by Abby Mushin Terris | Nov 20, 2022
Going through a stack of notes, I came across this scribbled quote, “To most of us a person, a human being, is the ceiling of reality. But a person is no superlative.“ Can we humans encompass the entirety life with our minds? We are not at the top of the chain of...
by Abby Mushin Terris | Nov 13, 2022
Radically intimate attention describes the heart of zazen. When exploring the intimacy of just sitting, in the silent center of every momentary experience, right at the heart of the silence in zazen, we embody radically intimate attention. Do you recognize this in...
by Abby Mushin Terris | Nov 6, 2022
The conditions in the world now require us to live with great patience. Patience, kshanti, is regarded as one of the paramitas, the practices of enlightened beings, facing conditions with a clear eye, open mind and warm heart. Without patience, our suffering is...
by Abby Mushin Terris | Oct 30, 2022
There is so much to how practice unfolds, and so it’s useful to reflect on what is offered by each of the three arms of Buddhadharma practice — meditation, study, and ethics. We practice meditation to unfold and explore natural awareness, usually filled with some sort...
by Abby Mushin Terris | Oct 17, 2022
Are you willing to stop suffering? This seems like a silly question, but when we ask ourselves this in all sincerity we’ve taken the first step in committing to practice. The Buddha Way is a practice. We practice being aware continually, spotting our habits of mind...
by Abby Mushin Terris | Oct 9, 2022
In Zen practice we talk a lot about “don’t know mind.” Even if it appears that things are as they seem, it ain’t necessarily so. So many of the conditions influencing the moment are invisible. We don’t know when or what the next second will bring. And when it doesn’t...
