Earth Dreams: Zen Buddhism and the Soul of the World

At the end of October it is common in Zen temples across the states to perform the ceremony of Seijiki, making offerings to the hungry ghosts.

This ceremony is derived from a Chinese Buddhist Sutra involving Ananda, the Buddha and the King of the Hungry Ghosts, a condensed version I am including below.

Ananda was meditating in the forest when the king of the hungry ghosts, Mianran, appeared. Mianran made a prediction about Ananda’s fate, saying that Ananda would die in three days and be reborn in the realm of the hu...

Blessings!

My sanghas are currently practicing autumn Ango, a period of more intensified practice together in community. Here in Columbus the Mud Lotus Sangha did a half-day retreat, which consisted of five hours of zazen and walking meditation. We sat for 50-minutes, walked for 10 minutes and then repeated for a full afternoon. Sitting in the silence of mind’s nature as the city stirred. The vow of loving kindness illuminating my heart, as the body sat upright and we peered together into our aliveness.

The Zen Community of Oregon is studying the Diamond Sutra this An...

If we really allow ourselves to reflect on our direct experience of interconnection we can realize that this world is completely entangled with our own awareness. One analogy I appreciate is the analogy of bundles of reeds leaning against each other for support. If you remove one of the bundles, the others fall down.

We lean together in a tilty world.

Interconnection can be explored through each one of our senses. Notice how the world blossoms in your seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting.

Shitou says in the Sandokai:

All of the...

Greetings!

I am beginning a series of talks exploring the wisdom of Zen Master Shitou’s Sandokai, which is translated in various ways including: The Identity of Relative and Absolute, Being One and Many, The Harmony of Difference and Sameness.

In this podcast dharma talk I explore the first stanza of the poem using Nelson Foster’s translation:

The mind (heart) of the great sage of India was intimately conveyed (transmitted) from west to east. Though people may be sharp-witted or dull, there's no north and south in the Way. The deep spring spar...

Greetings Friends,

I am returning from the Grasses, Trees and Great Earth Sesshin at Great Vow Zen Monastery. An outdoor sesshin I have had the deep pleasure of co-leading for the past six years. During the sesshin we practiced various ways of listening to the dharma of the natural world, including:

* Hearing with the eyes, heart, whole body.

* Letting ourselves be seen by the sky, ferns, rocks and queen ann’s lace.

* Becoming tree, black-berry, forest, ground.

The great earth and sky speak the dharma through their constancy, reminding us...

Greetings!

It’s Leo season (how is it the over 50% of people I know are Leos?) I have had the joy of some travel over the past month—Mud Lotus Sangha did our first weeklong sesshin at Saranam Retreat Center in WV, I saw Bob Dylan in concert in Cincinnati and spent a few days on the Atlantic shore immersed in Ocean Mudra Samadhi.

I’m back in Ohio for a couple of weeks and then I will be heading to Great Vow Zen Monastery for a jukai ceremony and our Grasses, Trees and the Great...

Greetings Friends,

I have been reflecting on the art of living a life of attention and intention. This is an art form I have dedicated much of my life to, and one that continues to bear fruit as I continue to practice it.

What is the art of living?

How is attention an art?

Last night I was walking home with my partner from meditation, it was dusk. The fire flies had just started to flutter about, offering their pulsating flashes of illumination. The air was warm, a gentle breeze. We...

Greetings Friends,

Happy Solstice! Here in the northern hemisphere it is the longest day of the year, one of two days of the year where the sun appears to stand still on the horizon. I feel interested in that teaching, here in what sometimes feels like the most active or busiest of seasons—what is stillness? where is stillness?

What does it look like to let your inner sun rest, or to recognize that it’s already still, shining brightly—no matter what.

This week’s koan from the Hidden Lamp is about big and...

Greetings Friends,

Happy New Moon! This past week we explored the Hidden Lamp Case 21: Linji Meets the Old Woman Driving the Ox.

Linji Meets the Old Woman Driving the Ox

China, ninth century

Master Linji Yixuan went to see Master Bingdian An. On the way he met an old woman driving an ox in a field. Linji asked her, “Which way is the road to Bingdian?”

The woman hit the ox with her stick and said, “This animal! It walks all over the place without even recognizing the road.”...

Greetings Friends,

We are moving through this wonderful collection of encounters with Buddhist Women found in the book The Hidden Lamp for our Summer Read. This week we met Keizan Zenji and Mokufu Sonin engaged in the dialogue below:

Hidden Lamp Case 20: Sonin’s Shadeless Tree

Master Keizan Jokin asked the nun Mokufu Sonin, “The winter is coming to an end and the springtime is arriving. There is an order to this. What is your understanding?”

