In an Oct. 11 dharma talk delivered at a day-long retreat at Still Mind Zendo in Manhattan, Sensei Marisa Cespedes quoted Roshi Shunryū Suzuki: "Being alive is enough."
Read MoreThe Beat poet Allen Ginsberg’s once explained to a skeptical interviewer how to sit in Zen meditation. It begins and ends with the breath. Like life.
Read MoreSome advice from Pema Chödrön.
Read MoreReflecting on some Buddhist wisdom found in a BBC series from 1977.
Read MoreI gave a version of this talk on July 1, 2025, at Still Mind Zendo, where I am a senior student.
Read More“There is a beautiful expression in Spanish, poco a poco, little by little. Our life is always poco a poco, and the way we practice poco a poco is zazen. In each moment, in each little step by step, the Buddhadharma is completely revealed. So little is not little, it is boundless.”
— Bernie Glassman
Read MoreI cam across this line in Kōun Yamada’s commentary on Case 4 of the Mumonkan.
Read More“Creations are numberless, I vow to free them.” This is the first of the great bodhisattva vows for all. This is the text of a talk I gave about the vows at Still Mind Zendo in April 2025.
Read MoreNotice. Allow. Breathe. Together these words form a powerful koan. This is the text of a brief talk I gave in December 2024 at Still Mind Zendo on the subject of breathing meditation and the biological phenomenon of habituation.
Read More“Ideology -- that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.”
Read MoreThe quote in the headline is from an essay by Stewart Brand, “The Elements of a Durable Civilization,” recently published by the Long Now blog, a site devoted to long-term thinking about the future of life, including human life.
Read MoreI have been working with some of the 300 koans collected by the Japanese Zen Master Ehei Dogen in his Shobogenzo. This short talk is about one of them, Case 21: Panshan’s Cut a Fine Piece.
Read MoreI enjoy giving stupid prompts to the not-really-intelligent large-language model ChatGPT.
Today’s prompt: “Write a 250-word blog post in Gen Z TikTok slang about how to care for cashmere. Give it a headline with a bad pun.”
Read More"Flowers decompose, but this does not prevent us from loving flowers. In fact, we love them more because we know how to treasure them while they are still alive."
That is a quote from the Thich Nhat Hanh, the writer and Zen teacher who died in 2022. It is from an essay he wrote on the topic of impermanence.
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Evil eventually defeats itself. It over-reaches. It is ugly, corrupt, incompetent, and weak. It is powered by greed, hatred and ignorance.
It underestimates the decency, courage and strength of ordinary people. Yes, many people might suffer. But generosity, love and truth will prevail, again.
Addendum: Yes, “eventually” is doing a lot of work here. And so is “itself” — part of evil’s undoing comes when it gives rise to opposition from ordinary, decent people.
I want to examine something that was a barrier for me when I first came to zen. As our teachers say, every barrier is a gate. This gate came in the form of a question: What’s up with all the bowing?
Read MoreIn the middle of hurricane season during the 2020 pandemic, The New York Times sent remote workers a Jackery power station to weather any power failures. No blackout was going to stop the news.
Read MoreI mostly stopped using Twitter, now X, in the fall of 2023, after Elon Musk instituted changes to verification and the algorithm to make the site less useful to me. I had been on the service for 17 years and had more than 35,000 follower at one point. Of the X alternatives, I currently use BlueSky, Mastodon and Threads, although I will probably start phasing out my presence on the latter.
Read MoreText of a talk given on Oct. 19, 2023, at Still Mind Zendo in Manhattan, where I am a senior student.
Good evening. As I understand it, these senior student talks are meant to be words of encouragement about our practice. While I’m talking to you, I’m also talking to myself. This is my first talk, and I’m a little nervous, so thanks for showing up. In fact, that’s the title of this talk: “Showing Up.”
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