Andrew Tootell's OzZen Podcast: Recent Episodes
Andrew Tootell
In this talk I am going to share some self-reflections on the metaphor of awakening from the self-centred dream. Self-reflection means I simply ask myself a question to investigate and reflect upon my own experience. I am not suggesting that the understanding that I develop is necessarily the same as what you would come up with. But if we all participate in self-reflection we can then engage in dialogue with each other and then dialogue becomes another method of inquiry.
This talk is about working with Right Effort in everyday life and noticing the tendency to want to control and force outcomes. Seeing how this strategy of our core beliefs to control life, is a form of clinging and creates resistance and suffering. We explore the possibility of moving towards flow states where we pause and check in with our inner wisdom and trust and not take everything so personally. Knowing the deep interconnectivity and impermanence of life, we can still perform at our best, but our work becomes part of something bigger, and we can reach out for help. We become lighter, calmer and more open to creative solutions.
On receiving transmission of the precepts in the denkai ceremony, it is customary in our tradition, that the recipient gives a dharma talk acknowledging their teachers and the teaching path they feel called towards.
On receiving transmission of the precepts in the denkai ceremony, it is customary in our tradition, that the recipient gives a dharma talk acknowledging their teachers and the teaching path they feel called towards.
This dharma talk explores how the Zen teaching of “not two, not one” offers a middle way for relationships by holding together intimacy and difference, love and fear, and oneness and individuality. It suggests that spiritual practice and honest relationship both invite us to become intimate with the protective patterns that arise from fear, while trusting that love, grounded in safety, awareness, and compassion, can soften those patterns. Drawing on attachment theory, psychotherapy, Martin Buber’s distinction between I-It and I-Thou, and contemporary relational thinkers, the talk presents the Buddhist precepts as practical guides for meeting others with respect rather than objectification. In this way, our closest relationships become part of the path, teaching us that genuine oneness is not found by erasing difference, but by recognising and caring for it.
This dharma talk reflects on the meaning of denkai transmission as a deep commitment to receive, embody, and pass on the Zen precepts within sangha life. It explores transmission not simply as ceremonial authority, but as the living expression of compassion, responsibility, and relationship in everyday life, while honouring both continuity with tradition and the unique ways each practitioner expresses the dharma. Through the example of Louise and Jack, the talk also points to the importance of creating the conditions—personal, communal, and environmental—that allow practice to flourish and be carried forward into future generations.
This talk explores how Zen practice is supported by a felt sense of safety in three interconnected ways: having a secure home or practice environment, learning to feel safe within one’s own body and mind, and co-creating a trustworthy relational community. Drawing on attachment theory and polyvagal theory, it suggests that spiritual practice is not separate from our human vulnerability, but depends on conditions of safety, co-regulation, and connection that help body and mind settle. Rather than treating agitation or calm as good or bad, the talk invites us to meet each changing moment with compassion and wisdom, while understanding refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha as an embodied experience of belonging, care, and love. In this way, zazen becomes not an escape from dependence and relationship, but a rediscovery of home within ourselves and with one another.
This nondual wisdom is the realisation that this is it. To me this is the meaning of realisation, awakening and enlightenment. To be enlightened is to love what is unconditionally. To say yes to everything. It’s all okay. But as human beings we struggle to say yes to everything. And this is it too!
I take refuge in Buddha.I take refuge in Dharma.I take refuge in Sangha.In this talk invite you all to contemplate what the three Buddhist refuges mean to you on a personal level. To do this, I present three different perspectives on how the refuges (and the other precepts) have been understood from the Zen Buddhist tradition I belong to:1. The Literal Perspective.2. The Relative or Relational Perspective; and3. The Absolute or Nonseparation Perspective.Each different perspective is relevant to our practice and contributes to why we refer to the three refuges as the three treasures.
In this talk, we explore dependent arising: our deep interconnections in time and space with all existence. Deeply realising this, brings us to see the emptiness of self and to lose our fear of loss and even death. We look at engaged Buddhism and through poetic verse practice kinship and kindness in a novel way.
In this dharma talk Sono explores the question, what does practice mean to you? He begins by discussing his own understanding of what practice is and is not. Sono then asks the question, is it possible to evaluate our progress in zen practice. He concludes that key indicators of progress from the perspective of Ordinary Mind Zen are not special mystical experience but rather a gradual , subtle shift in character, for example, becoming less selfish, angry and reactive.
I have become more aware of the presence of anxiety in my life over the past six months. Perhaps triggered by my health (heart); my precarious financial situation; anxiety about my performance as a psychotherapist or zen teacher; my anxiety about old age; and the world situation (wars; climate change; cost of living). I have also noticed how my practice has been helping me manage my anxiety. So today in the first half of the paper, I will give a very selective introduction to psychological theories anxiety and then in the second half of the talk I will discuss a Buddhist understanding of the arising of anxiety and how to practice with anxiety.
In exploring the Koan : Zen master Jui Yen talks to himself, we came to see the mundane and the supramundane in our lives and the importance of right view. Who are the others we need to not be deceived by? Questions and answers lead us into deep insights.‘Know yourself, notice your feelings’ speaks to our need to recognise, allow and investigate our feelings as a means to nurturing oneself. Then we can be more available to others. Deeply observing Joy we cultivate generosity, kindness, resilience and commitment to challenges. We recharge our battery.
“Each moment, as it is, is complete and full in itself. Seeing this no matter what arises in each moment, we can let it be.” – Joko Beck.In this guided meditation, Sono invites us to trust our body and our breath to allow each moment to be exactly as it is.
When Joko Beck broke away from the White Plum Asanga to form her own sangha which she named the Ordinary Mind Zen School, she also stopped wearing a robe and also dropped the Koan curriculum and the Jukai ceremony. Barry Magid reintroduced the Jukai ceremony (minus the Buddhist names) and also reintroduced the study of koans. Barry reintroduced the study of koans in the spirit of Soto Zen – using the koans as teaching stories to illuminate different aspects of Zen practice and not as a form of meditation practice aimed at inducing a special spiritual experience. However, more than that, I think one of Barry’s major innovations to contemporary Zen has been to interpret the old koan stories from the perspective of western psychotherapy, thereby instigating a unique sub-genre of utilising koans. In this talk I am going to apply Barry’s style of koan interpretation to Case 94, from the collection of Koans known as The Book of Serenity.
A hospice nurse discusses some Zen practices and perspectives around death and asks – Can we get used to the idea of dying?
Zen practice is premised on the identity of the Absolute and the Relative. They are both the same and different. Which is why in Zen we say, “not one, not two”! The Absolute is expressed in our Practice Principles as being just this moment – and the identity of the Absolute with the Relative is expressed as Compassion’s Way. If we see that our home is just this moment, then there is nothing else we need to depend on – no matter what happens in our life we will always be at one with our home. If only it was so easy! For most of us, we need to attend to some intermediary practices, in order to cultivate our capacity to feel at home in this moment, just as it is. Every time we practice zazen, we are cultivating our capacity to be at home in this moment. However, we need to do more than that. We need to express our understanding and share our response to just this moment, especially when this moment is a shared relationship with others – an intersubjective moment. How do we practice our insight into nonseparation in our relationships with others? In other words, what is the optimal response to the situation we find ourselves in, both to ourselves and others? After realising our true nature, how do we bring all beings into mutual harmony? This is the practice of the Three Treasures: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.
'Enlightenment,' says Joko Beck 'is the ability to give totally in every moment. In this guided meditation we explore what it is to give and what it feels like to give and to receive. We also investigate gratitude, forgiveness and what we may be avoiding right now, what we are not giving attention to. As we give, our hearts open, and we begin to see that giving feels good and can be a path, a way of living.
We often view life as a problem to be solved – we are either living a successful life, a good life, or we feel we are a failure at living. We might try one self-improvement project after another, and they can work for a certain period of time. But in the end, we cannot escape the inevitable – impermanence and interdependence. Impermanence and interdependence are experienced often as suffering – and when we resist impermanence and interdependence, we add another layer of suffering from our attempt to separate out from the fact that we are embedded in life and relationships with other human beings that ultimately, we cannot control. The alternative to viewing life as a problem is to view life as a koan to be lived to the full.
In this guided meditation we explore the distinction between awareness and mindfulness – with awareness being described as effortless presence and mindfulness being described as remembering to be aware of a particular object or to be aware of awareness itself (objectless meditation).
In this dharma talk OzZEN Facilitator Phil Genkai explores consciousness through the lens of the Buddhist teaching of the five aggregates of no-self and through the lens of contemporary scientific theories. The talk concludes with a discussion about the practical implications of these teachings.
In this guided meditation Sono recites Torei Zenji’s Bodhisattvas’ Vow to open the heart to practice loving kindness towards those who have hurt us or done us harm.
Make room for space.Todays guided meditation is about making space in our life for life.We all know what a cluttered house feels like. Stressful, busy. noisy. Everything seems to be calling for our attention.Have you too much stuff in your inner world?Is your life too busy?It’s not about what you feel cluttered by, it’s about what you value deeply and what serves a useful purpose.What brings you joy?
In this guided meditation by OzZEN Facilitator Phil Genkai, we are introduced to the metaphor of “cooking” to describe the process of just sitting in zazen. The meditation is based upon the text by Master Dogen, translated as How to Cook your Life, with a commentary by Kosho Uchiyama. Genkai invites us into this process of cooking our lives with minimal instructions, leaving plenty of silence to cook and transform the ingredients we bring to our sitting practice.
In this talk I will show how our practice principles can be translated into our core practices that I have inherited from Joko Beck, and in particular, from my teacher Barry Magid. The core practices to be covered in this talk are:1. Just-Sitting.2. Becoming aware of our curative fantasies and core beliefs and at the same time, cultivating an increasing capacity for self-acceptance.
Denial is the biggest threat to our survival. We need to acknowledge and build our resources of love, gratitude and connection so we can recognise and accept our emotions and move into action. Survival is dependent not on competition but on nurturing and cooperating. Peace and Joy are still possible in a chaotic world, when we live in awareness.
This meditation is about allowing whatever arises in awareness. Through this practice you are encouraged to observe your breathing, thinking, feeling, and sensations with non-judgmental, non-reactive and curious awareness. That is, not pushing away, or not clinging to specific experiences, you are encouraged to observe "whatever is known", as it arises and passes into your direct experience of the present moment. Being open and allowing whatever is here, you are reminded that you are already exactly where you need to be.
This talk is an example of the ongoing project, initiated by my teacher, Barry Magid, of integrating a Relational Self Psychology approach into Zen practice – in this case – integrating Heinz Kohut’s concept of the “selfobject experience” with Buddhism’s Three Refuges. I will first make a crucial distinction between “dialogue-narrative” and “experience” before introducing what Kohut meant by “selfobject experiences”. The concept of a selfobject was a familiar kind of language in the psychoanalytic world of Kohut’s time, but I have decided to rename selfobject experiences as self-affirming experiences – I think this makes it more user friendly for non-psychoanalysts. The purpose of the talk is to show how we can give an interpretation of taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha from a Relational Self Psychology perspective – therefore continuing to highlight how our approach in Ordinary Mind Zen is a psychologically-minded approach.
In this student talk Ryan Eno gives a spiritual autobiography of his journey towards finding his spiritual home in Zen Buddhism. He begins with his parents and then explores his young adulthood and his marriage to Bec, the love of his life. This includes both reflections on his experience of being both a practicing Catholic as a child and as a young man, Evangelical Christianity, before finding his home in Zen Buddhism. Ryan also talks about finding his vocation as a music teacher and finally as a school counsellor and psychotherapist in private practice.
In this final talk on the theme of spiritual autobiography, Sono discusses the theme of home and homelessness by sharing some more stories from his own life and also discusses the memoir The Salt Path (2018) written by Raynor Winn and released as a movie in May, 2025.
In this dharma talk Sono focuses on Lou Norstrom’s Memoirs of an American Zen Pioneer published in 2023. This memoir is a courageous exploration of how zen practice can at times collude with forms of “self-alienation” and “self-abandonment” caused by early attachment trauma.
In this dharma talk Sono introduces the important place of spiritual autobiographies in Zen Practice, inspired by Lou Norstrom’s Memoirs of an American Zen Pioneer published in 2023. Since Saint Augustine (354-430) famous Confessions, spiritual autobiographies often have a “confessional” theme. This is also the case in the spiritual autobiography Wild Ivory, written by the Zen Rinzai Master, Hakuin (1685-1768). In today’s language we would talk about self-disclosure and how self-disclosure can have therapeutic benefits.Sono begins to tell the story of his “Shakyamuni” moment – based upon two traumatic events which occurred in bis life when he was 19 years old.
This is a dharma talk on. It's one of the eight noble truths, usually translated as concentration. I will to talk about the different approaches/interpretations of Samadhi you'll find in Rinzai practice and Soto practice. I will then discuss how we might talk about Samadhi from an Ordinary Mind Zen point of view, based on the teachings of Joko Beck and Barry Magid. We emphasise no-gain and you can’t get it right or wrong right. Just sitting expresses the unity of practice/enlightenment – let go of all gaining ideas – just sit – this is it.
When an unusual gift is bestowed on a dying monastery, it begins to flourish and thrive. Perhaps this gift which we can also give each other, will make us thrive and flourish too.
In this talk Larry Kodo gives his first of a series of three talks on the founder of Japanese Soto Zen Eihei Dogen (1200-1253). In this talk, Kodo presents his life story in the wider context of 13th century Japan and China, the motivations for his life decisions and a simple look at some of his core teachings and why he is still relevant to our practice today.
Why do we need refuge? In Zen Buddhism the Three Refuges are like a life-raft on the sea of life. We face many storms of different conditions and circumstances. We face natural disasters, floods and fires; the storms of relationships, loss and disappointment; we face wars and financial anxiety. We can summarise these as:FearUncertaintyVulnerabilityGreed, hatred and ignorancePeople may take refuge in gods or an intervention God. They make seek refuge in authoritarian leaders. The Buddha taught us to find refuge within this world, within ourselves and our relationships.
In this dharma talk I share my latest understanding of the Practice Principles, originally formulated by Joko Beck and as interpreted by my teacher Barry Magid. The practice principles give us a condensed way of understanding ordinary mind zen practice. However, they do miss out some important aspects of practice, such as the importance of supportive relationships and mutual recognition. This talk covers how they are a re-working of the four noble truths and the four great vows. The two couplets represent the Two Truths, the absolute or ultimate truth and the relative or conventional truth. The first two lines focus on how suffering arises in our everyday lives of problems and relationships. They also give us a clue to the ending of suffering. The final two lines emphasise the koan aspect of zen embodied in our zazen practice of just-sitting. Paradoxically, the end of suffering is the end of the resistance to suffering.
