Zen Buddhist teachings point to a profound view of reality--one of deep interconnection and non-separation. Awakening is a word used to describe the freedom, creativity and love of our original nature. This podcast explores the profound liberating teachings of Zen Buddhism at the intersection of dreamwork and the soul. The intention is to offer a view of awakening that explores our deep interconnection with the living world and the cosmos as well as to invite a re-imagining of what human life and culture could be if we lived our awakened nature.
Amy Kisei is a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Somatic IFS Spiritual Counselor, Astrologer and Artist. She practices and teaches at the confluence of spirituality, psychology and somatics--affirming a wholistic path of awakening. You can learn more about Amy Kisei's upcoming retreats and/or 1:1 work on her website: https://www.amykisei.org/
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A thousand times at least I asked my Guru to give Nothingness a name. Then I gave up. What name can you give to the source from which all names have sprung? –Lal Ded
Language has a trickster quality. At one moment it limits. We find ourselves hard pressed to find the word that captures a feeling, mind state or emotion. Other times, a single word can invoke so many meanings and associations that we are left with a number of mind tangents or in a conversation with people who have very different images in their hearts.
For example—the other day I was working with a colleague to come up with a name for an event that we are collaborating on. They wanted to use the word “vessel”, I said it reminded me of deep sea submarines, they said they thought of a cup or chalice, another friend said they immediately thought of blood flowing through their veins.
Needless to say, we scrapped vessel.
But, how often does this happen?
One of my favorite books as a college student was The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (who is a Czech writer and somehow captures something I know so deeply in my bones growing up in a large close knit Catholic extended family with Czech ancestry). In the book he defines words according to the different characters, which opens up a reflection on how a single word also contains personal meaning based on our histories.
We all have experience with hearing a word, and an image appears in our mind, and suddenly we are in a scene from 10 years ago—smelling the ocean, filled with longing for a lost love or time of connection—or something else.
Given our wide range of life experience and associations, how is it that we are able to communicate at all?
In spiritual practice, we play the trickster, using language we point beyond concepts to a truth outside of our shared vernacular— a secret language of the innermost heart.
Yet, the words themselves can act as traps. We say one thing, and the other side isn’t expressed. Our words amount to an incomplete teaching, a partial truth.
As practitioners on this path of freedom—we learn to liberate language. To hear beyond the words.
To—at times—forget words.
Deviating from conventional conceptualizations — playing in pure potentiality.
If a tree wasn’t a tree, what would you call it?
If love wasn’t called love, how would you name it?
What is the sound you would give to oneness?
How would you capture Nothingness?
Don’t tell me about it, my teacher would say in sanzen, show me!
…
For the month of September my dharma talks/podcasts will be exploring the relationship between the oneness and the many, or sameness and difference. We will be using the Zen poem by Shitou called the Sandokai, which is translated as the Harmony of Difference and Sameness or the Identity of Relative and Absolute. This podcast introduces the poem and some other teachings from Shitou, just to give you a flavor for his teaching style. On Monday Sept 16, I plan to zoom out and explore the ways sameness + difference show up in our lives + practice, exploring how we can practice integrating the teaching of one + many in our relational lives.
Another theme I have been reflecting on lately, and this very much is part the exploration of oneness and many—is the relationship between Spirit and Soul in dharma practice. Almost every retreat I have led in a Zen context, someone asks at some point, where is the joy? And while I have found great joy in simply sitting in the stripped down style of a Zen sesshin. I also know that Joy, Beauty, Art, Wonderment and Ecstasy are potent elements to the unfolding and embodiment of dharma in our lives.
Jogen and I have been envisioning a practice space that is both committed to the spiritual practice of waking up, while also exploring together elements of soul work.
Meets monthly on Sundays from 10:30A PT - 12:30P PT / 1:30P ET - 3:30P ET
Join us for our first practice session : The Ritual of Liminality
Sunday October 27
Spirit (sky): indestructible stillness-openness, clarity, perfection beyond the mind’s capacity to grasp or reconcile, the felt unity of all this multiplicity, the cosmos in your cup of coffee. Unstoppable, ever-graceful flow.
Soul (rose): everything alive as Beauty. Art in the everyday quirks, cares, agonies and curiosities. Tending the need to create, relate, build and destroy. Reconciling Psyche’s movement towards wholeness. Answering the call to heal the meanness and alienation that fractures our worlds. Putting on the Altar the dark places and shining light in the shadowy corners of our very human hearts. The love and meaning for the flowers popping up in the cracks.
This is a place for kisei and jogen to weave in practices and explorations of Soul Work that are typically not highlighted in the Buddhist tradition but that have nonetheless been sources of vitality, expansion and joy.
Here we ask together: What if we lived as if Love were the point?
We will:
* Create a practice ethos of radical non-duality, a commitment to see into the dream of the self. Grounding in dharma practices of stillness, inquiry and openness.
* Center parts work practices to explore the fluidity, span and dream of who we are - somebody, nobody, everybody.
* Do interpersonal and group meditation practices of seeing, being and awakening.
* Directly explore emotional embodiment & shadow work
* Include Beauty, Art & Wonderment as core practice elements
We initiate Sky & Rose as an experiment in embracing Spirit and Soul simultaneously, together imagining and practicing collective liberation, playfulness and spaciousness in this time of deep adaptation.
We will begin with monthly 2 hour online sessions on Sundays. Each month we will have a different theme.
The schedule for a session can be found below. We ask each person to commit to coming for the entire session.
Opening—Sacred Invocation (10 min)
Meditation/Universe Somatic (45 min)
Group Shadow Work / Relational Practices (1hr)
Closing Dedication
….
