The Zen Studies Podcast

This is the third episode of three comprising the ?Zazen? chapter of my book, ?The Ten Fields of Zen Practice: A Primer for Practitioners.? I start by offering what I should have put at the beginning of my chapter on Zazen: Basic instructions for Zazen. I then discuss how my ?Five Efforts in Zazen? suggest Zazen is a neat and linear process, but in actuality Zazen is a messy, organic, real-life experience. Finally, I talk about how to deepen your Zazen without getting caught up in self-centered striving.

This is the second episode of three comprising the "Zazen" chapter of my book, "The Ten Fields of Zen Practice: A Primer for Practitioners.? I finish my discussion of the five efforts of Zazen, covering becoming intimate with Life, seeing the true nature of Life, and being one with Life.

The second Field of Zen practice is Zazen. ?Za? means seated, and ?zen? means meditation. However, as 13th-century Zen master Dogen famously stated, ??Zazen is not meditation practice.? Superficially, our Zazen may look like the meditation done in other spiritual traditions, or even in secular settings. We even call Zazen ?meditation? sometimes, for convenience. However, Zazen is not meditation in the sense of a mental exercise aimed at a particular result. Zazen is our total response to life. It is the essence and enactment of our entire Zen practice.

The Buddha famously said ?admirable friendship,? or what I?m calling Dharma friendship, is the entirety of the holy life. In the last episode, I discussed the value and nature of personal Dharma friendships. In this episode, I talk about what makes a good Dharma friendship and offer some practical ideas about how to find, form, and maintain such relationships.

The Buddha famously said the ?admirable friendship,? or what I?m calling Dharma friendship, is the entirety of the holy life. In this episode, I discuss the value and nature of personal Dharma friendships. In Part 2, I will talk about what makes a good Dharma friendship and offer some practical ideas about how to find, form, and maintain such relationships.

This episode on Bodhicitta, or Way-Seeking Mind, is chapter two of my book The Ten Fields of Zen Practice: A Primer for Practitioners.? Bodhicitta is the first Field of practice because without it we never even begin practice, and, if we don?t nurture and sustain it, our practice will wither and die. I discuss the first arising of Bodhicitta, its function, how to cultivate it, and its profound nature.

In this introductory chapter to my book, ?The Ten Fields of Zen Practice: A Primer for Practitioners," I discuss the nature of practice and "progress" on the path of practice. I then introduce the Ten Fields, and the rest of the book will consist of a chapter on each of the Fields.

The Two Truths teaching is another classic Chan/Zen description of Reality-with-a-Capital-R. Reality has two aspects, often called relative and absolute. I call them the ?dependent dimension? and the ?independent dimension.? I describe this teaching and discuss why it is so important to our practice.

The Two Truths teaching is another classic Chan/Zen description of Reality-with-a-Capital-R. Reality has two aspects, often called relative and absolute. I call them the "dependent dimension" and the "independent dimension." I describe this teaching and discuss why it is so important to our practice.

One way to frame our practice is to say it has a "translation" aspect and a "transformation" aspect. Translation means to apply Buddhist teachings and practice to our life to free self and other from suffering, and live with greater wisdom and compassion. Transformation means to seek transcendence of the self and all of its limited views through a relentless process of inquiry, for the sake of an even more profound and stable liberation. I discuss how each aspect is valuable, how they differ, and clarifying what you want out of your own spiritual path.

When we witness - or experience - suffering or injustice, the medicine of emptiness can give us strength and equanimity. It should also increase our compassion, allowing us to be open, sensitive, and responsive without getting overwhelmed by anxiety, depression, fear, anger, or hatred. I talk about what the "medicine of emptiness" is - and isn't - and how to access it.

Everyday life gives us countless opportunities for "awakening work." I discuss ways to practice each and every moment in order to awaken to the truth of Dukkha and the ending of Dukkha, and to the truth Emptiness. In Part 3 I will talk about how we can similarly work on a direct, personal experiences of Suchness, Buddha-Nature, and the Two Truths (absolute and relative) in the midst of our daily lives.

The formal aspects of Buddhist practice ? the things you can look at and identify as ?Buddhist practice? ? are very important. These include meditation, Dharma study, and time with Sangha. However, unless you?re a monk in a really strict monastery, over 90% of your time is spent outside of formal practice. It?s important to remember that practice each and every moment ? how we choose to live our life, just as it is ? is the most important thing.