These days I like to think that “life as it is” is the ultimate teacher, but not of course, the only teacher. There are many teachers: relationships with nature; works of art and of course, relationships with significant people in our lives. Zen is a relational practice. Even when you are sitting alone, you are sitting with a long line of ancestors going all the way back to Shakymuni Buddha. During this guided meditation, we are going to integrate our zazen practice, our experience of life as it is, with an exploration of our relational selves, embedded as they are in a matrix of significant relationships that have shaped our sense of self and well-being over the history of our life. You will be invited to explore how you experience yourself in different relational contexts.
Coping with the loss of a loved one is always difficult. In this Dharma Talk Lousie Shinsho explores how different people cope in different ways. The Buddha's teachings of impermanence are tempered by teachings of our deep interconnectedness. This can help in developing an ongoing relationship with our loved ones who are not really lost to us.
The title of today’s contemplation “our original face is always changing” comes from the story of the sixth ancestor, Eno, retold in case 23 of The Gateless Barrier collection of koans: “Don’t think good, don’t think evil. At this very moment, what is the original face of Ming the head monk?”“What is your original face before your parents were born?”In other words, just sit and your original face immediately appears.Finally, we could say our world self is also embedded in the great Cosmos. We could say -We are the Cosmos, experiencing itself in human form.
This guided meditation explores our personal relationship with mistakes. Mistakes are a fertile ground for learning. Dogen says ‘Life is one continuous mistake.’ Changing our attitude to our mistakes can change our life. Mistakes are exactly the path.
In this guided meditation we explore what is it to do zen practice together and to wake up together. in supporting each others practice, we support our own; in practicing together we discover our uniqueness within the simultaneous discovery of how important we are to each other.
In this lecture/discussion, Sono gives some background detail on the “three turnings of the wheel”, culminating in Yogacara. He also comments on the meaning of three natures and compares it with western phenomenology.
Nonkilling: Life is nonkilling. The seed of buddha grows continuously.Maintain the wisdom-life of buddha and do not kill life – Dogen ZenjiAppreciate your life – Maezumi Roshi
In this lecture today, we will first review the discussion about the “three natures” that I introduced last month from the work of the Yogacara philosopher, Vasubandhu. Then we will begin to discuss a contemporary philosophical school called Phenomenology and its similarities to Yogacara. We will then finish today’s lecture by reading and discussing a chapter from Joko Beck’s first book called Experiencing and Behaviour which I think will help us make the link between what these Yogacarins and Phenomenologists are on about because Joko has this way of being able to express these complex ideas in a simple and straightforward way.
Shinsho directs us home in this beautifully crafted guided meditation: A magnificent round full moon is rising before you and the path ahead is well lit.You have arrived home.‘Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet’ says Thich.We have caused a lot of damage to the earth. Now is time to walk home with love. It is only possible if we do not constantly think of the future or the past. Life can only be found in the present moment.
In this lecture we sample the Yogacara teachings of Vasubandhu called the Treatise on the Three Natures, which form the philosophical backbone of Yogacara. So, what are the three natures? They are three interrelated aspects of our experience: the imaginary, dependent and complete or realised nature. In a nutshell they are:The imaginary nature of things is what we think they are.Their dependent nature of things is that they appear to depend on other things.The complete, realised nature of things is that they are not what you think they are
In this sixth episode in the series Indian Buddhist Philosophy: Progressive Stages of Insight into Emptiness, Sono discusses the Two Truths of Nagarjuna, the important insight into the “emptiness” of emptiness and how these philosophical insights shape how we practice.
Zen Buddhism can be understood as a form of performance art.In this recording, Sono performs the song by the 17th century monk Hakuin, called “Song of Zazen”.
How does our practice help with this work?When we come from love rather than anger and fear, without creating enemies, we avoid anxiety and burnout. We can rely on our zazen practice to step back and see clearly with a compassionate lens. Together with the fundamental truths of Buddhism, this allows us then to step up and into wise action as is required in any given moment.
In this talk I discuss socially engaged Buddhism and how the paths of personal and social transformation are interdependent.As David Loy states: ‘Engagement in the world is how our individual awakening blossoms, and how contemplative practices such as meditation ground our activism, transforming it into a spiritual path”.
In this meditation we contemplate the question: Why do you sit?Like a Koan there is no right answer. Are we “Performing our vows”?“Renewing our commitment”? “Embodying the practice principles?” What kind of engagement with life is Zazen? The practice of nonseparation?The practice of leaving everything alone? Nonthinking is a kind of letting be – lettingthinking be, letting everything be. Forget yourself. No gain. Just this is it.
From the Buddhist perspective, the understanding and realisation of emptiness is the key to liberation from suffering – because the roots of suffering stem from primordial confusion as to the nature of reality – to be free from suffering we need to eliminate ignorance – to eliminate ignorance is to understand emptiness – hence the realisation of emptiness is the ultimate medicine.In this lecture series we are exploring some of the different ways of understanding emptiness found in Buddhism – today we will go into what is called the Madhymaka School or The Middle Way School which interprets the prajnaparamita sutras – such as the Heart Sutra and The Diamond Sutra. Prajnaparamita meaning the perfection of wisdom – where wisdom realises emptiness. Nagarjuna is the founder of the Madhymaka school and he is the first and most influential Buddhist philosopher - later in the series we will move to exploring the Yogacara view on emptiness and explore the question as to whether or not the Madhyamaka and Yogacara Schools are allies or rivals.
The divine abodes are loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. These are both fruits of a practice of meditation and can be doorways to the deepening of that practice. In this guided meditation we explore the connection between romantic love and loving kindness. Romantic love hints at the universal love we can experience and embody whether or not we are in love romantically with someone or not. Both in love songs and romantic poetry we can get a taste of something that is beyond our individual selves, beyond existence in a certain place and time, beyond the usual way we experience life. Universal love can flavour our lives and be flavoured by the qualities of romantic love.
This talk explores the benefits of these often tricky challenges and what Buddhism and relational science offer us in dealing with them. Idealised or romantic love is dualistic and relates to the other, Harmonic love relates with the other. Rather than being in love, we become love.
This session focuses on the meaning of Emptiness in the Pali Buddhist sutras and the Abhidharma philosophy school.
Awakened awareness is not about special experiences – it is about recognising the simplest form of conscious experience that is available to everyone. Joko called it “Simple Mind”, Shunryu Suzuki called it “Beginners Mind” or we could simply call it awareness of awareness or “Pure Awareness”.We could say that the purpose of meditation, both silent and guided, is the process of dis-identifying from the suffering that is generated by identifying as a personal separate self with the flow of impermanent, interdependent phenomena and recognising and returning to our home base of Simple Mind.By Sono.
This guided meditation offers a chance to gain clarity around our thoughts and emotions. Taking a few deep breaths, we can name our experiences. Then we gain an opportunity to fully experience them without being overwhelmed by them. We can then move on the investigate them if it feels safe to do so. Remembering to nurture ourselves by coming back to the awareness of the breath.
This session gives an introduction to the Buddha’s first discourse on Turning the Wheel of the Dharma. In this discussion we focus on the four truths or practices.
In this guided meditation Sono introduces three types of Zazen:Mindfulness of a mental object;Mindfulness of the field of all objects; andJust-Sitting
This session gives an introduction to why it is important to study philosophy and an overview of the course.
In this talk I reflect on the “Voice from the Heart”, why the referendum lost and what has to happen next. It provides a brief historical background to the Voice and it includes some reflections on the One and the Many from a Zen perspective and applies the concept of “spiritual bypassing” at the collective level when a nation denies the truth of its history. It concludes with the following quote from James Baldwin: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced”.Caveat: There was some technical problem with the recording so the quality is not very good.
Our original nature can be described as Awareness or Heart-Mind. This Awareness that we are, which ultimately constitutes our original nature, has a number of essential qualities. As an introduction to this guided meditation, I discuss the four faces of Universal Love. In Buddhism they are called the Four Brahma Viharas (divine dwellings): In the language of the Buddha, these are metta, karuna, mudita, and upekkha. In English they are commonly known as loving-kindness, compassion or care, appreciative joy, and equanimity, peace or simply being. In order to support the transformation of attachment-based exclusive love into love and happiness that radiates in all directions (including ourselves), contemplation of the four abodes can be transformative.
This talk guides us through a journey of embodying the connections we have with our place here …the earth, the elements, and the beings we share life energy with. Exploring the fundamental Buddhist truths that everything is connected and everything is impermanent. Being present with the emotions that arise and coming to the spaciousness that allows anything to be possible.
This meditation guides you from the experience of your breath to some old zen parables. The first story is a re-telling of “A Parable” from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki. Two koans are featured, both are from The Gateless Gate by Koun Yamada. These are, Case 30 “Mind is Buddha”, and Case 36 “Meeting a Man Who Has Accomplished the Way”.Influences for this talk are also SN Goenka and Paul McKenna.
This guided meditation was taught by Gurdjieff to his students. Through each round of body sensing we are guided into self-remembering – the “I am” of awareness.
This guided meditation is all about finding or recognising and then stabilising in your essential nature, your inner “treasury”. I have titled the meditation “Appreciate this Life” after the book by the same title by Maezumi Roshi. Even though we cannot “see” our essential nature we can simply be, knowingly, our essential nature. We need to recognize our essential nature in this way. It doesn’t need to be a dramatic event. But it is always deeply wonderous
Joshu (Peter Thompson) founder of the Wombat Sangha in Sydney gives a introduction to the importance of Yoga Nidra practice and how it complements our Zen practice.
ZAZEN YOGA NIDRA
This guided meditation integrates zazen and yoga nidra. Both zazen and yoga nidra are gateways into the subjective sense of the body and ultimately the realisation of self as nondual awareness.
Joshu (Peter Thompson) is a founding member of the Sydney Zen Centre and a founder of the Wombat Sangha based in Sydney. In this talk Joshu develops a founding narrative for contemporary Zen practice based upon Evolution. Joshu says, “An important part of the story and mystery of our evolution and being here is the existential reality of alienation and separation and anxiety seemingly caused by the emergence of the frontal neo cortex, bringing with it the human thinking mind ...This brought about The Fall from the graceful state of oneness ( The Garden Of Eden , Genesis ) ....In explaining this, I am cross fertilizing a number of religious stories ... In the beginning existed "only The Tao, Silent and Alone " ( Tao Te Ching ) … Tao or Brahma is moved to create a Divine Lila or Game ...A vast game of Hide and Seek - to lose 'herself' in her creation and then to seek to find herself again in the evolution of the human instrument over 4 billion years from the first living single cell! Woman and Man, at first totally lost and ignorant ( Avidya ) , confused , immersed in forgetfulness and clouded by thinking mind are moved and driven to find themselves as absolute and eternal life , which in reality they had never lost or left.”
The great master Jesus points to the need for a great search to arrive back at home again-'Seek and Ye shall find , Knock and the door shall be opened ' He demonstrates the centrality of the theme of 'lost and found' in three major and profound parables 1. The Prodigal Son/Daughter 2. The Lost Sheep and 3. The Widow's Coin ....What is most notable here is the grief of the loss, the intensity and unrelenting search and the tremendous relief , JOY and CELEBRATION upon the finding ... ( Ecstasis, Kensho, Sartori , Epiphany etc.)
The thesis is thus that JOY and CELEBRATION are the alpha and omega of our existence - the main goal, the main reason for our being here... (Zen Master Hakuin - " Singing and Dancing are the Voice of The Law “)
Brahma - Tao - Godhead and the awakened person exhibit these seven main qualities. Universal Love ( Karuna , Agape ) , Joy- Bliss ( Ananda ) , Creativity ( incl - Vishnu -preservation/ protection and Shiva- destruction ) , Intelligence , Conscious Knowing ( Chit ), Energy , Absolute BEINGNESS ( Sat)
The thesis here is that these metaphysical considerations enhance our Zen spiritual practice and understanding by embedding us in a most meaningful background context and Universal viewing platform ...
This talk is continuing our conversation about nonduality. One of the core dualities we are trained into is subject and object duality. The theme of this talk – recognising our essential self as awareness – and some of the experiential exercises are taken from a book called “Standing as Awareness” by the nondual philosopher Greg Goode. Last month I spoke about the Koan of the goose in the bottle. This represents “normal” experience of duality – the goose in the bottle is a description of the self-centred dream – we are trapped, or identified as, a separate body-mind self that is the activity of suffering. Practice can be described as shifting from our identification with the self-centered dream (the goose in the bottle) this limited body and mind which we take to be me, towards recognizing and establishing ourselves as being awareness itself. This is our journey from suffering in the self-centered dream to discovering our in freedom when we recognize ourselves as awareness (there never was a bottle in the first place) – is the journey to our home which we never left.
This guided meditation leads us into the non-duality of Simply Being through the gateless gate of silence.
This talk, based on an old koan, continues our exploration of psychological or mind-generated suffering and the ending of this suffering through seeing how psychological suffering is always synonymous with getting caught in conventional duality of “me” and “not me” and not seeing from the alternative perspective of unbounded awareness. Here is the old koan. Lu Geng asked Nanquan: If someone puts a gosling into a bottle and feeds it until it is full-grown, how can they get the goose out without killing it or breaking the bottle? The Master kept silent for few moments and then clapped his hand. Lu Geng was startled and Nanquan said, “The goose is out!”
In this guided meditation Doshin leads us on a train ride through the desert and a beautiful rendition of the Heart Sutra – casting her “zen spells for slowing down” and bringing us into the heart of the now.
This talk continues with the theme suffering and the ending of suffering. It introduces two complementary practices for ending suffering: self-inquiry and nonseparation.
In our OzZen sangha, when receiving the precepts, recipients also give a Jukai talk, reflecting on their experience of studying the precepts in the monthly study group over the past year. Recipients are encouraged to personalise their experiences.
Tonight, we will discuss the practice of “taking refuge” as it relates to the question of suffering and the ending of suffering. During discussion I want us to clarify the difference between psychological suffering and what we might describe as our natural emotional responses that arise from being creatures who become attached to each other. I don’t think that grief should necessarily be problematized, however, it can get complicated by the thinking mind. So, in some ways, I want to suggest, that we can, at times at least, bring an end to psychological suffering but natural emotions such as grief, we don’t want to bring an end to them, because they are simply manifestations of our love; but neither do we want to complicate them or dissociate off from them. We can add an unnecessary layer of psychological suffering on top of the raw grief. So our core practice of nonseparation from this moment is the key guide to how we approach this experientially. We will explore what it means to take refuge experientially, and what it means to clarify suffering and the ending of suffering experientially.
