The Zen Studies Podcast

The tenth Field of Zen is Connecting with the Ineffable. Zen is not based on a belief in God in a theistic sense. However, at its core there is a strong emphasis on a much more profound, inspiring, significant, and hopeful Reality than the bleak, mundane, and discouraging one people sometimes experience in their ordinary daily lives. Call this “greater reality” anything you like – God, the Divine, That Which is Greater, Other Power, the Ineffable, the Great Mystery, the Great Matter of Life and Death – but you have tasted it at peak moments of your life. Zen encourages you to explore and deepen your relationship with the Great Matter.

In this episode I extemporaneously answer questions listeners have submitted by email, including: Why aren't Buddhist vegan if the first moral precept is "do not kill?" What does it really mean to "let go" of a thought? And: Isn't taking action - including compassionate action - always the result of being dissatisfied in some way?

Bodhisattva Activity is enacting vows to free all beings as well as yourself. This is an acknowledgment that you are interdependent with all beings and things, and such an aspiration can give a sense of purpose and direction to your whole life. Of course, it’s impossible to fulfill this vow literally, and when you try to put it into action it is no easy matter! It requires tangible engagement with the world, including other people. If you hide out in comfort, you’re unlikely to transcend self-centeredness. If you rely only on your own resources, you’re likely to exhaust yourself and limit your impact. How do you even decide what Bodhisattva Activity to undertake? There is much to be learned by practicing in this Field of Zen, which inoculates you against the delusion that you can attain true peace of mind by ignoring the suffering of others.

In Episode 272, I discussed the third chapter of Zen Master Keizan’s book The Denkoroku, or the Record of the Transmission of Illumination. In the interest of thoroughness, I figured I’d start back at chapter one, with Shakyamuni Buddha’s “I and All Beings.” This text explores the nature of enlightenment and the tension between individuality and non-separation.

The eighth Field of Zen Practice is Realization, gaining a direct, personal experience of the truth. Realization helps you respond appropriately, allowing you to live by choice instead of by karma. Even more importantly, it gives you a larger perspective that can result in equanimity, even joy. There are different levels of truth, and the Dharma – Reality-with-a-Capital-R – is the biggest truth of all. Fortunately, it is a wonderful and liberating truth to wake up to. However, it’s important to understand that there is no “Realization” you can attain that means you know everything. The truth is infinite and there is always more to awaken to and embody.

This episode is the second half of the seventh chapter of my book-in-progress, The Ten Fields of Zen: A Primer for Practitioners. Listen to/read the previous episode (288) first, where I talk about the importance of Opening Your Heart and how that effort is viewed in the Buddhist tradition. In that episode I also discussed the four Brahmaviharas – goodwill, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. I finish the chapter in this episode by covering self-acceptance, practicing with the real, human relationships in your life, and Opening Your Heart in Sangha.

The seventh Field of Zen Practice is Opening Your Heart. Working explicitly to open your heart not only benefits other living beings, it puts you in accord with the Dharma and supports all other aspects of your practice. You work on radical self-acceptance to make Awakening and compassion possible.  You work on real and personal relationships with other beings – overcoming your social fears, becoming more willing to be seen and known, learning to be authentic, and recognizing the Buddha-Nature manifested in others. Ultimately, self and other are not separate; in practice, you seek to manifest and realize this simultaneously.

In a time of political divisiveness, many of us look to the three treasures of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha for solace, strength, and guidance. I offer a few Dharma teachings I have found useful for practicing in tumultuous times.

This episode is the second part of the sixth chapter of my book-in-progress, The Ten Fields of Zen: A Primer for Practitioners. In the last episode, I offered seven points about the role of Dukkha in our life and practice and discussed the first five points. In this episode I’ll finish the discussion with point #6: Buddhism offers a holistic approach to alleviating Dukkha, including maximizing our overall spiritual health, working with our karma, and curing its ultimate cause, and point #7: Even when our Dukkha is not extreme, it is a sign of lingering false views, so we continue to pay close attention to it and seek to end it.

