Earth Dreams: Zen Buddhism and the Soul of the World

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 …

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…

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 lac…

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 ab…

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 La…

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…

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 …

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 directi…

Happy Summer Solstice!

I feel deep gratitude to be on this path of friendship, communion and inquiry with you. The path of dharma is a path of truth, of getting closer to the actuality of our lives—to…

I have been reflecting on the nature of practice-awakening. In the Buddhist tradition this refers to the process (both sudden and gradual) of realizing our fundamental wellbeing. This is a transforma…

One can, the other cannot

Both are free

A god mask, a demon mask

The failure is wonderful indeed —Mumon’s poem

If I reflect back on my life, it is possible to see a series of failures, mistakes, broken d…

I have been contemplating being stuck. You know that feeling that something else should be happening. Something more, or different, or better. The sense that whatever is happening is somehow wrong, o…

Greetings Friends,

I am returning from a 10-day stay at my former home—Great Vow Zen Monastery. While I was there I had the opportunity to co-lead a sesshin (weeklong silent meditation retreat). The s…

Are you dreaming? How is your experience, like a dream?

In one sense, the words you are reading, the sounds you are hearing, the thoughts racing through your mind and the ones seeming to linger in the…

Dream as Analogy for Reality

This world is psychoactive. So much so that we don’t even realize how are fundamental beliefs and unquestioned assumptions shape our sense of who we are and what the world…

What is real? What is true?

These questions are fundamental to the spiritual path, to the path of awakening.

There is much confusion in our world right now. Blatant lies or mis-truths are being thrown …

Hello Friends,

Happy April 1st! Here we are, its Aries Season, it’s Spring, Mercury and Venus have both been retrograde for a while now (which can give a certain feeling of friction or underworld jour…

Book of Serenity #30: Dasui's Aeonic Fire

A monk asked Dasui: When the fire at the end of an aeon rages through and the whole universe is destroyed, is this destroyed or not?

Dasui said: Destroyed.

The …

Greetings friends~

As we be together in this political moment, I wanted to offer some of the dharma teachings and practices that I have been leaning into.

One of which is sharing poetry, so first a po…

As we began 2025, I returned to the teachings of the Heart of Great Perfection Wisdom Sutra. In times of chaos, something in me turns toward what is most true. The Heart Sutra is one such text that i…