The middle way practice of non-attachment to desire is not to give-in to desire or to repress desire. We allow desire to naturally arise and pass away, without clinging. Sometimes can do this and sometimes we can’t. Yet this is our practice.
Bodhidarma sat facing the wall. The second patriarch [Shenguang, later called Huike], standing in the snow, cut off his arm and said, “Your disciple’s mind is not yet at peace. I beg you, Master, give it rest.”Bodhidharma said, “Bring your mind to me; I will put it to rest.”The patriarch said, “I have searched for the mind but have never been able to find it.”Bodhidharma said, “I have finished putting it to rest for you.From Case 41 of the Gateless Gate: Bodhidharma Puts the Mind to Rest.In this meditation we go in search of the Mind (or Self). What did you find?
“Each moment, Life as it is, the only Teacher”.In our tradition, we regularly acknowledge “Life” as it is as being our only teacher, but how often do we really appreciate how astonishing it is to be alive? This guided meditation is all about awakening to this wonder of being alive and truly appreciating our life, just as it is, here and now.
We can only truly be open and loving when we are truly kind to ourselves.Here we explore some ways of bringing an inner smile into our lives and to observe how being compassionate brings happiness to both ourselves and others.
In this talk I return to the question, what is enlightenment? I begin with a working definition of enlightenment as a developmental process rather than a one-off event (or series of events). I then explore two primary lines of development: “know thyself” and “returning home” or “original OK-ness”.
This meditation focuses on the dance between being a separate self, bounded by the body, occupying a particular space-time point, and a self completely interdependent, depending on our environment, and our relationships. Dancing between the two, we hold these two seemingly paradoxical positions with love and compassion.
In this second enchanting, guided meditation, Pingala explores again the mysterious heights and depths of the presence of mountains.
This meditation starts with a reading of the Wild Swans at Coole by WB Yeats as an introduction to the contemplation of “mujo” or impermanence. We then segue into a contemplation of finding our way home in the world.
In this talk I share some understandings of enlightenment that have in the context ongoing dialogue with Joko Beck through her books and Barry Magid as my teacher. I begin my discussing two common curative fantasies of what enlightenment is. I then share one understanding of enlightenment that is found in both Joko Beck and Barry Magid - what I will call our Original OK-ness – the sense of being at home in our world and being at home with others harmoniously. I finish with discussing enlightenment as a life-time journey that we are all on.
In this talk I introduce the proposal that we all must discover what enlightenment means to us. Like the historical Buddha, we must be a lamp unto ourselves, not accepting any authority other than the authority of our own experience refined in the context of dialogue with dharma friends.
This guided meditation directs our attention to the quality of our attention to our experience. How our attention is uncovering reality. Zazen is a kind of experiential research into our experience of self and world that can be shared with others to arrive at common understandings. Attention can be understood as a form of taking care of ourselves and our world.
In this enchanting guided meditation, Pingala invites us to experience ourselves as a Mountain.
Most people, whether long-term meditators or not, engage in some kind of judgemental, negative, self-talk. We may not even be fully conscious of how we criticise ourselves and reject certain parts of ourselves. We are so used to doing it that we may not even know we are doing it. Sometimes it can be loud and sometimes very quiet and ubiquitous in the background of our psyche.
This meditation is an invitation to notice this and to come to terms with and include all aspects of ourselves.
Self-acceptance is the doorway to healing and to a full and rich life. When we can accept ourselves, we accept others, and the world opens its doors to us. We can discover that it is only we who deny ourselves our heart’s greatest desire: connection and love with others.
Outside the worldly winds are raging. Inside is peaceful and calm. Where are you when the winds blow? When we accept life as it is, right now, without complaining or trying to grasp for more, we come to peace and spaciousness. We come to a freedom, where we are more capable of both inner and outer change. Seeing the 8 worldly winds of the human condition, helps access this letting go of resistance to the present moment.
No longer caught in the self-centred dream. I have given up seeking, Content just to be With whatever this moment brings.
This guided meditation is a contemplation on the alternative practice principles. A common error is often to take up practice as a means to an end, we often fall into the trap of thinking we practice in order to obtain enlightenment. This is the activity of the ego-self. Rather we sit zazen to express our already enlightened buddha mind. To be Buddha is to sit with this moment exactly as-it-is and to leave everything exactly as-it-is. We even need to drop the goal of having no goal. To completely let go of seeking. As our Master Dogen said: “To study the way is to study the self; to study the self is to forget the ego-self; to forget the ego-self is to be actualized by the myriad forms”.
This guided meditation continues our contemplation on the unity of boundlessness (Buddha) and form (Dharma) and the harmonising of this unity (Sangha).
In this guided meditation I explore the three phases of zen meditation practice. Moving from focusing on an object, through to open awareness and finally objectless meditation (or shikantaza or silent illumination) or what Dogen called “taking the backward step” where all duality between observer and observed dissovlnes completely.
In this talk I focus on the three treasures and the three pure precepts and how an understanding of these precepts are essential to applying the ten grave precepts within the context of the koans of everyday life. The three treasures are the expression of the intrinsic nature or essential nature that the ten grave precepts are expressions of.
We are always in the middle of life. Cultivating awareness of this most basic of facts can help to heal the damage that often arises from judging parts of our selves and our experiences. For example, every human has a desire for pleasantness and a desire to be free from pain. Judging this basic desire can do subtle violence to ourselves, banishing the parts of ourselves that we don't like or want. The alternative is an open-hearted, open-armed embrace of all parts of ourselves, and of life.
In this guided meditation, Jack Wicks, an OzZen facilitator, takes us on a journey through the practice of not-knowing. Not-knowing is a zen approach to seeing our lives more clearly and liberating us from suffering. Not-knowing means seeing through our tendency to believe that our thoughts are always an accurate and helpful description of reality. This practice can help lead us to the realisation of emptiness of all phenomena and spiritual awakening.
In this guided meditation we define psychological suffering as the activity of seeking and resisting. In the first phase of the meditation we pay attention to the different ways we seek to escape from this moment or resist being this moment. In the second phase we explore the two basic practices that resolve this activity – the practice of attention on an object and the practice of resting as awareness. Both practices are necessary to free ourselves from avoidance and surrender to being just this moment – compassion’s way.
“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life." - John Lennon In this talk we explore the secret of peace and happiness – the peace and happiness of discovering our true nature, that cannot be gained or lost.
In this guided meditation we go on a tour of the wheel of awareness and distinguish phenomenal consciousness from meta-consciousness. We then explore how we get lost in the normal process of dissociation called, getting caught in thoughts and then demonstrate how the technique of thought labelling is an example of meta-consciousness in action. The more we practice this, we gradually create a shift in our consciousness from identifying with the spinning vortex of our self-centred self to a new default position of being awareness.
This year we begin a series of way-seeking mind talks. These are traditional to Zen Buddhism. Practitioners give a kind of psychological-spiritual autobiography of how they were drawn by the way-seeking mind to discover “the way” to their true self. I would like to thank Jack for accepting my invitation to give this talk, which I hope inspires more OzZen members and friends to share their own journey with us soon.
In this meditation we introduce the process of the epoche – the gradual negation of taken for granted assumptions about self and world which leads us into the shared open field of awareness without identity of any kind.
This talk begins with a discussion of the work of the twentieth century philosopher Edmund Husserl and the practice that he called the epoche (bracketing our beliefs and concepts about self and the world). I then demonstrate the epoche by exploring the text “The Invitation” by the contemporary spiritual teacher know as Mooji.
In this guided meditation we begin with contemplating Dogen’s instructions on Zazen to “Now sit steadfastly and think not-thinking. How do you think not-thinking? Beyond thinking. This is the essential art of Zazen”. We then explore what we need to practice to be before thinking. What is being before thinking. Following the introduction I introduce three core processes that were identified by Francisco Varela and his colleagues: (1) Suspending; (2) Re-directing; and (3) Letting Go. I also discuss (4) Resistance; and (5) Returning.
In this talk I explore The Observing Self. I often say to my students, stand as Awareness, and be kind to self and others. Joko Beck said “That which observes cannot be found and cannot be described. If we look for it there is nothing there. Since there is nothing we can know about it, we can almost say it is another dimension” 1989: 123. In the end, we are all a mystery to ourselves. At the core of our being lies a mystery – what Joko Beck, following Arthur Deikman (1982) called the Observing Self. In this talk we explore the far-out realm of the Observing Self, the Open Door. I would like to invite you to come on this journey with me - You might be surprised as to what you might find!
Underlying most forms of meditation is the basic act of returning: coming back to a meditation object (e.g., the breath, the body, a koan), drifting away, and then coming back, again and again. In this guided meditation, Rhys Price-Robertson encourages gentle exploration of returning in meditation, not with the idea that there are right or wrong ways to return in practice, but rather with the intention of cultivating interest and curiosity.
Originally formulated by Joko Beck, the practice principles are common to all the different centres of the Ordinary Mind Zen School around the world. In this dialogue we explore our mutual understanding of the practice principles and how we can use them to remind us how to practice, both formally, in our Zazen practice, and informally in our everyday life.
In this guided meditation Andrew takes us on a tour round the practice triangle to demonstrate the experiential shift in the sense of self as we move through these different ways of experiencing self. The first position is “self-as-content” (often known as the ego-self); the second position is the “self-as-process”, which is the beginning of negating our identification with the ego-self as the “owner” of thoughts and feelings; the final position is “self-as-witnessing consciousness” where we are no longer identified with thoughts and feelings, allowing us to be present to them as the knowing container of all contents, leading to transformation.
All guided meditations take us on a journey to discover our true self. However, the map is not the territory but some maps can be more helpful than others. In this guided meditation, Andrew once again maps out the territory which points the way to our true self – even through consciousness is in a never ending process of transformation our true self has no beginning or ending.
In this talk Andrew seeks to clarify and de-mystify the traditional pathways of Zen practice. Starting as a seeker and moving to finding a teacher and sangha, formalising a relationship with a teacher and then receiving the precepts. The talk also includes a discussion of the three stages of transmission.
In this guided meditation I explore the nature of taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.
In this series of talks, we commence with developing our understanding of the Mahayana teachings about Buddha Nature and Awakening to our True Self. We conclude that although awakening to our True Self is necessary, it is not sufficient. After having awoken to our True Self, we need to do the hard work of integrating the Parts of the personality that are still in exile, carrying the burdens of developmental trauma or fixed in rigid protective stances and strategies. This is the process of integrating the Parts with the Self.
- The Four Turnings
- Does a Dog Have Buddha Nature?
- Integration of Zen and Psychotherapy
- Nonduality in a Nutshell.
In this series of talks, we commence with developing our understanding of the Mahayana teachings about Buddha Nature and Awakening to our True Self. We conclude that although awakening to our True Self is necessary, it is not sufficient. After having awoken to our True Self, we need to do the hard work of integrating the Parts of the personality that are still in exile, carrying the burdens of developmental trauma or fixed in rigid protective stances and strategies. This is the process of integrating the Parts with the Self.
- The Four Turnings
- Does a Dog Have Buddha Nature?
- Integration of Zen and Psychotherapy
- Nonduality in a Nutshell.
In this series of talks, we commence with developing our understanding of the Mahayana teachings about Buddha Nature and Awakening to our True Self. We conclude that although awakening to our True Self is necessary, it is not sufficient. After having awoken to our True Self, we need to do the hard work of integrating the Parts of the personality that are still in exile, carrying the burdens of developmental trauma or fixed in rigid protective stances and strategies. This is the process of integrating the Parts with the Self.
- The Four Turnings
- Does a Dog Have Buddha Nature?
- Integration of Zen and Psychotherapy
- Nonduality in a Nutshell.
In this series of talks, we commence with developing our understanding of the Mahayana teachings about Buddha Nature and Awakening to our True Self. We conclude that although awakening to our True Self is necessary, it is not sufficient. After having awoken to our True Self, we need to do the hard work of integrating the Parts of the personality that are still in exile, carrying the burdens of developmental trauma or fixed in rigid protective stances and strategies. This is the process of integrating the Parts with the Self.
- The Four Turnings
- Does a Dog Have Buddha Nature?
- Integration of Zen and Psychotherapy
- Nonduality in a Nutshell.
This is my last talk, in a series of talks, on Zen as religious practice. In the first part of the talk, I will summarise some of the reasons why I view Zen as a religious practice, and how I was drawn to Zen because of its teaching of the direct realisation of our true nature in this life – not in some future life to come. From the Zen perspective, “the goal of life is to live fully as a human being, with one’s inherent potential completely developed (Guo Gu, 2012, page 6)”. In the second half of the talk, I will suggest that human development naturally leads to the realisation of our inherent Buddha Nature, given these favourable circumstances and conditions. The seed needs to be nurtured. The realisation that we are Buddha Nature, that all sentient beings are Buddha Nature, can be understood as the most mature form of what Heinz Kohut, the founder of Self Psychology, called healthy narcissism.
This meditation focuses primarily on the last two lines of the practice principles: Each moment, life as it is, the only teacher. Being just this moment, compassion’s way. It explores just this moment, as being complete, right here and right now.
Neti Mushin Parekh is an Australian based Soto Zen Priest who has recently returned home from 20 years in the USA to establish the Twining Vines Zen Centre - Katto-an Temple in Canberra. Neti has received transmission in both the Diamond Sangha Koan lineage and the Shunryu Suzuki Soto Zen lineage. Neti will be giving what is called in the Soto Zen tradition, a "Way Seeking Mind Talk" - these talks tell the story of a practitioner's journey along the Zen Way.
This guided meditation continues the meditation in part one of Ordinary Mind is Buddha: Ordinary mind is always here, Closer than close, nearer than near. In fact, its inseparable from who you truly are. Ordinary mind is Buddha. In Part One we focused on calm-abiding. In this meditation we focus Vipasyana (Inquiry leading to Insight). We start with experiencing and the six dimensions of experiencing, beginning with the distinction between experiencing and experiences. We then explore the quality of experiencing to discover that experiencing is not in time, and experiencing has no boundaries.
