One-Day Zen Retreat

The onset of warmer summer weather and the beginning emergence from our long COVID sequestration is a perfect time to join in a zazenkai. This is what we call a brief, one-day Zen retreat into silence and concentrated practice. We sit zazen, chant, engage in work...

Two Truths

Our Buddhist tradition unfolds a dharma about the Two Truths — the truth of life in samsara, a realm of desire and aversion, and the truth of liberation from samsara.  In samsara we are all thinking, feeling, reacting, human beings guided by whether we like or dislike...

One Complete Experience

The Buddha encouraged us to meditate in the forest in the early morning. We are still (mostly) Earthbound creatures, folded into the rhythms of the Earth. But how often do you experience the sunrise, as a creature of the Earth, with nothing else to do but feel the air...

Golden Hour

The Buddha encouraged us to meditate in the forest in the early morning. We are still (mostly) Earthbound creatures, folded into the rhythms of the Earth. But how often do you experience the sunrise, as a creature of the Earth, with nothing else to do but feel the air...

Spiritual Bypass

One of our sangha members recently brought up the term spiritual bypass, so it may be a good time to renew our awareness of what it points to in practice. We can fall into spiritual bypass when we turn away from our experience by thinking we “should” rise above it...

Affirming Faith in Mind

There’s a line from Affirming Faith in Mind that says, “When doubts arise, simply say, “not two.”  What kind of doubts? Well, our lives bring us to many impasses, situations that feel impossible to find our way through. Emotions that are like a mountain in our way. We...