by SJZC Administrator | Nov 30, 2025
From Mushin: Many of us are preparing to attend Rohatsu sesshin, a week that celebrates the Buddha’s awakening. We celebrate by embodying it during an intensive week of being present in all that we do. Everything, from zazen to chanting, to work practice, to drinking...
by SJZC Administrator | Nov 23, 2025
From Sogen: What is being received right now by body, heart and mind? What is being received that sustains and enriches life? Thank you air. Thank you food. Thank you friend. Thank you stranger. Gratitude, acknowledgment, appreciation being expressions of generosity,...
by SJZC Administrator | Nov 17, 2025
From Mushin: How often are you walking along wrapped up in your thoughts, and feeling unsettled? A while back Jiden Christina Stanley sent me words from Ralph Waldo Emerson that read, “Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain...
by SJZC Administrator | Nov 10, 2025
From Mushin: We live in a reciprocal universe. No one and nothing is ultimately isolated or alone in deepest reality. Whatever happens anywhere, in some way touches us, and conversely, how we live and act and think affects everything everywhere. Given what is now...
by SJZC Administrator | Nov 3, 2025
From Mushin: Dana is the Sanskrit word for generosity. We’ll be exploring this teaching during our upcoming Generosity Sesshin. Dana is the natural expression of an open heart and spacious mind. Generosity can bring us happiness at each stage of its unfolding –...
by SJZC Administrator | Oct 28, 2025
From Mushin: During the Sejiki Ceremony, otherwise known as The Gate of Sweet Nectar enacted at Sunday service, we address the Hungry Ghost realm of the Six Realms. The hungry ghost realm refers to the constant seeking that comes with any addiction. These seeking...
by SJZC Administrator | Oct 19, 2025
From Mushin: The stillness of the afternoon just now, the silence that is filtering through the stream of sunlight, just freely offered. What else is freely offered at this very moment? We have to stop to notice. It’s not so much that we have to live a different life,...
by SJZC Administrator | Oct 14, 2025
From Mushin Sejiki is an important ceremony in the Soto Zen school where we comfort and feed the ancestral spirits and hungry, restless ghosts. Every autumn we enact this ceremony of offerings to the ancestors, to our parents, relatives, community and other...
by SJZC Administrator | Oct 6, 2025
From Sogen: Dogen Zenji wrote in Genjokoan, which we sometimes chant: “To study the Buddha Way is to study the self; to study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all things.” Or as that last line appears in our chant book: “To...
by SJZC Administrator | Oct 1, 2025
From Sogen The Song of Loving Kindness is sung during each weekday morning service: May you dwell in the heart, may you be free from suffering, may you be healed, may you be at peace. The Pali word for Loving Kindness is Metta, as in Metta Sutra, which is chanted in...