I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, budding Astrologer and Artist. In my Spiritual Counseling Practice, I practice at the confluence of spirituality and psychology, integrating mind, body and spirit. I am trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS), Dream Work, Hakomi (Somatic Therapy) and Mindful Eating.
I also lead a weekly online meditation group through the Zen Community of Oregon and am leading a class series on the Zen Bodhisattva Precepts this Fall. Also if you are interested in workshopping your meditation practice join me in collaboration with Pause Meditation for a 5-week online class series called Beyond Mindfulness. More information can be found below.
Join me on zoom for 40 minutes of meditation and a dharma talk. We are currently exploring the freedom, spontaneity and love of our original nature through the teachings of the Zen koan tradition. Koans invite us into the mythos of practice awakening, gifting us with the ordinary images of our lives, they help awaken us to the wonder, intimacy and compassion of life as it is!
Be patient with all that is unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek the answers, which can not be given to you, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. And perhaps you will then gradually…find yourself living the answer. — Rilke
Far from being a set of rules or doctrine that we must follow, the Bodhisattva precepts act as koans, inquiries that we are empowered to take into our life. They ask us to consider, what does love look like in this situation? In this relationship, how do I work with my anger? Who is it who wants to gossip, or inflate one’s self? How can I show up authentically in the world?
With the final five grave precepts, pure precepts and refuges as our guide we will explore the heart of what it means for each one of us to live a life of integrity and love. We will explore how each precept touches the personal, interpersonal, global and secret dimensions of our living.
This workshop style course is designed to provide a map of the meditation path as well as:
* Introduce you to the five main styles of meditation (calm-abiding, concentration, heart-based practices, inquiry and open-awareness)
* Help you understand the intention of each method and how to practice it
* Help you understand how the various methods and techniques fit together and support each other
* Provide a fun, non-judgmental learning environment where you can try things out, ask questions and explore
* Give you the opportunity to work with a teacher with an extensive background in various meditation techniques
I currently live in Columbus, Ohio with my partner Patrick Kennyo Dunn, we facilitate an in-person meditation gathering every Wednesday from 7P - 8:30P at ILLIO in Clintonville through Mud Lotus Sangha. If you happen to be in Columbus, feel free to stop by. We have weekly meditation gatherings, and are offering a day of meditation in October.
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The Deeply Secret Mind
Tuesday, September 3, 2024 • Duration 37:10
We are emerging from the monthly return of the moon’s dark face—where from earth’s perspective the sun and moon appear to kiss, an aspect that astrologers refer to as a conjunction. In the Zen tradition, the moon cycles served as markers for the calendar year—with the new and full moons being opportunities for ritual and ceremony around atonement and renewal of vows.
In my own life and practice, I have been contemplating the mystery of being, what is often unseen or unacknowledged in the ways we normally move through space and relate to others and the world. In celebration of this New Moon and the Great Mystery, I offer a reflection on the following koan, Zhaozhou’s Deeply Secret Mind.
Hidden Lamp: Zhaozhou’s Deeply Secret Mind
A nun asked Master Zhaozhou: What is the deeply secret mind?
Zhaozhou squeezed her hand
The nun responded Do you still have this?
Zhaozhou replied: You are the one who has this
I was reflecting the other day about why I started practicing Zen. In my home sangha, the Zen Community of Oregon, we have been having conversations about paths of practice. So, I invite you to reflect as well. Why did you start practicing meditation? And if you practice in a particular tradition, why that tradition?
In my own reflection, it seems like Zen chose me. Someone gave me a Zen book and it resonated, then the meditation group I sat with in college was Zen, then my partner in college took me with him to a Zen Temple—at that point I didn’t really think about the other meditation traditions and if one would have been a better fit. I just followed the path that was opening itself up before me.
When I entered a Zen Monastery for my first retreat, I was greeted by an ambiance that felt ancient. The dark zendo, the temple bells, physical mudras that evoked stillness, gratitude and wonder as the monastery building played with the natural world in a way that the two felt indistinguishable. Though my thoughts frequently played the worries and dreams of this particular person, I had a sense that these stories weren’t the whole of who I was. The ancient timeless peace of the monastery was my heart too.
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Sun Face Buddha; Moon Face Buddha
Wednesday, April 17, 2024 • Duration 25:20
Greetings!
I am sending this Podcast Dharma Talk that I recorded last Monday, after viewing the Total Solar Eclipse. Which was spectacular, really beyond words, eerie, beautiful, humbling, I was struck with a deep sense of awe and gratitude.
Below is the written version of the Dharma Talk. The exploration inspired by the eclipse is an active contemplation of the koan, Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face Buddha.
Sending blessings with this post for your own transformations, and transformation in our world. May we continue to see love and compassion.
Eclipses are viewed mythologically, astrologically as times of transformation.
Perhaps something in the shadows of our psyche, unconscious to us–rises to the surface or is able to be seen more clearly. Making the unconscious, conscious is crucial for transformation to occur.
And there are other transformations possible in the spiritual alchemy symbolized by the kissing of the sun + moon.
I want to share a koan
KOAN:
Ancestor Ma was sick. The superintendent of the monastery asked him, “How have you been feeling these days?” The Ancestor said, “Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face Buddha.”
—Blue Cliff Record Case 3 (translation by John Tarrant & Joan Sutherland, titled Ma’s Sun Face, Moon Face Buddha)
Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face BuddhaWhat kind of people where the ancient ancestors!For twenty years I have struggled fiercely;How many times have I gone down to the Blue Dragon’s Cave for you?This distress is worth recounting;Clear-eyed bodhisattvas should not take it lightly.