In my second episode reflecting on Dogen's ?Bussho,? or ?The Buddha-Nature," I discuss how Buddha-Nature is a teaching about our existential koan as human beings. I also talk about how Dogen says we have already got Buddha-Nature, and then explore more fully his teaching about "Total Existence."

In his essay "Bussho," or "The Buddha-Nature," Dogen explores and expands a classic Mahayana Buddhist teaching. I reflect on a few central concepts from the first paragraph.

In zazen we stop imposing ourselves on the world either through our habitual thinking or through any effort to control or judge our meditative experience. Only then can we meet the world us it is unfolding around, within, and through us - but this meeting requires energy and participation. This episode addresses the two essential aspects of zazen practice: What we are not doing, and what we are doing. Both are equally important and both are easily misunderstood.

In this second half of a two-episode discussion, I briefly review the limitations of sensual or worldly pleasures. Then I explore how engagement with the world, contrary to simply being a compromise, can be its own path of practice. Finally, I talk about how the Buddha?s teachings on renunciation are not only relevant but deeply meaningful and useful for householders.

The Buddha was pretty clear. If you wanted to experience complete liberation, it was best practice renunciation - to leave all worldly things behind: Family, sex, alcohol, fancy food, music, entertainment, frivolity, etc. Why did the Buddha recommend this? Why do fully ordained Buddhist monks and nuns still live this way? Are the Buddha?s teachings on renunciation relevant for householders?

In Part 3 of my ?Sangha Challenges? discussion, I finish my list of reasons you may resist joining a Buddhist community or find it challenging to maintain your relationship with one over time. I present each challenge as an opportunity for growth and learning.

This is my third and final post during my 2023 sabbatical month. I'll be back soon with a full episode, but in the meantime I wanted to share two past episodes with you that multiple listeners have said were important to them.

Here again with recommended episodes for you to listen to while I'm on my August sabbatical from Zen teaching and writing. Your chosen form of meditation may be what I call "Directed Effort" meditation, or "Letting Go" meditation (I discuss Directed Effort versus letting go in Episodes 83 and 84: Two Paths to Meditative Concentration: Directed Effort Versus Letting Go ? Part 1 and Part 2). In either case, you may find some useful tips in Episodes 184 and 185: 14 Ways to Enliven Your Zazen. When my zazen gets dull, lazy, restless, or distracted, these are the ways I try to engage my meditation more wholeheartedly.

I take a sabbatical from my Zen teaching one month a year, and this year it?s in August. In this announcement I explain (and thank you for your patience), and recommend one of my 236 past episodes to listen to (published six years ago!).

In Part 2 of my ?Sangha Challenges? discussion, I talk about various reasons you may resist joining a Buddhist community or find it challenging to maintain your relationship with one over time. I present each challenge as an opportunity for growth and learning. I will finish up my list of challenges in the next episode, Part 3.

Should you join a Sangha? Sangha, or community, is one of the ?Three Treasures? of Buddhism, but is it really necessary? How important is it? There are many "Sangha Challenges" - reasons you might feel resistance to joining a community, or difficulties you might face as you practice with one. I discuss ways to relate to various Sangha challenges as opportunities for practice and growth. 

Seated Zen meditation ? zazen ? is less like the meditative practices of many other spiritual traditions, and more like prayer in theistic traditions. This is not because we believe in God (although we might), but because zazen can be seen as a ?religious? act ? if we define religion in one of the ways philosopher William James offered, as ?our total response to life.?

Understanding the teachings of Buddhism starts with becoming familiar with the Buddha's life story. This isn't because he is believed to have been divine, or even a prophet. Instead, his story is important because it serves as an archetype for the Buddhist vision of spiritual seeking and development. There are many teachings embedded in the story of the Buddha, who is regarded as having been a remarkable human being ? but just a human being, like you or me.

One of Zen master Dogen?s most beloved writings is a relatively short essay called ?Sansuikyo,? or the Mountains and Waters Sutra. In this episode, I reflect on two aspects this work: The statement that mountains and waters are, in of themselves, words of the Buddha, and the fantastic imagery of ?mountains walking.? I only cover a few paragraphs of the Sansuikyo, but it is enough to open up a profound spiritual inquiry.

Buddhist and Zen masters through the ages have begged us not to ?waste time.? What does this really mean? How do we know if we?re wasting time, and does it really matter?

