Discussion]
If we can’t find a substantial, essential, surely eternal self, what’s the alternative? Does our inability to define the parameters of a durable, persistent, separate and separable self lead us to nihilism? No, that’s not the Buddhist view either.
The Buddhist view is that we tend to think of ourselves as nouns, when, in fact, we are more like verbs. We are activity. Interdependently arising, interconnected activity. We are not a thing; we are experience itself.
Buddhism says our existence, our experience, has three key characteristics, or “marks”: impermanence, no self (or insubstantiality), and suffering. Each one seems to follow from the next.
We are born into a realm that is constantly changing. Birth is change! We are change and we are vulnerable to the very change that we are; within which we exist. This sense of self with which we come equipped is useful. Would I eat, socialize, and do other things necessary to sustain myself if I didn’t think I had a self to take care of?
But, as we’ve seen, we tend to objectify, solidify, and cling to this sense of self more strongly than is justified. We expect or want it to exist unchangingly, permanently, apart from the ever-changing stream of activity in which we exist.
And our resistance to accepting the fact that the first mark of existence, impermanence (or perpetual change), also applies to oneself—in other words, our resistance to the second mark of existence, no self—leads to the third mark of existence: we suffer.
We see this suffering all around us, don’t we? Especially in this time and place in which we each of us feels compelled to precisely define, and refine, and project “who I am,” distinctively and essentially. We suffer if we don’t feel sufficiently recognized for our distinctiveness. We suffer even among companions who recognize one another’s distinctiveness. We suffer as groups that regard themselves as distinctive square off against other groups who see their respective forms of distinctiveness as opposed, and perhaps even as negating one another.
Buddhism invites us to examine and see through the illusion of ontological separateness. To hold our “selves” and other “selves” with a light, loving touch.
If we regard ourselves and others as activity, as experience itself, our perspective on life, and how to conduct our lives, shifts. We become much less focused on objects (nouns) we can have or avoid, and much more focused on improving the quality of our shared experience; the interconnected activity that we are manifesting right here and now. And now. And now. And now.
The contemporary Zen teacher Yamada Koun Roshi, said, “The practice of Zen is the perfection of character.” If there is no self to perfect, then what are we perfecting through Zen practice?
Activity. Experience. The quality of our shared, interdependently co-arising experience.
Machs gute. We want to “make it good,” as the Germans say.
This activity is as vast and boundless as outer space. Let’s make it good. Together.
Together, because there is no such thing as apart.
Turning Words 