—Xuedou’s Commentary on BCR Case 3
I have always loved this koan. I think of the eclipse as a time when the sun-face buddha and moon-face buddha meet—In ancient Chinese and Indian cosmology the eclipse was thought to be caused by a dragon eating the sun, other cultures in the Americas believed it was a monster or a squirrel who ate the sun. In alchemy we have the image of the green lion eating the sun.
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Within Darkness it is Most Bright
Sunday, April 7, 2024 • Duration 28:24
We are in the midst of eclipse season. And while it happens twice a year, many of us living in the US are living close to the zone of totality or traveling to a place that falls in the zone of totality. During this dharma talk I explore the Zen teachings of the dark/light. Included is exploration of practice of bowing or touching the earth, the Dark Night of the Soul and the Koan: Everyone has their own Light. Here’s an excerpt
…
Touching the earth, is a practice of humility, grace, receptivity. It allows us to temporarily set down the weight of our aloneness, the weight of our needing to be someone—a unique light that shines out in such a special way. It allows us to blend our light with the light of the world–to see how we depend on each other, how we interbe together.
Often as we are going through our days, we give a lot more attention to the light. Light is vitality, life. Without it we die. And yet, the light of day, the light of knowing, the light of the Sun or our egoic selves, obscures another more foundational light.
Within darkness there is light
In darkness it is most bright
When faced with darkness, whether that is the darkness of night, winter, eclipse, depression, non-doing of zazen, sleep
Where is the light?
What shines forth still, no longer shadowed by the light of the sun?
Everyone has their own light, says Zen Master Yunman, when you look for it, it appears dark or dim. What is this light?
…
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See below for up-coming in-person and online group meditation events and retreats. I also offer 1:1 and . I incorporate dream work and hakomi skills in my sessions, you can learn more about my 1:1 work , feel free to reach out with any questions.
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Being Tamed by Our True Nature
Monday, April 1, 2024 • Duration 33:41
I always consider it quite a blessing to have found my way to the Spiritual Path. I didn’t always feel this way. I remember early on in practice wishing that I could just be satisfied with the flow of everyday life—tv, movies, music, entertainment, a regular job. As an 18 year old, I wished that the urgency of my spiritual angst wasn’t so pressing. That I could go back to normal.
I’ve heard this sentiment echoed a lot since the beginning of the pandemic. A desire for normal. When is it going to go back to the way it was? When will it go back to normal?
In Dharma practice we are encouraged to bring curiosity to the desires and pulls that arise in our minds. We are invited to ask:
What is normal?
An illusion. A phantom. A dream.
Can we ever achieve it? Is it even desirable?
When my younger self dreamed of normal, it was a dream of going back to sleep—back to the ignorance and bliss of youth. It was also a dream of finding ease within the pressing weight of my existential doubt.
My Zen teacher would often say, “the only way out is through.” There is another side, beyond the doubt, fear, confusion of the present situation. But running away, going to sleep, forgetting about it is not the way to the other side. It is only through acceptance, through being with, accompanying our apparent suffering, or our reaction to the suffering in the world, that a larger, more inclusive view emerges.
Our struggles, our challenges can be fuel for a deeper intimacy, a more enduring love, a fiercer compassion and boundless wisdom to emerge. Our desire for normal, may be a wish for a raft, some ease or ground in the midst of transformation—some reassurance that we will survive, that we will be OK.
In my experience, dharma practice offers such a raft—that develops into an embodied trust that we are held in the enduring pulse of the universe, in the spacious embrace of our true nature.
At the beginning of the year, I took up the Ox-herding pictures as a teaching inquiry and exploration for our Monday Night Online Zen Meditation group. This podcast episode is the 5th of the Ox-herding pictures, entitled—Taming the Ox.
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Caught by our True Nature
Saturday, February 17, 2024 • Duration 33:12
We explore the confusion or doubt that can come in when we habits return after having a taste of awakening. We also talk about how the mind will often try to recreate the peak experience, and how to meet that inclination.
The heart of this stage is a deepening of faith, an awakening of devotion for the path and perhaps even beginning to recognize that we can’t fall off the OX, we can’t possibly lose our true nature—for it has been here all along. We are never separate from it!
This stage can also deepen our commitment to continue to practice, trusting that it is possible to awaken to our true nature in a more sustaining way. Here we see how inclusive this path really is!
Thank you for your support! Consider becoming a paid subscriber or sharing this with someone you think would enjoy it!
Blessings + Love,
Kisei
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Seeing Our True Nature
Wednesday, February 7, 2024 • Duration 37:37
Greetings Friends,
In the on-going exploration of the Ox-herding pictures, this podcast episode focuses on Kensho—the Japanese Zen Buddhist word for seeing into our true nature, which is the third of the ten ox-herding or bull-herding pictures. The image above is a bull painted in the Lascaux cave in France around 20k years ago. While maybe not as apparent to a modern person, the Ox and bull have a long relationship to human beings and in the history of religion and spirituality.
When I first encountered the cave paintings of Lascaux, I was awe-struck. They touch my artistic sensibilities and convey, at least to me, a spiritual intimacy. Painted in the dark, fertile womb of the earth—a cave—the animals within the walls portray a liveliness of both painter and animal. It is as if they share the same spirit.