This talk continues my discussion of revisioning religious practice for the 21st century. It is based on how I understand Buddhism to be evolving in the west and how I see OzZen as being part of what I am calling the fourth way: “The OzZen Way is an attempt to do a preliminary sketch of how we fit into the larger pantheon of global Buddhism, and then, how we fit into Western Buddhism and what kind of Western Buddhist project we are cultivating - to become more conscious and intentional of this”. The talk also discusses how many westerners feel uncomfortable with religious practices such as rituals and liturgy. It includes a discussion about Zen Priests and the Jukai ceremony and the difference between no gain and for gain as applied to ritual, and I will use liturgy and bowing as two case examples. Finally, I will conclude with describing OzZen as a broad church, an expression that comes from my previous engagement with the Anglican church, many years ago
This talk is an invitation to begin to re-vision what it means to live a religious life in the 21st Century – in our time and place. In particular it explores the three major forms of Modern Buddhism has taken in the West: Religious Buddhism, Secular Buddhism and secular mindfulness. The talk concludes that Religious Buddhism, founded on “no-gain” Zazen and “practice/realisation” can provide the foundation for a new post-instrumental and post-salvation religious paradigm suitable for responding to the major existential challenges of our time and place.
“That which we most deeply yearn for is the thing that is already most fully present, already the very closest to us. Thus, our ancestral teachers, according to their own circumstances at hand, have always shown that Buddha is now, here. So, we place our focus now, here.” Harada Tangen. This guided meditation is in two parts. The first part is an introduction to calm abiding (shamatha): calming the mind without a meditation object. Next fortnight we will be exploring insight (vipasyana), a form of inquiry leading to insight into the nature of reality.
Gurdjieff designed this meditation as a morning preparation exercise, designed to increase one's awareness and sense of I Am. This meditation was led by Elisabeth Barrett, an Australian independent teacher in the Gurdjieff tradition.
Poetry (and other art forms) have been part of Chan/Zen practice since its origins in Ancient China. This tradition has been passed down through excellent translations of classical Chinese poetry and Japanese Haiku. These works influenced western poets from the 1950’s onwards, to explore the wilds of the mind and the restorative power of wilderness. The classic Chinese text, the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, has influenced numerous poets and Zen practitioners. Writing and performing these meditative poems I see as a core practice in our OzZen program.
This dharma talk will picks up from our Living without Walls dharma talk last fortnight (18.07.21) with a focus on making the Heart Sutra less abstract and more accessible and relevant to our lived experience. Hence rather than just giving a lecture, I introduce some mini-meditations to facilitate exploring how the world shows up when we start to free ourselves from the suffering of the isolated and alienated self to realise the inherent relational unity of self and world that we all share. This realisation creates a transformation in our experience of self, which I have metaphorically described as living without walls. These meditations are used to deepen our understanding of "emptiness" or "no-thingness" and will lead to a definite shift in our lived experience of the world. The meditations are informed by existential philosophy, in particular the work of the infamous Martin Heidegger, and his description of our being in the world as an opening, in which we experience the manifestation of the interdependence or inseparability of language, being and world.
Trees, rooted into the Earth, inseparable from the Earth, entirely dependent, entirely interdependent, hosting a variety of flora and fauna, welcoming all. This meditation invites us to reflect on how we can be like the tree, allowing life to be as it is, allowing us to be as we are, including the parts of ourselves and the parts of life that we don’t like and don’t want. This radical opening to life and to ourselves as we are is an act of self-love and other-directed love.
Avalokiteshvara, clearly saw all five skandhas are empty, freeing us from all identification as a separate self and thereby releasing us from all anguish and distress. From the perspective of emptiness this body and mind is like a waterfall. A waterfall is not a thing but rather a name for a process of happening. Our name and date of birth are just conventions. Just like we cannot distinguish where the waterfall begins and ends we cannot distinguish when Andrew begins and ends. Andrew doesn’t appear and disappear, he is just a convenient fiction.
The focus of today’s talk is part three of the heart sutra: The Bodhisattva Path. Sattva means being and bodhi means awakened. So, a bodhisattva is an awakened being or a being which aspires to awaken. In the first part of the heart sutra, Shariputra is asking Avalokiteshvara to teach him prajnaparamita. Prajna is wisdom and paramita means perfect or beyond. So prajna paramita is the perfection of wisdom or wisdom beyond wisdom and Avalokiteshvara simply teaches him the wisdom of emptiness. Prajna can also be broken down into pra, meaning “before” and jna, meaning “to know”. Therefore, prajnaparamita is what comes before knowing – what is it that comes before knowing – what was your original face before you were born? Before I can know, I have to be. Being comes before knowing. What is it that is prior to thinking? What does it mean to take refuge in prajnaparamita?
The meditation has three parts. In the first part we will inquire into the question: who or what is thinking the thoughts? In the second part, we will inquire into how thoughts turn into stories and how we can become captive of those stories. In part three, we explore the crucial distinction between thoughts and experiencing the reality of what is.
Both Zen and psychotherapy involve bringing awareness to endings, though they do this in different ways. Psychotherapy normally focuses on the big endings in our lives – finishing a job, a relationship breakup, losing a loved one – and can highlight our personal patterns of ending, patterns often developed to help us to avoid the pain of loss. Zen practice points to endings at more of a micro level: ending as a feature of impermanence; the moment-to-moment passing away of all things. This guided meditation explores endings at both the macro and micro levels.
The Direct Path is the path of nonduality. It is found in all religious traditions. In Hinduism it is found as Advaita-Vedanta or Kashmir Shaivism; In Islam it is found as the way of the Sufi; in Christianity it is found in mystics like Meister Eckhart; in Buddhism it is found in Chan/Zen and Mahamudra and Dzogchen. We can say, it is simply being.
When we become Buddhists, we first make atonement and then we take refuge in the Triple Gem: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. These are the first three of the 16 precepts – without these there is no Buddhism.
This meditation considers the wisdom of relatively unstructured meditation practices, as are taught in the Ordinary Mind tradition. How do we show up when there is no obvious goal, when there are no detailed guidelines, and when there is no clear right or wrong way of doing things? How do we configure ourselves in an unstructured space? This meditation explores how unstructured practice ultimately leaves us with nothing but a mirror reflecting our own image.
This interview continues the exploration of the common ground between the teachings of Gurdjieff and Joko Beck. It begins with a brief biography of Elisabeth’s journey with the Gurdjieff teachings. The interview then stays on practice issues such as waking up through self-observation and self-remembering and non-identification. It also clarifies the meaning of no-self and Self in Zen teaching.
Joko Beck often quoted an expression from the Hebrew Bible: “Be still, know I am”. It describes our practice of just sitting or silent illumination. Silence is the stillness – it is the anchor, the stabiliser that naturally allows clear seeing to arise. The light that illuminates all phenomena is awareness. The Buddha said be a light unto yourself. You are the light. Recognise yourself as the light of knowing. This awareness is who we are. To “know I am” is to recognise who we truly are. We hold the body still and the light of awareness illuminates impermanence – the cosmic dance.
The Heart Sutra is a condensed version of much longer Heart Sutras. It really contains all we need. It teaches the direct path: seeing directly into our true nature. We can let go of all identities by coming this moment. The meditation then focuses on Consciousness. The mantra coming at the end of the Sutra can be seen as a summary of the whole sutra. Then during the final 10 minutes of the guided meditation I introduce the “Ah Mantra”. Pronounced as Ah, it can be chanted out loud as the ultimate teaching of freedom, liberating all beings. Finally, as Bernie Glassman teaches, “even the Ah is unnecessary, for this very moment is the Wisdom Literature; this very moment is the perfection of wisdom”.
This guided meditation presented by Dr Jed Blore invites an exploration of three interrelated questions: 'what are we doing?’, ‘why are we doing it? (or: 'why does it matter?)’, and, 'what are we hoping to gain?’. The exploration continues with an invitation to connect with a spacious, open awareness that is accepting of our ‘gaining ideas’ alongside the rest of our experience (thinking, feeling, sensing). The meditation ends with a reading of the poem ‘Relax’ by Ellen Bass, which reinforces the reality of suffering whilst highlighting the joy that is available to us in our daily lives.
This talk begins with bearing witness to Anzac Day in the light of the Ten Precepts, starting with the first precept of bearing witness to the reality of violence and abuse, in myself and in the world. I then give an historical overview of how Anzac Day has evolved over the years since the 1920’s. I then explore what and who does Anzac Day currently exclude and fail to bear witness too? For example, the horror of war – how violence and abuse traumatise people; how not every war is a legitimate war and the exclusion of our First Nations warriors from Anzac Day and the National War Memorial. I conclude by reflecting on the relationship between bearing witness and denial, and suggest that we need to be careful not to value bearing witness at the expense of denigrating denial. As my colleague Rhys Price-Robertson suggested in his guided meditation last week, maybe we need to find ways of making room for and understanding resistance, while, at the same time, empowering ourselves as best we can to bear witness. Finally, I want to leave you all with a question: are we ready as a nation to take steps towards making Anzac Day more inclusive? And if we are not yet ready, what needs to be done to prepare this nation to be more inclusive?
We all resist parts of our experience. This meditation draws on the psychotherapeutic idea of supporting resistance, exploring how at times the path through resistance involves fully embracing it. When resistance is supported, sometimes it can be released.
This meditation is a continuation of a series of meditations inspired by the Heart Sutra. The topic today is resting in sensations. Simply resting in our senses. As Joko Beck says in her book Nothing Special Living Zen: “Without awareness of our sensations, we are not fully alive” (p. 159). In this meditation we will be meditating on the first and second skandhas and the six sense realms, which are referenced in the Heart Sutra. Our tendency is to become caught in the fourth skandha (emotional reactions based on the past), by bringing our attention to the first and second skandhas – basically the level of basic sensations and feelings – we can free ourselves from self-centred reactivity.
This topic that I have asked Barry to speak on continues our exploration of Buddhist modernism and is also deeply personal, as we reflect on the question of whether or not we wish to identify ourselves as Buddhists. I just want to preface Barry’s talk and our discussion by referring to our OzZen constitution. The relevant parts read: OzZen is established to transmit and maintain the teachings of the Ordinary Mind Zen School lineage of Zen in a form accessible and relevant to the present everyday lives of people living in Australia and other parts of the world and the purpose of the OMZS is set out in the Mission Statement: to manifest and support the practice of the Awakened Way – there is no affiliation with other Zen groups or religious denominations; however, membership in this school does not preclude individual affiliation with other groups – the awakened way is universal. So, I hope it is clear that one does not have to identify as a Buddhist to become a member of OzZen. All that is necessary is an interest in manifesting and maintaining the teachings of the OMZS.
This meditation focuses on one of the core teachings of the Ordinary Mind Zen School: that there is nothing that is, or can be, broken with you as a person. Thus, there is nothing to be fixed. Often, and understandably, we get caught in concepts and judgements of good/bad. As an example, when experiencing emotional states that are painful or unpleasant, like anger, sadness, agitation, boredom, we want to say (and society/culture often supports us in doing so) that this is bad, and therefore we need to get rid of it. The opposite is also true: when experiencing pleasant states like joy, happiness, excitement, contentment, we want to say these are good, and we want to hold onto them for as long as possible. This leads us down a slippery slope to viewing ourselves as deficient, needing fixing, and thus unacceptable. This is to do violence against the self. We end this suffering by seeing clearly how we lay the concept of good/bad on top of ourselves, and thus seeing clearly, we free ourselves.
In this guided meditation I explore the heart of the Heart Sutra: Boundlessness. The Heart Sutra is the most important teaching in the Zen Buddhist world. I want to emphasise that this sutra is all about enlightenment as a verb – enlightening. The realisation of emptiness or boundlessness is freeing – it lightens us up and fills us with great joy!
In this talk I am going to discuss the Heart Sutra, the most important teaching in the Zen Buddhist world. I want to emphasise that this sutra is all about enlightenment as a verb – enlightening. The realisation of emptiness or boundlessness is freeing – it lightens us up and fills us with great joy! First, I will once again situate ourselves within Modern Buddhism. I will then give some brief historical and philosophical background to the sutra. Then I will give a line-by-line commentary, which is the body of the talk. Then if I have time, I will discuss differing ways of interpreting or understanding the sutra and how to practice the sutra. My main sources for today’s talk are Dogen, Shohaku Okumura, Jay Garfield and Barry Magid.
This guided mediation explores awareness as a central aspect of both Zen and gestalt therapy. Drawing on Fritz Perls’ concept of the “three zones of awareness,” it leads meditators through different aspects of their awareness, encouraging focus on both the content of awareness (e.g., sensations, sounds), as well as the process of awareness itself.
This talk continues the discussion from last fortnight, about moving from traditional Buddhism, what I called the salvation model, to modern Buddhism, or what I called the human flourishing model. In this talk, I will review, how modern Buddhism is reinterpreting some traditional core Buddhist beliefs. Traditional Buddhism was embedded in Indian philosophy and religion. The salvation model was appropriate for the people living in those times. In the same way that we take it for granted, that the earth revolves around the sun, they would have taken rebirth for granted. It would not have been questioned. The following beliefs from the salvation model are therefore given a new interpretation in the modern Buddhist paradigm, developed for people living in our times. We will be revising the following traditional beliefs: a. Rebirth and Karma. b. Anatman and Nirvana (Anatman is the negation of atman which means Self; anatman therefore means No-Self). c. Attitudes towards Impermanence, Beauty and Sensuality.
Zazen can be considered as the practice of ‘being’. Sitting, doing nothing, we reveal ourselves to ourselves. We reveal the no-separation between us and life itself. We reveal the paradox of constant change. We reveal the impossibility of not being this moment, of not being ourselves. Robert Rosenbaum, in ‘Zen and the Heart of Psychotherapy’ puts it this way: “practicing Zazen we practice just being alive and just dying; these are the basic activities of being human, the rest is superstructure. Discovering that ultimately there is nothing between our selves and our experience”.
The topic for this guided meditation is Embracing your Life: Cultivating Joy. It fits withing the Modern Buddhist Ethical framework of cultivating Happiness in This Life. Its okay to enjoy practice! The introduction discusses The Three Gates of Zen Practice – from a dharma talk by Barry Magid on 04/09/2010. The three gates of Zen practice are suffering, joy and compassion. Last weeks guided meditation was on the gateway of suffering, so today we will be entering the gateway of joy. The guided meditation introduces three practices that help us to cultivate joy: savouring positive experiences; gratefulness for the gift of being alive and the “good” life we are already living; and self-appreciation of positive qualities we can identify in ourselves.
