by Abby Mushin Terris | Mar 17, 2024
When we come to Zen practice we are answering the call of the Way-seeking mind. The mind that seeks the Way knows what is essential, what it is to be free to be true to what is. Honoring what our life brings our way and responding to it with wholehearted and clear...
by Abby Mushin Terris | Mar 10, 2024
What do we mean by ‘Presence’? In one sense we are always present, there is nothing outside this present moment. Right? This ‘presence’ is all there is. And yet we have the experience of being present and the experience of not being present. It is like night and day....
by Abby Mushin Terris | Mar 3, 2024
‘What is my true path?’ A simple zen answer might be, ‘Well, the one you’re on’. The subsequent exchange follows quite rationally: ‘but where does it go??’; ‘well, walk it and find out’. Where do decisions come from? Do we rightly bear responsibility for making them,...
by Abby Mushin Terris | Feb 24, 2024
Hostility, competition, love, furniture, money, narrative, excitement all mark the dreaming of this life. There’s always a trail that we are following in a dream. It’s real, it’s vivid, it’s saturated with emotion and meaning. It doesn’t have to make sense in a usual...
by Abby Mushin Terris | Feb 17, 2024
How do we know when we’ve made a mistake? Is a mistake something we did in the past, or a consequence we expect to meet us in the future? What if there is nothing within us – nothing at all – endowed with the ability to prevent our making mistakes in the...
by SJZC Administrator | Feb 10, 2024
Every weekday morning after our morning zazen the small group of us have tea around the kitchen table at the Zen center. The guiding teacher (usually Soten) offers a prompt for discussion. This past Monday I offered the prompt, “If you were to substitute another...