Sonin replied, “In the braches of a tree without shade, how could there be...

Greetings and Happy Early Summer!

We are continuing our Summer Read of the Hidden Lamp again this year. Every week we will explore a different koan story from the collection. If you would like to follow along, check out the calendar page for up to date information on the koan selections. On Monday night during the live online meditation event, I will give a dharma talk themed around the reading for the week and then we will have time for discussion. I will post the talk here too.

This past Monday we started the Summer...

Greetings Friends,

I am returning from the Light of the Ancestors Sesshin at Great Vow Zen Monastery and feeling deep gratitude for this path of practice and all the people who have walked this path— discovering freedom and love in their own lives.

Over the past few months the Monday night online Sangha through ZCO has been exploring The Mountains and Rivers Sutra by Dogen Zenji. In wrapping up our study of the sutra, we explored the last two stanzas from the version of the sutra that is often chanted in ZCO.

Mo...

Greetings Friends,

I’m a lover of poetry. A sometimes writer of poems. A sometimes reader. Poetry for me is more of a way of being, a willingness to be carried across by metaphor, to be turned inside out by image, to sit in the silence, to not know and to be transformed through the art of attention.

The best poetry is wordless attention.

And, also. Some poems really act as an arrow, straight to the heart of it and allow what is often inexpressible—a moment of shared recognition.

April was...

One of the figures that we encounter in the Zen literature is the stone woman. In the Precious Mirror Samadhi we find her dancing, in another story she calls us back from our dream of the world.

In the study of the Mountains and Rivers Sutra, she shows up early on when Dogen quotes Furong Daokai. “The green mountains are always moving, a stone woman gives birth to a child at night.” He then comments on the stone woman, saying:

“A stone woman gives birth to a child at night” means that the moment when a b...

Greetings Friends,

Happy April Fool’s Day!

Last week I had the opportunity to co-facilitate a Zen sesshin in the mountains of West Virginia at Saranam Retreat Center.

Sesshin, a zen-style silent meditation retreat which translates as touching the heart-mind, has been a huge part of my adult life. While living at Great Vow Zen Monastery, I practiced sesshin together in sangha for a week every month. Such is the rhythm of monastic life we enter this cauldron of awakening together and let our hearts and minds simplify to reveal their true nature.

I will be joining the Mud Lotus Sangha in West Virginia for our first sesshin of the year. Sesshin is now often translated as a Zen-style meditation retreat. But the words meditation and retreat are mis-leading. It is in its truest sense a practice of recognizing our true nature, of touching, encountering the heart-mind that abides everywhere.

We are going to the mountains of West Virginia to practice. Stepping back into Mountain time to learn from the mountains, waters and great earth. To be students to the world before thought, which continues to blossom in the midst...

Greetings Friends,

This past weekend I had the opportunity to join the Pause Meditation community for a deep dive into practice around the theme of the beginner’s mind. In the Zen tradition we celebrate the beginner’s mind. For it is both the unborn buddha mind— our original mind which is always right here and our curious, open mind that is constantly being born anew.

So very much like the energy of spring, life is constantly bubbling up, recreating itself, blossoming in our awareness.

“In every adult there is a child – an eternal...

I wanted to share with you a profound, beautiful and somewhat unsettling teaching from the Diamond Sutra.

I would say its unsettling precisely because it is so radical, it touches something true that we know at the core of who we are, and it also reminds us that everything we think we are or think the world is —is not the whole story, our thinking inevitably misses something.

we are inconceivable in our nature

—and we all have, the same bright, clear, open, ungraspable heart-mind.

here’s the verse from the diamon...

dust returns to dust earth to earth mind always at home in itself where does it return?

This past week I was reflecting on the 6th Chan Ancestor, Huineng and his encounter with a verse from the diamond sutra.

Huineng lost his father early in life, and supported himself and his mother by selling firewood. On one occasion, he was selling firewood to a customer, and someone passed by chanting the words of the diamond sutra.

Huineng heard a single line and was profoundly moved—it touched something in him and his heart wa...

A lotus blooming in the fire is an image that comes from the Zen tradition. And before I write further on the symbolism of the image or the dharma teachings it evokes—I would like to invite us to just sit with the image of a lotus blooming in the fire.

For a moment, let yourself sense, imagine or feel into this image. Notice what you see, feel, hear, experience as you attempt to connect with the image of a lotus blooming in the fire.