In this talk Andrew locates our on-going discussion about Buddhist ethics in the context of Buddhist modernism in the West. He makes a distinction between the traditional salvation model of Buddhism and contrasts that with the eudaimonic or Human Flourishing model, which he argues is more congruent with our culture in this time and place. Andrew also suggests that Zen Buddhism since its beginnings in China has always been a life affirming, emphasising awakening in this life. There is also a discussion how the four noble truths provide the framework for Buddhist ethics and the importance of how the truths are interpreted. We conclude how Buddhist Ethics is about both personal and social transformation.
This guided mediation focuses on embracing dukkha as part of zen practice. Drawing on the “paradoxical theory of change” from gestalt therapy, it explores how growth, healing, and change are possible not when we try to modify ourselves, but rather when we fully become ourselves and our suffering.
This is the first of a series of Guided Meditations on Buddhist Ethics or the Cultivation of Character. It begins with an introduction to the Four Divine Abodes (Immeasurables): Karuna (care), Mudita (sympathetic joy), Metta (Love) and Upekka (Equanimity) followed by a reading of the Metta Sutta. The guided meditation commences with affectionate breathing moving the classic structure of metta practice.
In this talk Andrew gives an overview of the OzZen Way Study Program and answers questions on various aspects of the program. The written program can be found on the OzZen website.
By Dr Jed Blore. This is a meditation reflecting on “being just this moment”. What is “being just this moment”? It is reading these words, hearing the sounds around you, feeling the way your body is oriented in space and supported by the ground, thinking thoughts, feeling feelings. There is nothing outside of this moment. This moment contains everything. Memory is only ever experienced in this moment; likewise for thoughts about an imagined future. This moment is life. Being this moment means immersing yourself in this experience of your life. Like diving into water, there’s no way to avoid being wet; there’s no way not to be just this moment.
This guided meditation OzZen teacher Andrew Tootell continues the project of developing a Zen-informed Guided Meditation practice. It begins by outlining the four principles that all Buddhist groups adhere to: Life is Dukkha (Suffering); Impermanence; Interdependence (no separate self); and Nirvana. Although all Buddhism agree on these “four seals” they interpret them differently. We will be exploring the following question: What makes a zen-informed guided meditation different to other Buddhist-informed guided meditations? Is it a sensibility, an aesthetic? It can be argued that the difference between Japanese (Zen Buddhism) and Indian Buddhism is in how these different cultures relate to this world of impermanence and interdependence - maybe this is the key. Indian Buddhism (or the Buddhism of extinction) seems to reject this world, while Mahayana Buddhism embraces this world.
The meditation itself begins by emphasising the importance of posture and training the wandering mind to focus on an object, which is usually the breath. We then use the metaphor of earth and sky to draw a distinction between calmly abiding on an object and resting in global awareness. The object represents the earth, which can also be a metaphor for form. The sky represents sunyata (emptiness) or boundlessness. The guided meditation then explores what we call open sky meditation – calmly nonabiding in emptiness. The meditation also includes a reading from the Zen teacher Melissa Myozen Blacker and an introduction to the zen metaphor of dharma gates.
In this first talk for the year Andrew gives a general outline of Buddhism plus a discussion about the origins of Zen Buddhism. Andrew also answers some questions about what drew him to Zen Buddhism.
Gurdjieff (1866-1949) was a very influential spiritual teacher, and his teaching of the “Fourth Way” was ahead of its time and pre-dated the findings of later neuroscience, especially the “three centres”: the sensorimotor centre, the emotional centre and the cognitive centre and his teaching of multiple self-states. In this talk Elizabeth Barrett, a long-time student of “the work” gives us her story of her encounter with “the work”, and how it transformed her life. In the short time available, Elizabeth introduces us to some of the key teachings of the Fourth Way. Photo: Dushka Howarth, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Welcome home. Literally. This is our home, right here and now. You will not find this home on any map or travel guide. Wherever you travel, you will always arrive where you started - Here and Now. This is why, we have many stories in all the great spiritual traditions of people wandering in search of their home, finally realizing, THIS is their home. We are always at home.
This meditation reflects on our interdependence with each other and the world. How our body, mind and soul is dependent on nurture from the earth and from each other. Recognising this interdependence is the foundation for caring for ourselves and others.
If the image of the Buddha represents the experience of the timeless now, then the image of Janus, the two-headed Roman God of transitions, gateways, beginnings and endings, with one head turned towards what has been, and the other head turned towards what is yet to be, represents our experience of what I call mortal personhood. The smile of the Buddha conveys the sense of completeness – of serenely dwelling, in just this moment. Janus, on the other hand, looks to the past and the future, she knows she is mortal. Her time will come to an end. For the Buddha, liberation in this life, is liberation in this very moment. For the mortal person, liberation in this life, is the capacity to choose the life I wish to lead, knowing that my time is limited, and therefore having the faith to make commitments to relationships and projects, whose future outcome always remains uncertain. Also, given the limitations of time, I have to prioritise what I choose to commit myself too, but paradoxically, it is the fact that my time is limited, that allows me to experience meaning and purpose. Image: Loudon dodd, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Janus1.JPG
My teacher's teacher, Joko Beck, was once asked, if she could summarize all her years of practice in one word, what would it be? And she said, kindness. This guided meditation takes us on a journey into the experience of kindness and cultivating kindness. As the heart opens, we become free from our reactions and are able to respond to the world, to relationships, from this place of loving kindness and compassion. What does kindness feel like? This natural, effortless awareness that is presencing, is totally complete, just as it is. Lacking nothing, it desires nothing. From this place of completeness, kindness as a response to the world can arise. What are the qualities of kindness? There is a natural attentiveness, expecting nothing in return, no agenda other than to be kind. Openness, vulnerability, tenderness. Seeing our self in the eyes of the other.
In a way all these guided meditations are kind of like an exploration of our core practice - the practice of just sitting or the koan of just sitting. It's the core practice in Soto Zen. Dogen said zazen is not a meditation technique. It is simply the Dharma gate of joyful ease. It is practicing the realization of the boundless dharma way. Here the open mystery manifests and there are no more traps and snares for you to get caught in. So please settle into your posture.
I am currently reading a book called This Life: Why Mortality Makes us Free by the contemporary Swedish philosopher, Martin Hagglund, who argues against religious faith in favour of what he calls secular faith. He includes Buddhism, along with Christianity, as practicing a form of religious faith where some form of belief in eternity takes precedence over living this life. He argues that giving precedence to some version of salvation in eternity devalues this life, rendering our love and commitments in this life meaningless. I think Hagglund makes some good points, but I think the interpretation he has of Buddhism misses what we teach here in Ordinary Mind Zen. But I think his work does shed some light on some of the possible interpretations of the teachings of emptiness, that can misinform or even distort our practice, especially when they are interpreted in a way that prioritises some version of nirvana as being the ending of suffering via a release from the wheel of reincarnation or a release from the personal self into some form of pure awareness or the unborn and undying formless self. Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels.
This guided meditation take us on a journey exploring the two dimensions of time. The first quote refers to our normal experience of time as linear. The time that passes by in a flash. Ten, twenty, thirty seconds gone by in a flash. This is time seen from the relative or delusional perspective of the separate self that feels itself to stand-out, apart from reality as it is. It generates the emotion-thought of loss. The separate self is the wave that does not see itself as the ocean. However, even though it is delusional from the perspective of the Absolute (the ocean), it still feels real to us. When our beloved dies we suffer. This is what it means to be human, to be secular. However, there is another side to time, what we might call the religious dimension. This is the realisation of eternity. However, for zen, eternity is not endless duration that never ends. It is timeless in the sense that time as measurement of duration is not applicable. Eternity is not endless duration but nonseparation from just this moment. Wherever we may go, to the top of the highest mountain or to the depths of the deepest ocean, we are always here in this present moment, presencing. In fact, we are coming and going in and out of existence so rapidly we don’t see ourselves as change itself – we experience instead the illusion of continuity, rather like an an animated movie, where the film (motion picture) is a series of discontinuous still images. Photo by Matt Hardy from Pexels.
In this talk, my teacher, Barry Magid introduces us to the precepts of bearing witness. Barry suggests that the metaphor of bearing witness is more suited to contemporary lay practice in the west, than the metaphor of making a vow. When we bear witness to for example, violence in ourselves, we lay the groundwork for transformation through seeing ourselves clearly, without judgement. In contrast to this, vows can be easily broken and also may set up the aspiration to become an idealised version of ourself, forever feeling less than the projected ideal. The talk is followed by a very informative Q&A session.
Another expression for Zazen might be, being presence, but when we first sit down we may experience a strong pull away from being presence, almost like being caught in a rip current. Sometimes, it is best not to resist resistance and allow ourselves to be carried away by the rip in the faith that it will naturally come to an end and we will wake up again, in the light of a deep sense of being presence.
Resistance to just-sitting is part of our experience of just-sitting. It is hard to just rest in being here now without desiring something to happen or to be entertained in some way or to get involved in our thoughts. Or to get preoccupied with constant evaluations of how are we going? Am I doing this right or wrong? Am I there yet? As if there is a there to get too. As my teacher, Barry Magid says, “In that just sitting we enter a place which is neither right or wrong. We don't have to make anything happen. This practise heals our separation from life. Nirvana is nonseparation from life. This is our healing.
In our discussion last fortnight, we talked about making friends with death, and finding our home (nirvana) in this world rather than seeking some kind of transcendence of our ordinary self in an afterlife or in a “true” self that is behind, above or higher than our ordinary self, as if there is always something missing in our experience of ordinary self. In today’s talk I will explore some possible explanations as to how this sense of lack arises. I will be challenging the idea found in many commentaries, that the ordinary self is always experienced as an egocentric or separate self that is inherently insecure. Rather, I will suggest that the ordinary self is composed of many different self-states – only some of these states, the egocentric states, feel a painful sense of lack at their core but others may feel a deep sense of acceptance and nonseparation from the world. As is suggested in Case 19 of the Gateless Gate, maybe the ordinary self, when experienced from the perspective of emptiness, just like the spring flowers and the moon in Autumn, is the way.
This guided meditation is inspired by a reading that can be found on the OzZen website by my teacher Barry Magid. I read the pargraphs from the reading and then the meditation flows with the encouragement to allow and accept all aspects of our experience and needs.
The topic for this guided meditation is let it be. Whatever we may be experiencing right now just let it be, no need to change or fix anything. Allowing everything to be just as it is. If you get caught up in the contents of a thought that’s fine, just gently return to just sitting.
May we exist like a Lotus At home in the muddy water Thus, we bow to life as it is.
This is one of our meal chants. I like the metaphor of finding our home in the muddy water. This meditation explores this metaphor as a guide for our Zazen practice.
In this talk I want to say something about the importance of accepting our finitude and making friends with death, as if it was our most intimate companion. I contrast the acceptance of finitude with the flight from finitude - towards a quest for permanence or transcendence found in many religious and spiritual teachings including nondual teachings such as Zen, Advaita and Dzogchen.
Zen is a communal practice; it is also a commitment. Zen, ultimately, is a path of service to all beings and to each other, this commitment or vow is expressed in the Four Bodhisattva Vows. Showing up to practice together is an expression of that commitment. In some ways, commitment in Zen is like the Metta or Loving Kindness practice. We start with making a commitment to ourselves then extend that to loved ones and friends and continue extending to community and ultimately to all beings.
Most of you are familiar with the basic teachings of Buddhism - which you can basically group into two: the wisdom teachings and practices and the compassion teachings and practices. The wisdom teachings and practices are sometimes called the prajna teachings or the “emptiness” teachings and practices such as the Heart Sutra which teaches form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Those wisdom teachings are seeing into the impermanence and insubstantiality of all conditioned existence including the personal self. Then the compassion teachings are also building on or flowing from the wisdom teachings emphasising the interdependence and interconnectedness of all conditioned existence including ourselves. The two mutually support and complement each other all the time. We are always working with the two teachings and practices.
So, to begin our meditation – let’s start by letting go of our social identity. We do that by focusing on sensations, feelings. We can’t really feel age, or gender. They are just concepts. However, because we identify with concepts, we can feel hurt if someone insults aspects of our social identity. However, for the purpose of this meditation let’s leave these identities behind us. Let us de-identify from these constructs by just bringing our attention to our direct experience. Right now.
This talk was inspired by a recent conversation with an OzZen member. In this conversation the person was concerned with their inability to forgive someone who had hurt them it was a kind of betrayal. Now, my Buddhist friend felt that this was inadequate from a Buddhist perspective, that is, from a Buddhist perspective one should not feel hurt and one should be able to forgive. It is these assumptions that I think it is helpful to question.
Bring awareness to our intention and settle into our posture. We don’t sit to become Buddhas, we sit because we are already Buddha. When resistance arises we sit with he resistance. Allow the self to settle into the self. Trust in your Zazen, allow zazen to do zazen.
In this talk I am going to continue the exploration of the psychological and interpersonal-neurobiological aspects of Zen practice. Given the limitation of time, this will of necessity be a simplified account. In a way, I am basically providing a sketch of how I see our relationship to Zazen playing a similar function to our experience of an intimate relationship to potentiate our experience self.
In this talk I begin exploring the psychological and neurobiological aspects of Zen practice. This talk focuses on understanding the relationship between the personal self and the universal self and concludes that they meet through the experience of intimacy.
The 13th century Zen Master Dogen grew up with the teaching of original enlightenment – enlightenment is inherent in all beings from the beginning – not something that is achieved through effort. We might say it is a Holy world. Original dwelling place is another metaphor that has been used to point towards this ultimate reality that is always going to be impossible to pin down in words. The dilemma which Dogen struggled with as a young monk was, if we are all originally enlightened, why sit? This was Dogen’s personal koan. Another similar question is, if we are all originally at home, then why do we not experience this? Why do we fail to experience this ultimate security? In the existential sense, we fail to dwell. We fail to feel at home in the world. In this talk I am going to respond to these questions by making a distinction between our ESSENTIAL OR ORGINAL dwelling place and EXISTENTIAL dwelling, which consists in realising or understanding our ESSENTIAL dwelling. This distinction I have taken from the work of Professor Julian Young, who is a specialist in European Philosophy. This realisation in Zen of existential dwelling (being at home in the world) is brought forth through the regular practice of Zazen. In part one, I will present dukkha as a form of homelessness and alienation in the world. In part two, I will suggest that Zazen is the return home, what Dogen metaphorically referred to as “taking the backward step”.
This talk explores the existential and communal aspects of Zen practice. In particular, it focuses on interpersonal isolation, intrapersonal isolation and existential isolation. Zazen can be understood as a practice that builds our capacity to experience the intimacy of self, others, and the world by sitting alone together.
Caught in a self-centred dream, only suffering Holding to self-centred thoughts, exactly the dream. Each moment, life as it is, the only teacher Being just this moment, compassion’s way.