In her article on Enlightenment and Awakening, Zen Buddhist Teacher Joan Sutherland tells a story of Chekhov and Tolstoy as a way of illuminating the insight of a kensho experience, she says:
How large is the self softly illuminated by the moon of enlightenment? Tolstoy and Chekhov were on a walk in the spring woods when they encountered a horse. Tolstoy began to describe how the horse would experience the clouds, trees, smell of wet earth, flowers, sun. Chekhov exclaimed that Tolstoy must have been a horse in a previous life to know in such detail what the horse would feel. Tolstoy laughed and said, “No, but the day I came across my own inside, I came across everybody’s inside.”
She goes on to describe that awakening doesn’t belong to buddhists or buddhas saying:
Awakening is autonomous, existing before there were humans, or anything else, to experience it. This is personified in Prajnaparamita, mother of buddhas, who holds the universe’s awakening, regardless of whether there are buddhas or Buddhist teachings in a particular era.
Though I have never met these artists or animals, I feel something of them even 20k after they lived. Could it be that these artists too, knew the mind before thought—the great expanse of prajna paramita? Sitting in the womb of the earth, the radiant blackness of the wisdom mother—they lost themselves as individuals and became tiger, bull, horse—the goddess herself? Portraying their likeness on these cave walls as an act of devotion, a gesture of love?
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Traces of the Self
Sunday, February 4, 2024 • Duration 32:57
The path of Awakening is sometimes referred to as the Great Unbinding and consists of un-learning our deeply conditioned habits of mind and perception in order to truly meet our Selves as we are—
This is a recording from my free online Zen Meditation group that is hosted through the Zen Community of Oregon. All are welcome to join, we meet at 6P ET on Monday nights for a period of meditation followed by a Dharma Talk. We are exploring the 10 Ox-Herding Pictures, which is a metaphor for the path of Awakening. This talk reflects on the 2nd of the Pictures, sometimes called Traces of Self.
I am also leading an online retreat on the Zen teachings of Emptiness with Jogen Sensei this coming Saturday Feb 10th, which corresponds with the New Moon. It’s called Beyond Self: The Zen Teachings of Shunyata. And is a guided exploration of the Zen teachings and practices of Emptiness, a commonly mis-understood part of the Buddhist path. Our aim is to give participants practices that you can take into your daily life to continue to explore the Mind ground and the pure potential energy that rests at the heart of your being. Click here to learn more!
Lastly, I will be offering my monthly DreamSky Community Dream Practice Event this Sunday at 5P PT / 8P ET. This is a drop in Dream group. You can learn more here.
I also offer 1:1 Spiritual Counseling using IFS, Hakomi and Dream Work, and 1:1 Meditation Coaching. You can learn more on my website.
Take care and thanks for your support!
Love,
Amy Kisei
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What is your motivation?
Tuesday, January 23, 2024 • Duration 35:16
This is the first of a series of talks exploring the Ox-herding pictures, a set of teachings on the Zen path of Awakening. This first stage is foundational and is often called The Search, Arousing the Mind of Awakening or Awakening Bodhicitta.
Each of the Ox-Herding pictures includes a stanza and a poem. The stanza reads as a teaching to accompany the image. What follows below is an excerpt of this Dharma Talk.
The Ox has never really gone astray, so why search for it? Having turned his back on his True-nature, the man cannot see it. Because of his defilements he has lost sight of the Ox. Suddenly he finds himself confronted by a maze of crisscrossing roads. Greed for worldly gain and dread of loss spring up like searing flames, ideas of right and wrong dart out like daggers.
Here we are confronted with one of the seeming paradoxes of dharma practice. The OX, our true nature–has never gone anywhere. It is right here. Prior to all experience. What has been with us since the moment we were born, through every breath, heart-beat, heart-break, loss, joy, thought, delusion, delight.
The sense of being myself, prior to all conditioned ways of being / behaving.
If it is so close, if it hasn’t gone astray–why search? Why practice?
And yet, and I think we can resonate with this. Having turned our backs on our true nature–we don’t see. We’ve been conditioned to seek pleasure else-where, to look for validation and safety from others, to move towards success, to avoid failure, to appear competent and knowledgeable and avoid feeling incompetent or unknowledgeable. And so the maze of criss-crossing roads.
Or you could say it another way, our feelings of isolation, of being separate, unloveable, or being afraid of being unloveable, or our need for approval—dominate our attention. Creating confusion, we start relating to the world as if things weren’t interconnected, as if we could just do it right and everything would work out, we start to blame ourselves or others for our conditions.
And mean while, the freedom and love we seek. Is just right here. In the present. Yet, we don’t quite know how to be present with ourselves any more.
In the long arc of practice, this stage or picture represents beginning to really see our own ignorance, isolation, confusion or our own suffering, and the insight or recognition –wait, it doesn’t have to be this way.
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Awakening the OX
Tuesday, January 9, 2024 • Duration 28:14
I originally started this Substack as a clear way to share my weekly dharma talks. Every Monday at 6P PT / 9P ET I host an online Zen gathering through the Zen Community of Oregon where I am one of the teachers.
The gathering begins with two twenty minute periods of meditation, followed by a Dharma Talk.
Dharma Talks are ways of connecting to the voice of the ancestors, the path of awakening that has been opened up and walked by real human beings over the course of millennia. Because our habitual minds tend towards confusion and distraction, we often need regular reminders about the path of practice.
In the Zen Buddhist tradition these reminders point us to Buddhahood. To our intrinsic Buddha nature, that is spacious, free, compassionate and infinitely creative.
This talk is the beginning of a series of talks on the Ten OX-Herding or Cow-Herding pictures. My teacher Chozen, Roshi would often remark that Zen practice is a practice without handrails. For how does one begin to measure or mark the infinite. And yet, there are states of mind we taste in our practice, and as we continue these states become more and more familiar and accessible.