Now, if you haven’t already bring the image closer in...

Greetings Friends,

I have been reflecting on one of the simplest and perhaps most profound teachings in the Buddhist tradition— the teaching of our extra-ordinary heart.

Our extra-ordinary heart is the aspect of our being that doesn’t die, and isn’t born. That isn’t dependent on us but is a deep refuge and resource—one that we know and rely on all the time. One that we also see demonstrated and embodied in our communities, on the world stage, in the people we love and care about.

We are living in...

Greetings Friends,

In the heartbreak, pain, confusion of this moment. I wish to remember together the Way of the Bodhisattva.

The image or archetype of the Bodhisattva resonates deep in the hearts of those oriented towards love for this beautiful and broken world.

For a Bodhisattva is motivated to relieve suffering and pain, as they work towards a liberation for all beings. This is the spiritual warrior, who knows that this life is not our own but a shared life.

Practice of a bodhisattva is a practice of compassion which has...

New Years Blessings! And wow, it feels like its off to a chaotic start. In times like these, I find it vital to ground myself in this bodhisattva vow. To remember what is always reliable, no matter what circumstance or situation I find myself in.

I would like to share a koan that has been close to my heart as we began 2026.

Mumonkan Case 46: Stepping from the Top of the Pole

Sekiso asked: How do you step from atop a 100-ft pole?

Another eminent master from former times...

When faith and mind are not separate. And not separate are mind and faith, this is beyond all words, all thoughts.

If you have been reading these posts this season, you may have noticed I have been writing about Faith. Writing, reflecting, wondering, wandering through the many expressions of Faith as I returned again and again to this practice poem, Affirming Faith in Mind. There is something both delicious and challenging about coming back to the same teaching, day after day, week by week.

Above is the last stanza of the poem. The...

Tis’ the season for story-telling. I don’t know about you, but there are certain stories I can hear over and over again. These stories often have mythic and archetypal elements, that seem to resonate with the poetics of the soul.

In the Zen Buddhist tradition the first week of December is the week we commemorate/remember/celebrate the Buddha’s awakening.

We do this with our bodies. Sitting retreat with the orientation that we too can realize our true nature. That we too can awaken.

We do this with our hearts and minds...

I want to return to this profound poem we are studying for the autumn practice period—Affirming Faith in Mind.

If mind does not discriminate, all things are as they are as one. To go to this mysterious source—frees us from all entanglements.

When all is seen with equal mind, to our self-nature we return. This single mind goes right beyond all reasons and comparison.

This poem is about Trust in Mind, Faith in our true nature, Trust in the Heart of Wisdom

Do we trust our heart-mind?

One stanza from the Trust in Heart poem says:

Cut off all useless thoughts and words and there’s nowhere you cannot go.

Returning to the root itself, you’ll find the meaning of all things.

If you pursue appearances you overlook the primal source.

Awakening is to go beyond both emptiness as well as form.

I appreciate the clarity of these instructions. Here we find an invitation to practice with our thinking minds.

I find that this instruction to “cut off” is more of an invit...

Calling all you hungry hearts

Everywhere through endless time

You who wander, you who thirst

I offer you, this Bodhi Mind

Calling all you hungry spirits

All the lost and the left behind

Gather round and share this meal

Your joy and your sorrow, I make it mine. —Kanromon

Giving awakens the unbounded heart. What in our lives isn’t already shared?

If we open to all the inter-relationships that make up our lives, we begin to see that this...

I am currently spending some time with this beautiful teaching poem, Affirming Faith in Mind as part of Autumn Ango through ZCO. As I was reading it this week, I thought about how would I summarize this teaching in one sentence. I came up with:

Everything’s Included on the Path!

Everything is included.

Maybe it seems too simple, too obvious. And yet, how often are we looking outside of our experience for satisfaction, the answer, some-thing-else.

How could it be that our doubt, fear, the wars and violence we bear wi...

Deep Autumn Greetings Fellow Travelers of the Way!

As autumn becomes us, I have been contemplating darkness and the creaturely way my body seems to respond to the cold-dark. Maybe you too feel a little more intimate with the night and the dark creature of the body at this time of year.

Sometimes I feel, and I know others feel, that we are living in dark times—and whether this feels true for you—I think we all know something about the dark.

Whether its as the seasonal darkening of autumn, energetic darkness, or p...

Polarization & Play

Polarization (def)—division into two sharply contrasting groups, sets of opinions or beliefs. When we stop seeing similarity or what is shared, but only see difference. When difference becomes a threat.