The practice principles are regularly recited in Ordinary Mind Zen Centres around the world. They are a re-working of the classic statements of The Four Noble Truths. In this talk I interpret the principles as encourage to let go of our self-centred reactivity and embrace the whole of life, both its delights and it tragedies.
“Come in”, she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”. In this talk I explore the meaning of salvation in Zen, in the context of a world stunned by the effects of disease and death. It begins with an overview of how both religions and relationships have been the main “shelters” of salvation for human beings since the dawn of time. So, what does Zen offer? I conclude that Zen does not promise us salvation by means of an escape from disease, old age and death, whether that be by transcending death by being reborn into a Buddhist Paradise or by realising our true nature as the unborn and undying Spirit. After over 30 years of engagement in this practice, I would say the salvation Zen offers is simply an embrace of disease, old age and death. The path of salvation in Zen is to live mindfully knowing our time on this earth is limited. This doesn’t mean we have to convert to a religion. It just means we must live our lives, as my teacher recently said, as if everything matters.
This talk explores the relationship between growing up and waking up. It commences with a reading of the first five verses of the poem Intimations of Immortality by William Wordsworth. I then discuss the distinction made by my teacher Barry Magid between a “top-down practice” and a “bottom-up practice” and outline some of the pitfalls of a top-down practice. It was Jack Engler who coined the phrase you have to “be somebody before you can be nobody”. I then weave together developmental psychology and trauma theory and how the process of waking up is an inherent potential in human development because it is our true nature. However, existential anxiety and developmental trauma often distort into a self-centred self which has anxiety at its core. This is contrasted with a life-centred self, characterised by openness to others and the world. The talk finished by stressing that it is better to integrate the self-centred self into the life-centred seld prior to integrating the life-centred self with the formless self of awakening.
In this talk I discuss the relationship between student and teacher which is at the core of our tradition and practice. This talk answers the question what is involved in becoming a student? What is a zen student? How do I become a zen student? What does it mean to practice in a non-monastic setting? The talk also discusses my experience of the student – teacher relationship and explores the question, what does it mean to be a teacher? Finally I ask the question should zen teaching be professionalised or should we continue with the dana (donation) culture?
I have sometimes heard people say “I have wasted my life” and are full of regrets for the life they did not lead. This is a common form of suffering. A critical part disparages the life we have led as not being "good enough" or "successful" enough because we did not follow our authentic calling and opted for a safer option. For example, a character in the Netflix comedy The Kominsky Method, feels he has wasted his life because instead of pursing his youthful dream of being a musician or an actor, he became a High School English and History teacher instead.
From a Zen perspective, life itself IS the ultimate value, and our commitment to practice is the way in which we embody these values. When we are being “this very moment” it is not possible to regret the life we did not lead. However, there is an element of truth in this story of a wasted life. From a Zen perspective, a wasted life would be a life not lived, not appreciated for the wonder it is (even during the hard times) and I would also encourage everyone of you to follow your calling, whatever that may be
In this talk Andrew gives his interpretation of the traditional “four seals” as discussed in the classic book by Uchiyama on Soto Zen: Opening the Hand of Thought. The four seals are: 1. Life is suffering. 2. Impermanence. 3. No substantial self (interdependence). 4. Nirvana (the end of suffering). The four seals are the essentials for a teaching to be Buddhism. They are what differentiates Buddhism from other religions.
This is a classic enlightenment poem, attributed to the third ancestor of Chan, Seng Ts’an. The title is sometimes translated as Faith in Mind, but I prefer realising mind because the poem is a guide for practice and teaches us how to align ourselves with our Buddha mind. “True faith in mind is the belief grounded in realisation that we have (are) a fundamental, unmoving, unchanging mind” (Sheng Yen). Talk presented 24/11/19.
What are the barriers that prevent us from awakening? From appreciating this presence that we are and always have been. Usually our preoccupation with “me”. Also, important to focus on post-enlightenment practice. Awakening doesn’t mean we are not going to have ups and downs. This path doesn’t offer a pot of gold. But it offers eternity – which is always now. And now could be a pain in the neck or anxiety in the belly. We are always at home, while all forms, all phenomena, are coming and going. We are the universe! When we have realised ourselves as awareness/presence, we can then bring that awareness down into the body. Freedom is now.
Vimalakirti, was a very wise lay practitioner who lived at the time of the Buddha. In reply to the question: “What is the Bodhisattva’s Gate to the One and Only?” his response was silence. Silence is synonymous with nonduality. This is a guided meditation commenting on a short text on “Silence”, by a twentieth century nondual teacher called Jean Klein. Jean Klein was not in the Buddhist tradition. He was in a different tradition, Kashmir Shaivism. His lineage is quite influential in the west. One of his students, who now teaches, was a man called Francis Lucille, and Francis Lucille was the teacher of Rupert Spira.
This was a talk given by a student, Phil Pisanu, at the recent retreat. "My Zen journey has 3 entangled threads – the idea of Zen, my interest in the natural world, and my lifelong pastime of surfing... Mind, body and spirit. All good journeys have a beginning, a middle and end..."
Our original enlightenment or inherent completeness is obscured by our self-centred dream, trauma and conditioning. Awakening to presence, although necessary, is often not enough to heal our addiction to the self-centre, and our traumatic deficiency stories (beliefs) and body memories. We need to ensure that presence can meet the conditioning that has been compartmentalised away. We must bring conscious awareness to our pain. In this talk I introduce traditional and contemporary unfindability inquiry that helps us to embody our awakening and help to free the body from previous trauma.
Silence is the gateway into ordinary mind. In our Ordinary Mind Zen School, we have two basic practices that work in tandem: just sitting or resting in presence (no-gain) and inquiry (I would also include guided meditation as a form of inquiry). Inquiry and guided meditation are necessary to embody our awakening. Inquiry investigates the mind and explores the body. The purpose of both just sitting and inquiry is not to change anything but is clear seeing of what is. However, for inquiry to lead to healing we must be established in presence. Two basic questions to explore on this retreat are: what am I waking up from? And, what am I waking up to?
It is free of suffering, arising, cessation, and path. This talk reflects on human suffering from the perspective of the Heart Sutra. Most of our suffering originates from rejecting this moment in the form of clinging or resisting. This moment is never it. The separate self is the activity of endlessly seeking something other than just this! Suffering is a form of homesickness – we are alienated from our natural home – which is always just this moment. From the perspective of the heart sutra – when we rest in awareness and allow this moment to be exactly as it is, without clinging or resistance – we are no longer separate from suffering and hence, paradoxically, free of both suffering and the pursuit of the ending of suffering.
In this talk I begin with the reasons why a psychologically minded zen practice needs to be a trauma-informed zen practice: firstly, to ensure that zen practice doesn’t inadvertently retraumatise people; and secondly, zen practice can facilitate the healing process of trauma survivors. I then define trauma and discuss how the symptoms of trauma are the price we pay for surviving trauma. Following this I focus on the treatment of trauma and how Zen practice contributes to the process of healing by facilitating self-acceptance and self-compassion.
This is a famous koan which our Zen school is named after. In the story the student is asking the teacher what is the Tao, what is the Buddha way? Basically, how do I practice? The way is basically our life. The whole of our life is our practice. In this talk I introduce the metaphor of “falling in love with life” as a way of understanding the process of awakening as both a sudden and a gradual process.
"Peaceful dwelling as change itself liberates all suffering sentient beings and brings them to great joy". With this dedication we explore the practice of non-abiding - as resting as change itself - discovery nirvana in the midst of impermanence.
This talk is on the need for both wisdom and compassion to be always working together, like the two wings of a bird enabling us to fly to go with the flow of the reality of this moment. We can err on either side of the equation – we can get stuck in the wisdom of oneness or we can get burnt-out by putting others needs before our own. Rather, wisdom (or prajna) frees us from our attachment to the self-centred dream and compassion guides how we express this understanding in our everyday life – compassion’s way.
This was the second talk given at the Yarrawarra Aboriginal Cultural Centre during our Autumn sesshin. This talk focused on the great matter of life-death from the Absolute or Wisdom beyond Wisdom teachings perspective. It draws from the essay called Genjo Koan written by the 13th century Japanese Zen Master, Eihei Dogen. It points to how enlightenment is not an “experience” that is realised by a person but rather Reality itself is already enlightened and our practice is to realise this reality as our self – to become intimate with enlightened reality.
This was the first talk given at the Yarrawarra Aboriginal Cultural Centre during our Autumn sesshin. This talk focused on the relative dimension of life-death. Looking from the human perspective, we must confront our awareness of the inevitably and finality of death. The talk focuses how death, like life, can be a great teacher. Don’t wait for your “real” life to begin sometime in the dream of the future, begin it now! This life, right now, is IT!
In this meditation I guide participants in objectless awareness, or awareness of awareness. This is the practice of “just sitting” in our tradition. We rest our attention in awareness itself, nonabiding in any object. This is the direct experience of freedom in impermanence, nirvana in samsara – the dharma gate of ease and joy.
This talk was given as part of the Zen Buddhist service for my mother (and other sangha members whose mother had recently passed away). My mother passed on the 12/4/19, the day before her 96th birthday. The eulogy takes the form of me speaking directly to my mother, whose photograph was placed on the alter.
This talk is a commentary on the chapter “The Razor’s Edge” by Joko Beck. It distinguishes the activity of the self-centred self, which is the attempt to control and resist impermanence in order to avoid feeling emotional pain from what Joko called embeddedness in life. When we are embedded in life there is no separation and hence no problem. We allow our lives to flow. However, when we feel threatened or hurt, we are thrown out of embeddedness and back into separateness (duality). We need to join together these broken pieces to become whole again. How? By experiencing the pain, we are trying to avoid. This is walking the razor’s edge. Practice is walking this edge. But we don’t want to do this. We want to fix the problem, solve it, get rid of it. Experiencing is the practice of waking the razors edge. The first step is to become ware of what it is we are feeling. To walk the edge is to experience the pain and realise we can endure and survive it. We have to arrive at the emotion before we can move on. “When we are experiencing nonverbally we are walking the razor’s edge – we are the present moment”. Walking the razor’s edge is what Zen practice is. “In fact the enlightened life is simply being able to walk that edge all the time”. The paradox: only in walking the razor's edge, in experiencing the fear directly, can we know what it is to have no fear”. Walking the razor’s edge is how peace is found. Experiencing the body and breath is being on the razor’s edge. How does the razor’s edge relate to enlightenment? It is enlightenment. Keep the question with you: Right now, am I walking the razor’s edge?
This talk commences with some words on the act of terrorism that had just occurred in New Zealand on the previous Friday. I then share some of my reflections on the chapter True Suffering and False Suffering from Everyday Zen. It begins with a discussion of the absolute and the relative together as it relates to suffering. I then discuss the basic distinction between true and false suffering as a way of practicing with suffering. I introduce my own interpretation of primary and secondary suffering, with secondary suffering being a form of resistance to primary suffering. And as long as we are caught in a separate self, we will also experience a background feeling of unease or lack. The talk concludes by encouraging us to be this impermanent moment that we are. The way to the ending of suffering, paradoxically, by fully being our suffering.
In this talk I give a commentary on Barry Magid’s dharma poem "I am my body". I think Barry's writing is addressing two basic issues: 1) the tendency in religion/spirituality to seek to transcend the impermanence of our body (our incarnation) and seek permanence somewhere else other than where we are; and 2) to transcend the Cartesian mind/body duality we still tend to get caught in. The expression, I am my body, seeks to transcend this duality. There is no separation between me and my perceptions of the world. You are the sound. You are the colour. You are the taste. If you like, the world is your body. We might therefore say I am my bodyworld.
I think the reason why Barry states “I am my body” etc., is to undermine the tendency we have, to relate to the body as if it is something I have or possess like a house or a car. It is important to distinguish between "having" and "being". Even the phrase "I am my body" can't completely escape this sense that there is an "I" that owns a vehicle called a body. However, the lineage I belong to, the Soto Zen lineage of Dogen, is quite explicit - there is no "owner" of the vehicle. Hence, I don't "have" a body - I am my body.
Now it needs to be made clear that the body we are referring to is the lived experienced body. Not a body as object but the body as subject. Hence, my awareness is always embodied. The observer is just another attribute of my body - we might say my body is both aware and orientating us in the world. The body is also aware of being aware. Again, be careful not to reify the observer or witness. Awareness is no-thing. The body is both the percept and the awareness of the percept. The capacity for self-reflection is what enables us to make meaning and tell stories about our experience. The experience of the body is also the sense of presence. Being here (in a location) and being this now moment.
This talk reflects on the nature of the observing self as described by Joko Beck. The observing self is distinguished from the conceptual or personal self. In a sense it is a knowing or awareness that is embodied. We are aware of being aware. This is the miracle. This body is aware. We can see and describe our body as object, but we cannot describe the body as subject. The body as subject cannot be observed. The observing self is no other than the body as subject. We can describe our experience of the contents of awareness but not that which is the experiencer. Awareness is the light or the lamp that “lights up” these contents. Practice is to illuminate these contents and explore them at greater and greater depth. When we are “lost in thought” we have fallen asleep, and we have lost the observing function. We have identified with the thought. In order to “wake-up” from the dream we return to the observing function. We wake up to the “wonder”. What is this wonder? “This space of wonder- entering into heaven – opens when we are no longer caught up in ourselves: when it is no longer “I”, but “Thou”. There is no barrier. The gate is really no-gate. The barriers are the veils – the dualistic emotions and constructs that blind us to the wonder that is always here. This very body is Buddha!
I share my reflections on the chapter “What Practice Is” from Joko’s first book Everyday Zen. It discusses the relationship between sitting practice and everyday life practice, focusing on “thought labelling” and “experiencing”. It finishes with a discussion of common thought traps that we all at times fall into.