This talk is an introduction to the Ten OX-Herding pictures as well as an introduction to how I will be exploring this teaching.
One invitation that is alive in the Zen school and in my personal teaching is that the metaphors that we use to describe Mind’s nature, can be entered directly. So here, in this teaching we are invited to meet the OX or the Cow. This is a symbol or metaphor of our true nature, our natural divinity.
Awakening the OX perhaps is a journey to the pre-Buddhist Minoan culture on the island of Crete, where humans performed rituals dressing as bulls to summon the Great Goddess who could give life or take it away.
But as always, more intimately awakening the OX is a journey of Self discovery. A revelation of what has always been here. Of course, as with any good teaching tool, the OX itself will be forgotten, as the functioning of Awakening lives on through us.
There are many great resources to view the Ten Ox-herding Pictures, the prose and commentary. Here are two that I share during this talk:
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It was here that I felt, perhaps for the first time in my adult life, Zhaozhou’s hand reaching out and squeezing mine—the monastery + zen forms provided the physical invitation into this open secret.
Another way this koan is translated is: The nun asks, What is the inner-most heart?
We say Zen is transmitted heart to heart, mind to mind. A few weeks ago I was at Great Vow for a weeklong silent meditation retreat called Grasses and Trees Sesshin. The retreat takes place completely outdoors, we practice with the grounds and forest, the trees, leaves, meadows, birds and bats.
During our sharing circle on the last day, someone shared a story of sitting with a spider, and feeling the spider extend one of its legs, as the person held out a hand.
Others spoke of touching the earth, a rock, a tree —palm to palm, hand to heart, eyeball to eyeball, soma to soma.
When we spend a week, or a day or years or even minutes sitting with another being in silence, in openness, in presence—we know each other in a way that words can’t even begin to explain.
Think of all the hands you have held over the years. The hands you have squeezed. What was being communicated? What were you sharing? What state of Mind? What quality of Heart?
All the time we are holding hands with this sacred life.
Tooth brush hands, tea cup hands, peach + apple hands, dirt hands, human hands, dog hands.
Sometimes maybe we are saying, I love you, I’m scared, hold me, other times especially with the seeming objects of our lives, it might feel more transactional, or maybe we fail to notice this ordinary intimacy.
Chozen Roshi would invite us to take up the practice of Loving Hands. A way of really attending to all the beings, all the life energy that moves through our hands in a given day. How many hand squeezes are we giving and receiving? How many moments of intimacy kiss our lips, and pass us by?
Patrick and I have been doing some teaching with a local sangha called Mud Lotus Sangha here in Columbus, OH, and sometimes the question comes up—what is Zen good for?
Or another way a similar sentiment arises for folks who have been practicing for a while is, I know what Zen is good for. It helps me feel calm, or less anxious, or more connected.
We have the habit of relating to this practice as another thing that we can measure—whether it is working for me, or not. Whether I am getting what I want from this, or not.
This koan is reminding us that Zen or our spiritual lives don’t work that way. Even sitting meditation doesn’t work that way.
When we try to measure our spiritual practice, we overlook the mystery—we violate the deeply secret transmissions, we forget about our inner-most heart.
Many of you have heard me use the teaching tool of inner, outer and secret. Let’s go into that a little bit more in relationship to the practice of Zen, or spiritual practice more generally.
So, we have the physical things that we do, maybe that is meditating daily, or once a week, maybe that is doing bowing practice, or chanting or walking meditation, precepts study or some other practice. This is the outer form of the practice. It is important in that it gives us a form, a temenos, a sacred vessel and structure to our practice. This form is helpful. It reminds us that we are practicing. It gives our bodies and minds something to do, to settle into, to trust. This allows practice to deepen and open.
Then we have what we are doing with our minds / attention. I call this the inner dimension. This starts with intention, and then the method—how we are actually meeting the changing experiences on an inner level. This could include practicing acceptance, loving kindness or compassion for ourselves, or learning to relate to thoughts as another sense happening. Or beginning to look into the nature of our experience (we call this inquiry). What is the source of thoughts, what are emotions made of? How long does any experience last? All these practices compose the inner dimension—what we are doing with our attention moment to moment.
The secret dimension is all that can not be said, what we don’t have names for. The physicist David Bohm said that if we used the analogy of the ocean to describe what we know and don’t know about the universe, what we know would be comparable to the foam that rests on the surface of the ocean. What we don’t know—is the rest of the ocean.
The opening lines to the Dao De Jing say it this way:
The dao that can be named is not the eternal dao.
And so Zhaozhou gives our hands a squeeze. And it’s not about the hand or the squeeze per se, but the intimacy. The connection. Not the words intimacy or connection, but the direct, living intimacy. The dissolving of self and other. Releasing the world from our concepts about it. It’s the heart at home with itself. The great mystery of being and non-being—simultaneously.
I think you know what I am trying to say. There are times in our practice, in our life as practice where we hear the words behind the words. We hear the secret language of a chant, dharma talk, gesture, sound and part of us understands.
Chozen Roshi would invite us to listen to the birds so closely, that we could almost understand what they were saying. I think a similar kind of listening emerges in Zen, we hear and learn to speak the language behind the words and forms, the secret language of true intimacy.
So we practice Zen in all its forms, we set intentions and put into practice the teachings that help us cultivate mental stability, equanimity, ease, loving kindness, compassion, gratitude, joy.
And at times we are touched by the mystery. The great love of being. We sense our shared nature, and the wisdom, openness and clarity of the heart as our own nature. And then, without us even noticing it secret language emerges from our own lips.
….
This dharma talk was shared live during the Monday Night Dharma event through the Zen Community of Oregon.