This is part four of my series called ?One Reality, Many Descriptions,? Buddha-Nature Part 2. I first talk about Buddha-Nature as trust. Then I offer the requisite discussions of what Buddha-Nature is not, and how it is necessary for us to awaken to our own Buddha-Nature in order to fully partake of the associated joy, redemption, and faith.

This is part three of my series called ?One Reality, Many Descriptions.? While experiences of Emptiness and Suchness (or Thusness) may be liberating and transformative, we may be left with the question of how our limited, embodied existence relates to these profound truths. Our natural inclination toward self-preservation, our appetites and shortcomings, our ingrained habits, our complacency ? these things can seem at odds with the greater Reality we have started to perceive. The teaching of Buddha-Nature points to the marvelous and redemptive fact that we too ? just as we are ? are Thus: Luminous and miraculous in and of ourselves.

It's natural to feel some eco-anxiety as the earth?s natural life-support systems break down. Buddhism clearly admonishes us to refrain from killing, to actively care for all life, and see ourselves as being in the ?same boat? with all beings. In what ways can our practice help us stay strong, and how can it help us respond to our climate and ecological crisis in a way that?s consistent with our Buddhist values?

Eco-anxiety is fear that our earth?s natural life-support systems are in the process of a collapse that will be catastrophic to life as we know it. This fear may range in intensity between a vague, pervasive sense of worry to a debilitating condition. What does Buddhism have to say about eco-anxiety, and what does it offer us if we want to be responsible citizens and true to our aspirations as Buddhists ? but we also want to avoid being overwhelmed with fear, despair, or a sense of powerlessness?

Awakening Inquiry is aimed at awakening to what I?ve been calling Reality-with-a-Capital-R. How do we inquire into aspects of Reality we have not yet even imagined? How do we even know what we don?t know? How can we see what we have not yet seen? How do we even know where to look? In Zen, we do this through the use of koans, whether those are traditional koans or natural ones. I discuss the nature of awakening inquiry and how to find koans to focus your practice.

What do Buddhists mean by the terms ?Suchness? or ?Thusness?? Over the millennia, Buddhists have employed many concepts to point us toward Reality-with-a-Capital-R, because awakening to Reality is profoundly liberating. This series of episodes discusses five classic descriptions of Reality. In Episode 229 I talked about the first of these, Emptiness (One Reality, Many Descriptions Part 1: Emptiness). In this episode I explore Suchness, or Thusness.

In the last episode I discussed ?karma work,? or the process of noticing the underlying reasons for our selfish, harmful, or less-than-enlightened behaviors of body, speech, and mind, and then working to resolve them. I talked about how to identify our karmic issues. In this episode I discuss what to do once you?ve identified a karmic issue you?d like to work on, taking you through the process of delving into the underlying causes of your negative karmic patterns, and then finding greater freedom through insight and through habit change.

An important part of Buddhist practice is spiritual inquiry. Buddhism teaches us that there are underlying reasons for every selfish and neurotic thing we do, and that we can discern what those reasons are and work on them. This karma work can lead to lasting and transformative change. In this episode I describe karma work and discuss how to identify your karmic issues. In the next episode I will talk about the process of karmic inquiry once you have identified a karmic issue you would like to resolve.

In this episode, my second in a short series on spiritual questions, I talk about various reasons for resistance to coming up with or asking spiritual questions. Then I discuss the relationship between karma work and awakening, because in my next episode or two I?ll explore in depth how to come up with karmic questions, and then how to come up with awakening questions.

There are many aspects of Buddhism which suggest you ought to have deep spiritual questions ? questions which are not merely intellectual, but which matter to you, personally, very much. Questions which bother you so much that you are driven to seek answers in the hope that they will bring peace of mind, or reveal better ways to think or behave, better ways to live your precious life. How can you come up with meaningful spiritual questions, or choose which of your many questions you should focus on?

Buddhism is based on seeking ? seeking freedom from suffering, greater wisdom and compassion, greater skillfulness in benefiting beings, and a more authentic, connected way of being. Our spiritual growth depends on arousing and sustaining ?Bodhi-Mind,? or the ?Way-Seeking Mind,? which in turn generates questions, curiosity, energy, and determination. How do we arouse our Way-Seeking Mind and thereby give direction and inspiration to our practice?