Do you know your core fears? Fear can alert is to our patterns of attachment to the apparent separate self. In this talk I explore how we practice with our fears on the level of the mind (thoughts/core beliefs) and the body (the memory or residues of past fears that have accumulated over our lives). Recorded 20.05.18. If you found Andrew’s talks or meditations helpful, please consider donating to Ordinary Mind Zen Mid North Coast at https://www.ordinarymind.com.au/donate
In Buddhism attachment is often seen as the root cause of suffering and non-attachment is seen as the solution. In classical Buddhism this took the form of monastic communities. Obviously, this is not the solution for lay practitioners. So, what is the understanding of non-attachment that is helpful for lay-practitioners? This talk discusses how dwelling in non-abiding awareness is the form of non-attachment that liberates us from attachment and therefore suffering. The core form of attachment is attachment to egoic self. The egoic self doesn’t have to die – only our attachment to the egoic self. Recorded 15.04.18. If you found Andrew’s talks or meditations helpful, please consider donating to Ordinary Mind Zen Mid North Coast at https://www.ordinarymind.com.au/donate
In inquiry practice we explore the barriers that get in the way of us waking up. In this talk we look at the need to make a descent down into the cellars of our “Guest House”. That which we resist, persists – and that which we lock away tends never to go away. So, we make our descent to recognise and acknowledge the prisoners that have been locked away, often in childhood. We then give them a voice and allow them to share their burden and then with our help release their burden – freeing up the life energy that previously had been frozen in time. Recorded 14.04.18. If you found Andrew’s talks or meditations helpful, please consider donating to Ordinary Mind Zen Mid North Coast at https://www.ordinarymind.com.au/donate
The movement from avoidance to acceptance is an area in which both therapy and zen dovetail and overlap. The suffering we experience when invested in the separate self takes two basic forms: lack and resistance. In this talk we focus on the example of shame or personal inadequacy. Shame is an emotion we experience from a deep sense of lack – we will never be good enough and it is a painful feeling we want to get rid of. In our zen practice we welcome all feelings and thoughts, whether they be comfortable or uncomfortable. When we recognise our true nature as impersonal awareness, we are naturally accepting of whatever is coming and going in our awareness. So, in zen, acceptance is not a technique we have to practice getting better at, acceptance is the functioning of our true nature. It is only the mind that picks and chooses. Before we can live without shame, we have first to live with it. In welcoming our painful feelings, we accept ourselves, even our vulnerable or hidden parts. Thus, we become whole and heal the primal wound of separation. Recorded 25.03.18. If you found Andrew’s talks or meditations helpful, please consider donating to Ordinary Mind Zen Mid North Coast at https://www.ordinarymind.com.au/donate
I give some history of American Zen and some details of Joko’ biography. This helps to understand her break from her teacher, Taizan Maezumi Roshi and the innovations she made to western Zen, such as her emphasis on practice and deemphasis on the teacher and enlightenment. Her emphasis on psychology and deemphasis on robes and ritual, developing a unique American style of zen.
This talk begins with Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality – how as children and even as adolescents we are in touch with the wonder of being alive, but as we become adults, we tend to lose this wonder and it is obscured by the “realities” of family life and work. Then the “fall” happens, the loss of wonder. Life is taken for granted. We identify with our separate self and suffer. Then at a certain point, we start to seek again, that homesickness inside that yearns for paradise lost. On the spiritual path we again start to inquire into the question, who or what is aware? This inquiry invites us to re-discover this mystery. However, because we are so accustomed to a life of drama and seeking excitement as an escape from the dull monotony of our lives, we may miss the simple wonder of the awareness of just being here. Recorded 11.03.18. If you found Andrew’s talks or meditations helpful, please consider donating to Ordinary Mind Zen Mid North Coast at https://www.ordinarymind.com.au/donate
“The mystery is never very far away – it is so close that sometimes we miss it!” This mystery or wonder at existence is often something we experience in childhood and adolescence, but when we arrive at adulthood, we often get disconnected from it as we become preoccupied with our busy lives. Retreat is an opportunity for us to re-connect with this mystery. Recorded 13.04.18. If you found Andrew’s talks or meditations helpful, please consider donating to Ordinary Mind Zen Mid North Coast at https://www.ordinarymind.com.au/donate
We are social and political beings. From an evolutionary point of view our brain has developed in order to help us survive. Buddhism offers the hope of living in a world were other human beings do not represent a threat. One of the ways our body/brain regulates threat is through the autonomic nervous system. Habits of connection or protection. We want to shape our nervous system to be more open and less fearful. Zazen makes an important contribution to relaxing and opening the heart to our own fears and the fear of the other, shaping our nervous system to respond with love and kindness.
The Bodhisattva vow is to awaken with all beings realising the impermanence interdependence and perfection of all life. From our deep realisation of this reality arises deep compassion and gratitude. The realisation that we and life are perfect just as we are is hard to understand. We think, this doesn’t feel like Buddha, because we have expectations or beliefs about what we think Buddha should be like. We habitually resist being just this moment. Please observe this. Gratitude can be taken up as a practice in itself, both formally and/or informally, which is perfectly in harmony with Zen practice.
What does it mean to identify as a Buddhist? There is a diversity of Buddhism, so what kind of Buddhist? The most important point for me is that it is a commitment to a teaching and a teacher. We are all students of the Buddha Way. We are always deepening our understanding and our practice. In Buddhism the teaching is called dharma. We could say we are students of the dharma. What is the essence of Zen Buddhism? In this talk I propose that the four seals summarise the essence of Zen Buddhism. The four seals are: 1. Life inevitably involves suffering; 2. Everything is impermanent; 3. Everything is interdependent; and 4. Nirvana is peace or perfection found in this life.
This talk was given during the Autumn 2018 retreat which included Peter Joshu Thompson as a guest teacher. This talk, in contrast to classical Zen teaching, discusses the importance of the inherent value of the personal self and the capacity for intimacy – to awaken the vulnerable open-heart-centred self. It is important that we don’t interpret Buddhist no-self to mean our personal self has no intrinsic value. It asks the question, what is it that makes us uniquely human?
Our practice IS awakening. Awakening to each moment. Hence awakening is endless for as long as we live. Being caught in a emotion-thought reactivity is what constrains us from being awake. When we are awake, we can respond. When we are caught in the dream we react. Practice itself is awakening. We don’t practice to wake up, practice is awakening.
The path of the Bodhisattva is to embrace life. To fully embrace life is to embrace the totality of life just as it is. We don’t get to pick and choose. To fully embrace both the joys and sorrows of life. We can’t have on without the other. To fully embrace life is the taste of nirvana - a life free of emotional reactions – an awakened life. Recorded 07/10/18. If you found Andrew’s talks or meditations helpful, please consider donating to Ordinary Mind Zen Mid North Coast at https://www.ordinarymind.com.au/donate
This is a guided meditation on thoughts. Waking up from the dream is never ending. As delusions are inexhaustible, each moment is our opportunity to awake from them. So, don’t be disillusioned by the endless thoughts that arise. This is just the mind doing what minds do. Just let them come and go. And when you do become lost in a thought, notice that as well. And if you can, rest in the space in-between thoughts.
This talk reflects on how I position myself (now) as a “Buddhist” and how the Ordinary Mind School fits into Buddhism. Joko never described herself as a secular Buddhist, but she did dispense with several religious aspects of practice such as disrobing. And, although Barry Magid doesn’t describe himself as a secular Buddhist, Barry has dropped non-scientific Buddhist beliefs such as reincarnation and has been instrumental in promoting lay practice. So, I think the lineage I belong to as several affinities with secular Buddhism, although I think it is important maybe to redefine what we mean by a religion in this secular age. What is secular Buddhism? According to Stephen Batchelor: Secular as distinct from religious: so, styles of dress and rituals are secularised. From the Latin, saeculum, which means this age, these times, this world. This world we live in is not the world of ancient India. We have more of a naturalistic bent and are accepting of the discipline of science – therefore metaphysical beliefs such as reincarnation and the law of karma are jettisoned. Finally, secular as the transfer of authority over certain domains from religion to the state.
When we sit together in a group, we all benefit from sharing in our mutual flow of loving energy. This creates a context for deep relaxation and letting go. We discover in our hearts, this here now is the only constant in our lives. This precious moment is who we truly are. If you found Andrew’s talks or meditations helpful, please consider donating to Ordinary Mind Zen Mid North Coast at https://www.ordinarymind.com.au/donate
Preface by Mumon from Aitken Roshi. Two ways in which the word mind is used: the thinking mind and original mind or ordinary mind unconditioned awareness or just this (suchness). There is no barrier we are already here. The Zen knowing is not conceptual knowing or knowing how to fix something. The great way has no gate A thousand roads enter it There is no path in the sense of getting somewhere. What are the barriers which prevent from realising the way in each moment?The barriers of the “family treasures”, what we want to possess or hang onto. Or, the “could haves” or “should haves”. Endless decisions that we can make big problems out of. Just let go of right and wrong – maybe there is no such thing as a mistake.
As a child we identify with the image in the mirror and the concept of identity, but we miss the mirror. After many years of conditioning we may become curious about this image and identity. Who are we really? This investigation may make us uncomfortable to begin with, maybe even a little scary. Donald Winnicott came to the conclusion that we all experience two primordial fears: endlessly falling and non-being – disappearing into the black void. This me that we identify with is constructed around these core fears. This journey of freeing ourselves from this holding on inevitably means re-experiencing some of these fears.
This talk introduces the Aboriginal practice of Dadirri. Recognising an indigenous lineage and our indigenous ancestors: “What I want to talk about is another special quality of my people. I believe it is the most important. It is our most unique gift. It is perhaps the greatest gift we can give to our fellow Australians. In our language this quality is called dadirri. It is inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness. Dadirri recognises the deep spring that is inside us. We call on it and it calls to us. This is the gift that Australia is thirsting for. It is something like what you call "contemplation". When I experience dadirri, I am made whole again. I can sit on the riverbank or walk through the trees; even if someone close to me has passed away, I can find my peace in this silent awareness. There is no need of words. A big part of dadirri is listening. Through the years, we have listened to our stories. They are told and sung, over and over, as the seasons go by. Today we still gather around the campfires and together we hear the sacred stories. As we grow older, we ourselves become the storytellers. We pass on to the young ones all they must know. The stories and songs sink quietly into our minds and we hold them deep inside. In the ceremonies we celebrate the awareness of our lives as sacred. The contemplative way of dadirri spreads over our whole life. It renews us and brings us peace. It makes us feel whole again…”
Part 1. This talk discusses the process of integrating the nondual traditions of Zen and Advaita. We usually start Zen practice with the feeling or belief there is something lacking. But we are already enlightened – so why seek? Why indeed, practice at all? We begin with the path of differentiation, differentiating the universal self from the passing phenomena of the individual self. We then integrate this understanding in the realisation the identity of samsara and nirvana.
Part 2. “Neti Neti” – I am not my thoughts, I am not my feelings, I am not my sensations, I am not any particular identity. Awareness has no age or gender – it is like empty space. This process is one of recognition of remembering who we are. The path of love inclusion – where we express or live out our nonduality. The ocean and the waves metaphor. You are that sensation – you are that sound – you are that thought – you are that feeling. There is no separation between you and the world. You, awareness, are the world. This is the original self. Joko would say be just this moment – you, awareness, are this moment – whatever this moment may be.
Emptiness or boundlessness is one way of understanding the teachings of nonduality. All forms are impermanent, they come, and they go, from the source, the formless. The formless is a no-thing. This present moment itself is empty – timeless.
This is a guided meditation on the classic exhortation ‘be here now!” first published as a book title by Ram Das in 1971. The now is not a now in a sequence of other now’s. It’s not a moment in linear time, stretching backwards to the past and forwards to the future. It’s hard to put it into words, but the now is more like the space in which everything appears; or Mind outside of time; timeless or presence. The now is also the knower or the witness of all that is appearing. So, another metaphor is we're sitting on the bank, witnessing the river that’s flowing. The river of course is constantly changing. The old expression you can't step into the same river twice. And the stepper itself is always changing. There is nothing to grasp onto, just continuous change. We are both the witness sitting on the bank and the river. They're not two. Recorded 29.07.18. If you found Andrew’s talks or meditations helpful, please consider donating to Ordinary Mind Zen Mid North Coast at https://www.ordinarymind.com.au/donate
Reflections on my teacher, Barry Magid’s teachings. The importance of enjoying practice and adapting practice forms to the limitations of the aging body. Experiencing emotional pain is more important than trying to push through physical pain. The koan “Fireboy seeking fire” is a nice summation of one aspect of Barry’s teaching – dharma is just this – peace and joy OR anxiety and anger!
Atta Dipa Viharatha (Pali) – the Buddha’s parting words are usually translated as “be islands unto yourselves, refuges unto yourselves, seeking no external refuge; with the Dhamma as your island, the Dhamma as your refuge, seeking no other refuge.”. ... but I prefer the metaphor of “light”. Be a light unto yourself - don’t depend on external authorities – verify it for yourself. We cannot see light because it is who we are – our essential nature – the light that we are is the lamp of awareness. Light has no boundary – no beginning or end. Dwell as light – nonabiding awareness.
This is a guided meditation on the art of “just-sitting”. In just sitting we enter the open awareness of the totality of body sensations, thoughts and the environment. One seamless field of phenomena. Recorded 9/9/18. If you found Andrew’s talks or meditations helpful, please consider donating to Ordinary Mind Zen Mid North Coast at https://www.ordinarymind.com.au/donate
Inquiry practice has always been part of the classical Zen tradition in the form of Koan practice. There is really only one Koan: Who am I? The rest of the Koans are designed to help us align our everyday lives with this realisation into our True Self.
This is a commentary on the classic 18th century poem “In Praise of Zazen” by the great Zen Master, Hakuin. So, this poem--like all Zen poetry--is inviting us to take the backwards step, to turn inwards, to see how everything we experience is within; that there is no outside. When we practice direct experiencing (non-separation) this very body is experienced as the absolute manifesting as sensations. Not as a body that conventional reality would have us believe is bounded by our skin. Hence, this very body is the Buddha!
This talk compares and contrasts the teaching of the direct path (as found in Zen and other traditions) and the progressive path as found in both religious mindfulness practice and secular mindfulness. The progressive path is characterised as the realisation of truth through gradual stages culminating in the wisdom that sees the truth of impermanence, suffering and the absence of any substantial self. It is taught as a set of factors or skills that we practice to attain either realisation or well-being. In contrast, the direct path points directly to reality or ordinary mind – which is always already and here and now. Rather than training all that is required is recognition – this indeed unfolds gradually but is realisable right now.