Play (def)— to engage in something for enjoyment or for sport. Be cooperative. Try something out.

I want to say, we are living in a polarized time. But I find myself questioning each word. I look for polarization and find it in my social media feed, in the news, in my own inner dialogue —as certain views and opinions claim their...

Greetings Friends,

I have a deep love and appreciation for the wonderment and creativity of this life. It’s un-pin-down-able, slippery, un-define-able—like a water color painting that continuously repaints itself.

One story from the Zen tradition that has always helped me stay awake to amazement and in courtship with the great mystery is the Zen Mirror of Tokeiji.

A partial-telling of which can be found in Case 34 of the Hidden Lamp.

The convent of Tokeiji had a great mirror. The founding abbess, Kakuzan Shido, would meditate before it i...

Hello Good Friends,

It’s late summer and I can feel the seasonal shift. Here in the northern states the Earth is darkening earlier and staying dark later, its cooler too. The humidity has dropped and the insects have grown quieter in my central ohio village. The tomatoes, peaches, corn, and zucchini are in abundance, the pawpaws are ripening and chicken-of-the-woods are blazing orange on fallen logs. We even found some huitlacoche!

What seasonal shifts are happening where you are?

What are you harvesting?

Part of what I appreciate ab...

Greetings Friends,

I am returning from 10 days of monastic practice at my former home, Great Vow Zen Monastery. While I was there I had the opportunity to celebrate my teacher Chozen Bays Roshi’s 80th birthday, to practice and lead the annual outdoor sesshin that we call Grasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin and to facilitate a precepts ceremony.

I love monastic practice. I love merging with the great activity of awakening. I love the depth of practice that opens up when we sustain the gaze on our true nature and allow the bodhisattva vo...

Being Flower

On Monday night during meditation we sat together as a community of flowers. Sun flower, daisy, rose, violet, marigold, milkweed, celosia, echinacea, blue vervain, poppy, queen anne’s lace, crocosmia, zinnia.

We were studying the koan Case 19 from the Hidden Lamp, Flowers in the Buddha Hall.

The nuns of Tokeiji were famous for their beautiful elaborate flower decorations on Buddha’s Birthday. Zen Teacher Yodo, the abbess wrote a verse for the occasion:

Decorate the heart of the beholder,

for the Buddha of the flower hall...

This life is mysterious.

I often marvel at how there is so much more that we don’t know then that we do.

Walk into a forest or a city.

Even if I knew every being in the forest by name.

Will I ever be able to comprehend the relationships between them?

The relationships between the cells in my own body?

Even the mystery of what a tree is, this tree—the sycamore standing

right here, at the entrance to the park.

I can...

Greetings Friends,

Here we are in the heart of summer. I am writing this a week after the passing of beloved eco-dharma elder Joanna Macy. We are also in the middle of our summer read of The Hidden Lamp: 25 Centuries of Awakened Women. The koan story that we explored this week was Case 13: Chen’s Mountain Flowers and the commentary happens to be written by Joanna Macy. So I want to take the time in this post as well as the dharma talk audio to appreciate Joanna Macy’s life, work and practice through the lens...

Greetings Friends,

As we move through our Summer Read of The Hidden Lamp: Stories from 25 Centuries of Awakened Women this week we focused on Case 10: Asan’s Rooster. The koan is one of devotion, deep listening and awakening to our true undivided nature.

Here’s the case.

Asan was a lay woman who studied Zen with Master Tetsumon and was unremitting in her devotion to practice. One day during her morning sitting she heard the crow of the rooster and her mind suddenly opened. She spoke a verse in response:

Greetings Friends,

I am just getting back from our Interdependence Sesshin— five-days of residential silent retreat practice in the hills of West Virginia with the Mud Lotus Sangha. It was moving for me to practice sesshin in a new environment with many people who it was their first longer retreat.

Sesshin is healing, no matter what the theme, it transforms us to sit and live in silence together, to practice opening the senses and seeing into our nature. It’s a non-linear practice that awakens faith, vow, deep love and interconnection. As well as a...

Greetings Friends,

We began the Summer Read of The Hidden Lamp: 25 Centuries of Awakened Women with the first koan—The Old Woman of Wutai, a story about the spiritual path, pilgrimage and life direction that features crone wisdom. If you are interested in joining the summer read, more information and reading schedule can be found here.

In this email I would like to share the koan and some reflections about life as pilgrimage. I would also love to create space for your own reflections and engagement.

First the koan.

Hi...