The sixth Field of Zen Practice is ending Dukkha (this is part of my book, The Ten Fields of Zen Practice: A Primer for Practitioners). While physical and emotional pain, discomfort, and longing are an inevitable part of human life, Dukkha is existential angst we add to such experiences, ranging from subtle uneasiness to acute anguish. It drives our unhealthy or harmful behaviors, so we seek to end Dukkha for the sake of self and others. Buddhism offers a holistic approach to doing this, including maximizing our overall spiritual health and working with our karma. However, Buddhism’s radical teaching is that Dukkha is a symptom of underlying spiritual illness caused by false views - so, through practice, our spiritual illness can be cured, and Dukkha ended.

It’s challenging to make our Dharma practice continuous – maintaining awareness and appropriate conduct each moment of our lives. In his essay Gyoji, or “Continuous Practice,” Zen Master Dogen doesn’t offer practical tips for mindfulness and pure conduct in everyday life, but instead challenges our limited ideas about what practice is. In this episode (part 2), I continue discussing four points I think Dogen makes about Gyoji.

Our goal in practice is to live in accord with the truth, or the Dharma - not only while sitting in meditation or studying Buddhism, but every moment of our lives. In other words, we strive to make our practice continuous. It can be extremely challenging to maintain mindfulness and good behavior all the time. How can we make our practice more continuous? Not surprisingly, in his essay “Gyoji,” or Continuous Practice, Dogen does not give us practical tips but instead challenges our limited ideas about what practice is. 

This is part two of my discussion “Cutting Moral Corners: Is Buddhism Compatible with 21st-Century Life?” In Part 1 I talked about the moral stress that arises from living a modern life, where almost every decision we make becomes a moral choice. I discussed how home leaving – or monasticism – was early Buddhism’s prescription for avoiding moral stress, and then how the Mahayana bodhisattva ideal become a model for lay practice. In this episode I address the matter of moral stress and how we might practice in the midst of it in order to free ourselves from dukkha, or suffering.

As long as we remain engaged in 21st-century life, at least in any industrialized society, we are part of an infinitely complex web of karma that covers our planet. Even the details of our lives become moral choices, and it becomes increasingly difficult to live in a way that does no harm or that fulfills the ideal of the selfless Buddhist contemplative. Because of our interconnectedness with all things, we feel pain and moral stress when we act out of accord with our ideals. What does lay Buddhist practice look like in the midst of all of this?

In a lineage tradition like Zen, your understanding, manifestation, and expression of the Dharma is deeply influenced by your teachers, and by their teachers. Whether you are a member of my Zen Center, Bright Way Zen, or a fan of this podcast, you may appreciate stories of my teachers Kyogen and Gyokuko Carlson in this live talk.* (*Most of my episodes are produced specifically for podcast listeners, but I am on sabbatical in August.) 

I am on sabbatical for the month of August, so this is a recent talk I gave at Bright Way Zen. This is, of course, a very timely topic with a major election coming up in the U.S. in just over two months. If politics is "the set of activities that associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status, none of us are able to opt out of politics. Even if we remain silent, ignorant, and passive, we're profoundly affected by the decisions other people are making for the groups we are part of. How can we engage in conversations about what we should do as a group, institution, organization, community, state, nation, or species, while remaining centered in our practice and true to our aspirations as Buddhists?

This episode is an informal (unprepared) talk I gave in response to a question someone: Is everything a Zen teacher does a "teaching"? How do you know? This led to discussion of other topics as well, related to having a formal relationship with a Zen teacher - What does it mean? What does it look like? Why would someone want this?

In this episode and the previous one, I do something radical and share my experience of a sesshin I recently attended, describing it day by day. There are many reasons not to do this, and I went into those reasons in the last episode (part one), where I also described my first two full days of retreat. In this episode I describe days 3-5 and make some closing remarks.

In this episode I’m going to do something radical and share with you my experience of the sesshin I attended last week, describing it day by day. There are many reasons not to do this, which I will go into. I certainly don’t intend to do it again. Still, despite my misgivings I thought it might be helpful for you to get an insight into what a sesshin is like for another person. In this episode I get through the first couple days of the retreat, and I will finish my story in the next episode.

This episode is the third installment of chapter five of my book-in-process, The Ten Fields of Zen: A Primer for Practitioners. In the first episode, I described the central role of Precepts in Zen and covered the Three Refuges, Three Pure Precepts, and two of the Grave Precepts. In the last episode, I talked about the Grave (serious, or weighty) Precepts 3-8. In this episode, I’ll discuss Grave Precepts nine and ten, and talk about how we work with Precepts.