I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, budding Astrologer and Artist. In my Spiritual Counseling Practice, I practice at the confluence of spirituality and psychology, integrating mind, body and spirit. I am trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS), Dream Work, Hakomi (Somatic Therapy) and Mindful Eating.
I have a few new client openings this Fall if you are interested in exploring Spiritual Counseling with me.
Spiritual Counseling can help you:
* Companion Grief + Loss
* Clarify Life Purpose
* Healing Relational Conflict + Inner Conflict
* Work with Shadow Material
* Heal your relationship with Eating, Food or Body Image
* Spiritual Emergence
* Integrate Psychedelic or Mystical Experiences
* Move Through Creative Blocks, Career Impasses and Burnout
I also lead a weekly online meditation group through the Zen Community of Oregon and am leading a class series on the Zen Bodhisattva Precepts this Fall. Also if you are interested in workshopping your meditation practice join me in collaboration with Pause Meditation for a 5-week online class series called Beyond Mindfulness. More information can be found below.
Join me on zoom for 40 minutes of meditation and a dharma talk. We are currently exploring the freedom, spontaneity and love of our original nature through the teachings of the Zen koan tradition. Koans invite us into the mythos of practice awakening, gifting us with the ordinary images of our lives, they help awaken us to the wonder, intimacy and compassion of life as it is!
Be patient with all that is unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek the answers, which can not be given to you, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. And perhaps you will then gradually…find yourself living the answer. — Rilke
Far from being a set of rules or doctrine that we must follow, the Bodhisattva precepts act as koans, inquiries that we are empowered to take into our life. They ask us to consider, what does love look like in this situation? In this relationship, how do I work with my anger? Who is it who wants to gossip, or inflate one’s self? How can I show up authentically in the world?
With the final five grave precepts, pure precepts and refuges as our guide we will explore the heart of what it means for each one of us to live a life of integrity and love. We will explore how each precept touches the personal, interpersonal, global and secret dimensions of our living.
This workshop style course is designed to provide a map of the meditation path as well as:
* Introduce you to the five main styles of meditation (calm-abiding, concentration, heart-based practices, inquiry and open-awareness)
* Help you understand the intention of each method and how to practice it
* Help you understand how the various methods and techniques fit together and support each other
* Provide a fun, non-judgmental learning environment where you can try things out, ask questions and explore
* Give you the opportunity to work with a teacher with an extensive background in various meditation techniques
I currently live in Columbus, Ohio with my partner Patrick Kennyo Dunn, we facilitate an in-person meditation gathering every Wednesday from 7P - 8:30P at ILLIO in Clintonville through Mud Lotus Sangha. If you happen to be in Columbus, feel free to stop by. We have weekly meditation gatherings, and are offering a day of meditation in October.
It does look like someone is taking bites out of the sun, like the sun is a giant cookie, and the moon is taking bigger and bigger bites out of it. Until it is completely swallowed and night dawns in the middle of the day.
Perhaps it is in blue dragons cave—in the belly of the monster– where the light of the sun is restored. Where our original light is realized.
In this koan we have Ancestor Ma.
Ma is a sound that corresponds to mother, in many languages–which is interesting in its connection to pre-axial religions, where mother goddesses ruled the heavens and the Earth.
Sophie Strand in her research on the history of myth traces the monsters that emerge like the minotaur as having their roots in a mother goddess culture, where this goddess had energy like Kali meaning she could give life and take it away. Which is something that we say of Zen teachers or people with realization—they have the power to give life or take it away.
For realization in Zen is more of a losing than a gaining. We see through our self and delusions to the point of realizing that we are everything and nothing belongs to us.
The Sun and Moon archetypally play different roles in our collective imagination.
Sun Face Buddha
The Sun illuminates the day. The sun is connected with knowledge, the ego, clarity, our uniqueness, how we shine, vitality, consciousness, the mind–our knowing.
If you look at the Sun card in the Rider-Waite-SmithTarot you see an image of a bright luminous sun, a naked baby so vibrantly full of life, riding a horse as sunflowers bloom all around. The Sun looks directly back at us. Bright and straightforward in its life-giving radiance.
The sun you could say is what we know about ourselves.
In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition the clear light of the sun is used to describe our true nature. There is this enduring, life-giving quality to the sun.
Awakening is allowing the clear light of our nature to shine through us.
Awakening dawns in us, as us—with the recognition that this light does not belong to us, but is the light of our shared being—our true nature.
Practice-awakening involves a continual recognition of this light—our Sun Face Buddha—which is always present. We are in a sense continually recognizing what is always already here, basic to us.
The clear light of mind is present even in the night or when the dark monster appears to eat the light for a few minutes twice a year.
Because our inner light, the light of awareness does not dim. Even in sleep. Even when the outer world appears dark.
Moon Face Buddha
And yet, change is our nature. As human beings, as earthlings—we change, we live on a changing planet.
Some change happens to us. Or at least appears too. Friends move away. Our career pivots or the work environment undergoes changes, our relationships pass through their own seasons of connection, intimacy, seeming disconnection and rediscovery / drifting apart. People we love die. Our kids grow up. Our parents age. Our bodies age. Environmental disasters happen. The politics in our country changes.
Other changes we seem to have more agency in.
The Moon reminds us that we too are cyclical.
Archetypally the moon has been associated with change, the tides, in many cultures each of the monthly full moons have a different name. The moon's phases remind us of our own mini cycles, that our bodies too are flowing, need periods of rest and rejuvenation. The moon is often associated with our emotional being. Our innermost experience.
The moon’s light is different from the sun, it's a reflective light.