Teachings like Emptiness, Buddha-Nature, Suchness, Absolute and Relative, and Mind-with-a-capital-M are challenging, and sometimes people wonder if they?re all just terms for the same thing, more or less, or whether they?re part of a long list of difficult-to-comprehend concepts we need to master as Buddhists. It may be helpful to realize that each of these classic Buddhist concepts describes Reality-with-a-capital-R, and there?s only one Reality. The concepts, therefore, are intimately related to one another, and each one emphasizes different aspects of Reality in a very useful way. In this episode I discuss Buddhist descriptions of Reality in general, and then talk about Sunyata, or Emptiness.

If we live without self-discipline ? without clarifying aspirations, forming intentions, or training ourselves ? our lives are unlikely to go in the direction we would like them to. Unfortunately, self-discipline is notoriously difficult! In the last episode I discussed the importance of self-discipline and some of the mistakes we make when applying it. In this episode I talk about what skillful self-discipline looks like.

If we live without self-discipline ? without clarifying aspirations, forming intentions, or training ourselves ? our lives are unlikely to go in the direction we would like them to. Unfortunately, self-discipline is notoriously difficult! In this episode I will discuss the importance of self-discipline and some of the mistakes we make when applying it. In the next episode (Part 2), I?ll talk about what skillful self-discipline looks like.

In Part 1 I defined what I mean by ?worldly pleasure,? and then discussed five drawbacks of such pleasure as described in Buddhist teachings, and in our own experience. In this episode I talk about how - if we can engage worldly things with the mind that sees impermanence - we are not only inoculated against the many usual drawbacks of worldly pleasures, we can use every encounter we have with the world as an opportunity to practice deeply. Not only that, we actually end up engaging worldly pleasures with more appreciation and awareness.

Traditionally, the ideal of Buddhism is the renunciate monastic who forgoes worldly pleasures because they are fleeting and distract us from practice. How should a serious practitioner relate to worldly pleasures if they?re not living a renunciate lifestyle? Is it possible to fully enjoy the pleasures in our lives while maintaining a strong Buddhist practice, or are we fooling ourselves when we try to do so? In this episode I define what I mean by ?worldly pleasure,? and then discuss five drawbacks of such pleasure as described in Buddhist teachings, and in our own experience.

Why aren't we just all born enlightened and avoid suffering? Or, we could ask: Why are human beings the way they are? Why did they evolve to cause so much suffering for themselves and others? If we all have Buddha-Nature, why isn?t that manifest from the beginning, and why does it get obscured so completely? Why is practice so hard if, as the teachings say, we have everything we need from the beginning?

On the meditation seat and off, we may experience significant insights - realizations that shift our perceptions of ourselves and world, and help relieve suffering. Insights may be sudden or gradual, major or minor, but we naturally want to be able to hold on them instead of forgetting them and going back to our previous way of thinking or being. Yet sometimes these insights seem to slip away or fade with time. Our effort to hold on to them sometimes causes them to recede even further. How can we integrate insights into our lives and practice?

I explore how - for some of us - explaining, dismissing, or justifying the story of the Buddha?s resistance to ordaining women (told in the Gotami Sutta) does not completely neutralize the discouraging effect of this story?s presence in the Buddhist canon. I then discuss how we can relate to this story without losing our faith in Buddhism as a path of practice.

I introduce the text that describes the Buddha?s negative words and actions in response to the question of ordaining women into what was called the ?homeless life? of his monastic community. Then I?ll talk about various ways we can explain, dismiss, or justify the story contained in this text. In the next episode I?ll explore how, for some of us, explaining, dismissing, or justifying the story of the Buddha?s sexist discourse does not completely neutralize the discouraging effect of this story?s presence in the Buddhist canon, and how we can relate to the story without losing our faith in this path of practice.

This is Part 2 of my discussion about being the only Buddhist in your family. I continue discussing ways to create more harmony between your spiritual practice and your family relationships, and then talk about the special case of being in an intimate relationship with someone who doesn?t share your passion for Buddhist practice.

Many ? if not most ? English (or Spanish!)-speaking Buddhists are converts to Buddhism. Even if you were raised in a Buddhist family, chances are good that as an adult you are surrounded by non-Buddhists, or that as an active Buddhist practitioner you are surrounded by people for whom Buddhism is largely a cultural matter. I discuss the challenges of being the only Buddhist in your family or intimate relationship, and ways to create more harmony between your spiritual practice and your close relationships.