I made my way back to Mid City Zen for meditation for the first time since coming back home. About time, but oh how my body ached just trying to sit still and think of absolutely nothing for one hour. Daunting. Though it’s the meditation that guides me there, it’s the talk afterwards I enjoy equally. We are still reading and discussing Genjo Koan, which I had left off of when I left for the…
After meditation this morning at the small Zen center down the street, we talked about the Genjo Koan again and of course, read it aloud again in the odd soto zen way of reading – a rush of words. What stood out – this time, “Do not suppose that what you realize becomes your knowledge and is grasped by your consciousness. Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be distinctly apparent. Its appearance is beyond…
The Times Picayune published an article by David Brooks, who writes about education for the The New York Times – the article is entitled “What you don’t learn with a top degree” – it’s an interesting look at why we go to school as two thirds of the article is about the brain drain that Wall Street created in the last decades as it attracted the best and the brightest. Towards the end of the…
The zen temple down the street has started offering dharma talks after the meditation on Sunday mornings and the topic has been Genjo Koan, which was written in 1233 by Eihei Dogen, founder of the Soto Zen tradition. The “issue at hand” is the koan of everyday life. And so let’s just start with that. As I kneeled in the corner, facing the wall, meditating and practicing the tradition of letting thoughts come and go,…