Ominous, it holds an element of mystery. When seen in the moonlight, things lack clear edges or boundaries, there is a blending quality to the moon’s luminosity. Hazy, inchoate, the moon illuminates a world beyond distinction + labels, beyond the piercing clarity and gnosis of the sun’s rays. In the moonlight we are invited to un-know. To see beyond our projections.
The mind and our obsession with “seeing” is rendered ineffective. We misperceive. Is that a vine or a snake? A person in the corner or a coat hanging, the antlers of a deer on the porch or an upside down broom? We can spook ourselves and have the opportunity to laugh at ourselves in our delusional moon vision.
The Moon card in the Tarot is an image of waters, a crab, a wolf/dog, howling, two towers with a path passing through. There is something a bit unsettling about the image. Looney, lunatic. The moon’s face isn’t straight on like the sun’s —its sideways. Looking away, peripheral.
It describes what many people talk about feeling in the dusky hours. A restlessness, an unsettling, a strange boredom, loneliness—this is often the time of temptation, cravings emerge for food, sex, some kind of distraction or entertainment.
At the monastery, this is one of the times of meditation.
Another aspect to the moon is that we can’t see the entire moon. The moon has a dark side.
The moon is what we don’t know about ourselves.
What is unknowable.
In the Japanese Zen tradition the moon represents enlightenment.
Here we have the reminder that awakening is ungraspable, anything that we think we can say about it, is already covering the direct, unmediated experience of life itself. The moon shadows show us the limits of mind, words, concepts and knowing.
The moon reminds us of the mystery that we are. That life is. The mystery of our own light, our own gnosis—how we can’t quite tell of it—for our telling casts silvery delusions like the rays of moonlight, obscuring the truth.
And so—we are invited to live—Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face Buddha.
Knowing and unknowing, bright clarity that is truly a mystery.
Transformation comes from our ability to embrace these two luminaries, two sides of the same face? To faces of the same sky?
What shines forth unobstructed as we allow our humanness, our changeability, our flaws, the mystery of what we are—to shine together with the unalterable light of our true nature?
Love, our unique expression of compassion, awe, wonder, wisdom—
Sun Face, Moon Face
Original Face
Buddha
See below for up-coming in-person and online group meditation events and retreats. I also offer 1:1 IFS-informed Spiritual Counseling and Meditation support. I incorporate dream work and hakomi skills in my sessions, you can learn more about my 1:1 work here, feel free to reach out with any questions.
This talk is recorded during my weekly OnlineMonday Night Meditation and Dharma event. This event is open to anyone, you can drop in anytime. Meditation begins at 6P PT / 9P ET. Click here for more information and the zoom link. We are currently exploring the theme: Engaged Buddhism.
During this 5-day silent Zen meditation retreat we will connect to the ancestral light of awakened nature. Drawing inspiration from the stories and practices of our Zen ancestors, fellow human beings who felt the call to practice the spiritual path of insight, love and presence.
With wonderment on our side, and in relationship with all that is, we recognize the inherent compassion that naturally arises from deep and sustained presence. Held in a container of zen forms and the vibrant dance of a monastery waking up to spring, we will explore the nature of being anything at all! Love and Spaciousness are two qualities of our true nature. This retreat we will practice recognizing and opening to them.
This talk is recorded during my weekly OnlineMonday Night Meditation and Dharma event. This event is open to anyone, you can drop in anytime. Meditation begins at 6P PT / 9P ET. Click here for more information and the zoom link.
This drop-in online dream group is open to anyone with an interest in exploring dreams with community. You don’t have to be having profound dreams or even be remembering your dreams to join. Please contact me if you are interested in attending.
During this 5-day silent Zen meditation retreat we will connect to the ancestral light of awakened nature. Drawing inspiration from the stories and practices of our Zen ancestors, fellow human beings who felt the call to practice the spiritual path of insight, love and presence.
With wonderment on our side, and in relationship with all that is, we recognize the inherent compassion that naturally arises from deep and sustained presence. Held in a container of zen forms and the vibrant dance of a monastery waking up to spring, we will explore the nature of being anything at all! Love and Spaciousness are two qualities of our true nature. This retreat we will practice recognizing and opening to them.
These pictures are the stages of awakening in the Zen tradition, where we are OX and ox-herder. The OX being our true awakened nature, and the herder being our mind of both practice and habit energy.
So when we say we are herding the OX we are really herding ourselves.
And when we say the fifth picture is taming the OX, we are talking about the stage of practice where we are taming ourselves in our realization of our true nature. Despite the wonder, peace, satisfaction and beauty of awakened awareness, our habit mind seeks pleasure in fleeting desires and follows trains of thought that lead to despair, division, pain and suffering.
We are learning here to recognize our true nature, the source of ultimate happiness and to stay in or stabilize this recognition. I shared a few stanzas of The Little Prince as a way of connecting to the spirit of taming in Spiritual Practice.
"Please--tame me!" he said.
"I want to, very much," the little prince replied. "But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand."
"One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me . . ."
"What must I do, to tame you?" asked the little prince.
"You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me--like that--in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day . . ."
The next day the little prince came back.
…
And he went back to meet the fox.
"Goodbye," he said.
"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."
"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . ."
"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
What have you let tame you? What practices help you connect with the innate, wild compassion and wisdom of your true nature? What supports help you remember your way back home especially when you feel untethered, ungrounded, seeking ease or something familiar?
For me, retreat practice, regular meditation and 1:1 work with a seasoned practitioner have been vital supports in my own process of healing and awakening.