This is a guided meditation on the poem The Guest House, a poem by the 13th century Sufi, Rumi. The poem can be used as a guide for meditation. In this poem, Rumi takes quite a familiar metaphor, you find it in various Buddhist stories going back quite a long time before Rumi. You'll find it in the Sufi stories as well, this metaphor of a guest house, or a host, and the notion of visitors or guests arriving and leaving. So, it's a lovely metaphor of how the host, symbolising our true self or our true nature, or simply awareness, and the guest being the contents of our awareness. Be they simple sensations, perceptions, or more complicated forms of thoughts and feelings and emotions, and clusters of thoughts and feelings, such as depression. These guests may stay only momentary or they may stay a little bit longer. But the key metaphor is the fact that the constant background or the space in which all the guests come, that is our true nature or awareness, remains a constant presence. Indeed, it is the timeless presence, the now that is always here and always now. And the guests, of course, are transient, constantly coming and going, coming and going. If you found Andrew’s talks or meditations helpful, please consider donating to Ordinary Mind Zen Mid North Coast at https://www.ordinarymind.com.au/donate
This meditation guides you into an experience of the body as sensations and perceptions. The body is 99.99% space. My attending carefully to sensations arising within the spaciousness of our awareness we experience liberation from identification with the body as an object. If you found Andrew’s talks or meditations helpful, please consider donating to Ordinary Mind Zen Mid North Coast at https://www.ordinarymind.com.au/donate
Bankei, one of my favourite Zen teachers from the 17th seventeenth. Bankei teaches the direct path to enlightenment. Bankei taught a form of Zen that was accessible to people from all walks of life. He spoke of the “unborn” – the treasure that is here all the time – we come home to the unborn – this timeless aware presence that we have always been.
Discussion on the similarities and differences between Advaita and Mahayana Buddhism. Is there one truth or many truths? Emptiness and True Nature? Are they the same or different?
In this talk we investigate our experience of emotional hurt, ranging from traumatic experience to feeling let down or disappointed. This includes seeing how the identification with a separate self from childhood onwards is necessary precursor to the experience of emotional hurt. During our investigation we come to realise that our self-as-awareness cannot be hurt because awareness is always prior to the identification with the separate self. Realising self-as-awareness provides us with a refuge for our hurt and helps us to let go.
Continuing from last week’s talk we explore human development from the perspective of growing up and waking up. In the same way as the mother communicates security to the child the teacher communicates the True Self to the student. Once the student recognises their own True Self (which is the same True Self) they see the path of freedom from the limitations of the separate self. The True Self provides refuge to the “baby being” in the same way as the mother provides a secure base for the child.
A commentary on the Pali Chant Attha dipa which identifies the True Self using the metaphor of Light. This is interpreted in the light of the zen tradition and the Heart Sutra: form is boundlessness. In zen we return our attention inwards – resting attention in the source of awareness itself and realising our True Self as that awareness.
A commentary on the koan which is often shortened to read, “what is your original face before your parents were born?” It gives the background story to the sixth founding teacher and relates the koan to the three steps of zen and the foundation this creates for deep self-acceptance.
The three steps to Zen awakening are (1) to study the self; (2) to forget the self; and (3) to integrate our awakening to reality into our everyday life.
The four Bodhisattva vows are regularly chanted at most Zen centres. We discuss the language and interpretation of the vows and how to make them relevant to our practice. Each of the vows is a perspective on the call to awaken from the self-centred dream to the Reality of just this moment.
Discussion of the duhkha or suffering. This focuses in particular on psychological suffering, the suffering of the separate self and the suffering that is maintained through the actions of the separate self. This includes examining suffering on a personal, interpersonal and social level.
The Buddha taught suffering and the ending of suffering. This talk focuses on the psychological suffering generated by the separate self. It starts with a commentary on the four practice principles and then discusses what we mean by “inquiry” practice.
This cycle of talks takes both the universal myth of the Hero’s Journey from the work of Joseph Campbell and the ten traditional Ox-Herding pictures from Japanese Zen to talk of the stages of Zen Practice.
This cycle of talks takes both the universal myth of the Hero’s Journey from the work of Joseph Campbell and the ten traditional Ox-Herding pictures from Japanese Zen to talk of the stages of Zen Practice.
This cycle of talks takes both the universal myth of the Hero’s Journey from the work of Joseph Campbell and the ten traditional Ox-Herding pictures from Japanese Zen to talk of the stages of Zen Practice.
In this talk I discuss the 7th precept – “I take up the way of meeting others on equal ground”. This includes meetings ourselves with acceptance and compassion. It explores how we can embrace our own “inner critic” with compassion and gradually transform the critic into an inner mentor or teacher.
Depression is understood as a self-state and is related to the first precept – I take up the way of supporting life. How depression could be understood as a form of “killing” the self, either literally through suicide, or metaphorically, in that it closes down our ability to enjoy life.
Integration is about the transformation from self-as-person to awareness-as-self. To study the way of enlightenment is to study the self. When we study our experience of “I”, we realise we are composed of many different “I”’s or “self-states” or “parts”. We identify with these different states. The path of integration begins with firstly distinguishing body sensations from our thoughts and emotions and secondly identifying ourselves with the observer or witness rather than the sensations and thoughts that are changing all the time.
Continues the focus on the importance of compassionate witnessing and maintaining and responding from awareness to the various situations we meet in everyday life. It takes up the precept of letting go of anger when we feel we have been unjustly injured by what someone has done or said.
This guided meditation gently introduces the listener to the experience of being awareness. Being awareness is meditation, being awareness is our inherent nature, who we truly are. When we are being awareness we can meet and welcome all our sensations, feelings and thoughts and accept them just as they are. This includes the unpleasant or even painful sensations, feelings and thoughts that go together to constitute the object that we call emotional “hurt”. If you found Andrew’s talks or meditations helpful, please consider donating to Ordinary Mind Zen Mid North Coast at www.ordinarymind.com.au/donate
Starts with a discussion of Case 45 from the Blue Cliff Record: “Myriad things return to the One. Where does the One return to?” And discusses three stages of practice. The first stage is realising oneness. The source or The Absolute. In our practice of “open awareness” we come back to our experience of this moment. The second stage of practice is when we respond to the world of everyday life from this place of oneness or openness. The third stage of practice is the ongoing integration of stage one and two.
This guided meditation begins the same as part one, but then explores our experience of anger and the process of letting go of that anger. If you found Andrew’s talks or meditations helpful, please consider donating to Ordinary Mind Zen Mid North Coast at https://www.ordinarymind.com.au/donate
There are many problems with the Koan Zen style of teaching that places emphasis on kensho or satori experiences. Firstly, it can mistake colourful experiences for the recognition of our essential nature; secondly, it can set students up to feel like they haven’t had that experience and that somehow, they are a failure; thirdly, these experiences can elevate the self and then the self is always chasing another experience, where our essential nature is not an experience of any kind. Another problem was that these experiences would often bypass unrecognised psychological issues that would manifest later. Hence, our founding teacher dropped the Koan style teaching method and placed emphasis on the direct path to awakening to our essential nature, by including within that the direct experiencing of body sensations including unwanted sensations such as anxiety. The combination of direct experiencing and dropping the story-line would lead to the erosion of our separate self. These talks explore this style of teaching in part 1 and part 2 of Relational Zen.
This talk is based on the story found in Case 41 of the Gateless Barrier titled “Bodhidharma Pacifies the Mind”. Is pain always necessary to realise our True Self?
This Christmas talk tells the story of the Bodhisattva figure found in Japan known as Hotei. Hotei has the bodily appearance of Santa Claus, often known as the laughing Buddha or the Buddha with the big belly who carries a sackcloth on his back.
To be a human being is to be attached. That’s the natural order of things. There is nothing wrong with that. But what is our ego-self attached to? What are our self-centred requirements?
Ordinary mind is the way. How do we understand effort within the context of a just sitting practice which emphasises no goal and no-gain.
In our Zen practice, we move from a life of upset and drama to a life of clarity and equanimity (most of the time). To do this we need to be at ease with who and what we are.
In our Zen practice, we move from a life of upset and drama to a life of clarity and equanimity (most of the time). To do this we need to be at ease with who and what we are.
This talk focuses on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs within the context of our study of the precepts, doing no harm to self and appreciating the preciousness of life. Mindfulness asks what am I experiencing right now and self-compassion asks what do I need right now?
In Buddhism, there is a ceremony called “Jukai” which means receiving the precepts – where one takes up a public commitment to living our life by the precepts.
How we practice with the precepts. Discussion of Joko’s Beck emphasis on the importance of “experiencing” and “observation” and “labelling”. A Self-compassion approach to the precepts also includes considering our own needs as well as the needs of others.
Introduction to the precepts in Zen Buddhism. Dogen’s understanding of the precepts as expressions of our True Nature or Universal Self. In this talk I discuss how precept practice can be understood as the practice of self-compassion.
How to live a life of purpose and meaning? How to become an oasis of sanity and compassion in a crazy and often violent world? A Zen commentary on the myth of Sisyphus.
How to live a life of purpose and meaning? How to become an oasis of sanity and compassion in a crazy and often violent world? A Zen commentary on the myth of Sisyphus.
Ordinary doesn’t mean our normal, delusionary mind, neither does it exclude our normal, delusionary mind.
Begins with a discussion of the uncertainty that is inherent to life. What’s the only thing we can depend upon? Zazen can be seen as a alchemical container transforming our delusions into gold, or our suffering into compassion.
“To carry the self forward and illuminate myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forward and illuminate the self is awakening.” This talk is a commentary on these two lines from Dogen’s Genjokoan.
In zazen, we investigate both the nature of reality and the nature of suffering. However, our investigation is not a thinking activity. We investigate through our awareness of awareness and our ability to be just awareness.
This talk focuses on compassion to others by starting to pay attention to the numerous ways in which we are constantly judging others. Noticing how judgment creates a sense of separation between a “self” and an “other”.
Dukkha can be understood as the suffering that arises when we identify with the self-centred dream and separate ourselves from Reality. When surrender to the Reality of this moment the resistance is let go off and the unnecessary suffering falls away leaving us with the reality of just this moment.
Continues the exploration of the self-centred self and how we make that subtle shift to realising the reality of no-self.
Gives some biographical background to Hakuin and then gives a commentary on his poem about Zazen.
This is a reading of a short story that I wrote to present a metaphor of Zen practice within a unique Australian setting.
The practice of awakening from the illusion of the self-centred self can be described as a gradual process of “decentering”. The self-centred self holds memories of developmental trauma leading to feelings of shame and low self-worth or these memoires are dissociated from consciousness. The ego self is also part of the protective system which seeks to control the environment to ensure that we don’t experience that kind of trauma again.
Continues to explore the concept of the multiple self as the normal state of self and identification. This helps to explain how continuity of identity is maintained while at the same time we move through different self-states – therefore this capacity enables us to change and stay the same at the same time.
I have always found Joko Beck’s distinction between Necessary and Unnecessary suffering as very helpful. This insight or discernment between these two allows us to suffer intelligently. Accepting pain or change without resistance is a form of intelligent suffering.
This talk explores attachment to the self, or self-clinging. It makes sense to think of the self as a verb rather than a noun. The process of becoming attached is what selves do. This is what I call “selfing”. This talk explores how selfing can be beneficial and how it can be harmful.
The teaching of Zen in the USW by newly arrived teachers from Japan such as Shunryu Suzuki, coincided with the rise of self-psychology found in the work of influential therapists such as Carl Rogers and Heinz Kohut. Rogers and Kohut popularised the notion of self-esteem and how the self could be injured in childhood leading to disorders of the self. This social construction of the individualistic self, contrasted with collective identity found in other cultures and shaped how western Zen developed a psychological approach to Zen practice.
In our individualistic culture, it is all about “me”. Often this has been referred to as the age of narcissism. A common form of suffering in our affluent culture is variations on the sense of shame, the sense of not being good enough, of being inadequate, of being a failure. This is to be contrasted with the zen teaching that we are okay just as we are.
How we relate to our pain, physical or emotion, is the key to ending suffering or escalating our suffering. Our competitive culture can also create shame-based forms of suffering such as personal failure, Developmental and relational trauma also creates shame-based forms of suffering. The practice of Zazen is the best antidote to self-rejection, founded in profound self-acceptance.
This is the first talk I gave at the Promised Land Zendo. It is my “Christmas” talk on the meaning of giving and receiving in the context of Zen Buddhist practice. Ultimately, from the perspective of the Absolute, when we are “giving” we are “receiving” and when we are receiving with gratitude we are giving.
This talk is a commentary on the poem “The Guest House” by Rumi, a 13th century Islamic scholar and Sufi mystic.
This talk begins with a summary discussion of the four noble truths and the four practice principles before moving onto a commentary on the story of the Sixth Patriarch and his poem about the mirror.
This talk is about how the scandals in western zen and subsequent disillusionment led to the increasing awareness of the need to integrate a psychological mindedness into traditional zen practice to ensure that zen could not be used as a form of “spiritual bypassing” or means of dissociation from psychological problems.
This talk is the first talk given at the Sawtell Zendo, and is a commentary on a famous zen story. In this story, the teacher asks the student, “what is your purpose or intention in doing Zazen?” and the student replies, “I seek to become a Buddha”. Thereupon the teacher picks up a roofing tile and begins to rub it with a stone. The student asks, “Teacher, what are you doing that for?” and the teacher replies, I am polishing this tile to make a mirror”. The student replies aghast, “but you can’t make a mirror by polishing a tile!” The teacher responds with “can a Buddha be created by doing Zazen?”
This talk, is a commentary on the chant, “On Opening the Dharma”. This is traditionally chanted prior to the teacher giving a dharma talk.
This talk is a commentary of the four practice principles developed by Charlotte Joko Beck and her students when she formed the Ordinary Mind Zen School. These were later revised by my teacher Barry Magid, who changed the second principle. The principles are a contemporary reworking of the four noble truths and capture the essence of Joko and Barry’s teaching in four lines. We chant the four principles at the end of a formal period of zen practice or at the end of the day when on retreat.
This was my first talk given in Coffs Harbour, Australia to a small fledgling sangha. This talk focuses on the centrality and uniqueness of the student-teacher relationship in the Zen Buddhist tradition.
This talk was given after receiving both Jukai and Denkai or lay entrustment from my teacher Barry Magid. Denkai is transmission giving permission to teach and offer the precepts. The talk expands on the positive interpretation of the first two precepts: to cherish life, to love life and to practice appreciation and gratitude fir what we freely receive.
This is my first ever talk as a zen teacher. It is my commentary on case 45 of the Gateless Barrier, “Who is That Other?” My reading of this Koan is that it goes to the heart of our Zen practice: that is, it asks the question, how do we integrate our understanding of the oneness and interdependence of life, which we discover in Zazen, with how we conduct ourselves in our everyday life embedded as it is in wealth inequality, discrimination based on gender, race, age, sexuality, and ability differences? That is, when we come down from the mountain of Oneness, how do we conduct ourselves in our relationships with our partners, our families, our friends, our work colleagues and indeed, with the homeless person on the street? So, who is that other? Who am I?