Much Love,
Amy Kisei
Earth Dreams is a reader-supported publication. I offer these dharma talk podcasts and writings as a labor of love, to support my work consider becoming a paid subscriber.
See below for up-coming in-person and online group meditation events and retreats. I also offer 1:1 IFS-informed Spiritual Counseling and Meditation support. I incorporate dream work and hakomi skills in my sessions, you can learn more about my 1:1 work here, feel free to reach out with any questions.
Zen is more than a path of meditation. It is a way of life. Join us for an exploration of the Zen Bodhisattva Precepts, which are a set of contemplations on how to live a wise and compassionate life. In an age where many of our leaders seem to be lacking a moral compass, it feels vital to practice embodying love and understanding in our lives and in the world. Anyone is welcome to attend! In-person only.
During this 5-day silent Zen meditation retreat we will connect to the ancestral light of awakened nature. Drawing inspiration from the stories and practices of our Zen ancestors, fellow human beings who felt the call to practice the spiritual path of insight, love and presence.
With wonderment on our side, and in relationship with all that is, we recognize the inherent compassion that naturally arises from deep and sustained presence. Held in a container of zen forms and the vibrant dance of a monastery waking up to spring, we will explore the nature of being anything at all! Love and Spaciousness are two qualities of our true nature. This retreat we will practice recognizing and opening to them.
Once I came across my own inside, I came across everyone’s inside.
In her book on the Image of the Goddess Anne Baring connects these early cave painting cultures to the earliest depiction of a mother goddess that historians are aware of. Wisdom beyond wisdom, need not be gendered for it points to that which is prior to gender, body, form, all dualities—and yet, the metaphor of the great mother captures something essential. From the darkness of this cave-like womb—bull, hand, paint, tiger, woman, voice, body, me, you!
We are currently in week one of a 14-week class series I am offering on the Sacred Feminine—as I post this recording on kensho— I am feeling how deeply the two intersect for me. As a Zen practitioner Prajna Paramita—wisdom beyond wisdom—wasn’t something I immediately connected with as a feminine deity or mother goddess.
Throughout the years of practice, my practice has taken on more of a devotional flavor. As I learned more about the image and history of the goddess, prajna paramita—mother of all buddhas, I feel how her depiction helps me open to the spaciousness, compassionate, freedom of Mind’s nature.
I have a practice now of embodying the goddess, allowing my body to take the form of prajna paramita, and everything that arises in the space of awareness—body sensations, sounds, thoughts, images, feelings, emotions—are all a manifestation of prajna paramita—wisdom beyond wisdom. Inseparable for the light of awareness.
Where have you encountered the goddess?
Can you see her—right now?
When I look, she is everywhere:
In the freedom and play of The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Moor Mother’s spoken word poetry. In the oak tree still holding some of his leaves and the babbling creek running gently in spring sun, in the city lights twinkle, and the burgeoning trunk jade plant on my desk—she is everywhere, miss true nature—and gratitude, devotion, wonder and awe arise in this heart when I catch a glimpse of her various forms of compassionate expression.
Can you really see her everywhere? In everyone and everything. When my heart trembles in fear, or I feel sadness over the suffering in the world—I invite this inquiry. This too, the wisdom and compassion of our awakened nature. This too, none other than the goddess’s compassionate manifestation. This too, the spontaneous expression of the OX. For me, this is a koan worth pursuing.
With just one glance of Miss Original Face
Standing there you will fall in love with her. —Zen Master Ikkyu
Each of the ox-herding pictures has a prose teaching and poem to accompany them. Below is the image, prose and poem for the third picture sometimes called Seeing the OX or The First Glimpse of Self.
PROSE
Through sound you gain entry, by sight you face your source.
The six senses are not different, in every activity it’s plainly there.
Like salt in water or glue in paint. Raise your eyebrows—it’s just right here.
POEM
In the trees nightingales sing and sing again
Sun warms the soft wind, green willows line the bank
Here, there’s nowhere left for it to hide,
It’s majestic head and horns no artist could draw
The recorded talk is commentary on this vital stage of the path, which includes commenting on these teaching points found in the prose and poem. Please enjoy and feel free to comment. I am curious to hear about your experience of Awakening, Prajna Paramita, devotion or anything else that touched you in either this written piece or the dharma talk.
This Saturday I will be offering a daylong online meditation retreat exploring the Zen teachings of Shunyata, emptiness—an often misunderstood yet vital aspect of practice-awakening. We will be sharing teachings, guided practice sessions and recordings will be available for anyone who registers. You can learn more here.
On Sunday evening 8P ET/5P PT, I will be hosting the monthly online dream drop-in group called DreamSky. Anyone is welcome to attend, click the link to learn more.
I feel deep gratitude to be on this path of discovery with all of you!
I remember someone saying, you are not your thoughts. And really being able to hear it, like oh, wow–there is a me who isn’t this confusion, this shame, this anxiety, this narrating, this planning. Who is that me?
Another way this comes up is through reflecting on the state of the world, seeing all of the division, conflict, war, discrimination–and recognizing, it doesn’t have to be this way. There is another way.
…
The talk continues by exploring some of the traditional reflections for Awakening Bodhicitta or cultivating motivation on the path of practice. This is a meditation on our own motivation for practice. How that motivation may have changed over the years, and how we continue to connect to motivation in whatever season of practice we find ourselves in.
As always, I offer this as an expression of my practice and vow. Please feel free to leave a comment or reflection if anything touches or challenges you. I find the connection of community such a vital part of the of Awakening. The ways our hearts and minds shape and are shaped by each other’s is truly precious.
This talk involves some screen shares where we look at some of the images of this OX-herding picture together. I am including the links below.
