Explore every episode of the podcast The Jizo-an Zen Community Podcast

This talk explores Buddha nature as the wholeness obscured by afflictions, self-centered stories, and habitual reactivity. Drawing on teachings about contingency, the Noble Path, and daily practice, it considers how awareness helps us recognize the causes of suffering, stop feeding old patterns, and remain present amid uncertainty.

What does it mean to live an awakened life, to live in an awakened way? How do we bring our practice and the Dharma teachings into our everyday lives? How do we realize or actualize our practice in the world? Fortunately for all of us, the Buddha and our many ancestors left us a great treasure trove in the many Dharma teachings, sutras, and commentaries that have been handed down for generations. Those teachings are like a guide-map for us, not simply instructing us on exactly what to do, but rather pointing the way toward our own discovery of living an awakened life.

This teaching explores right view as the foundation of the Noble Eightfold Path: seeing suffering, impermanence, causation, and personal responsibility clearly rather than seeking happiness through attachment and control. Drawing on Buddhist teachings, contemporary reflections, and personal stories, it presents right view as a fluid, embodied practice of meeting each moment honestly and responding with greater acceptance and skillfulness.

As we move through this life, we tend to exchange old stories for new ones, but always there is a backdrop of old fears like a shadow that haunts us. In order to fully mature, we need to see through these stories, to identify and come to grips with our maladapted behaviors and strategies. Zen practice helps us to surface our perceived shortcomings, and engage the process of transforming them. We commit to sharing our lives and relationships in more ethical and appropriate ways and behaviors.

In its 2,600-year history, from the time of the Buddha to the present day, Buddhism has grown from a tiny religious community in northern India into a movement that now spans the globe. It has shaped the development of civilizations in India and Southeast Asia and had a major influence on the civilizations of China, Tibet, Korea, and Japan; and today has become a major part of the multi-religious world of Europe and North America. It is a story of the Buddha himself, and the story of generations of people who have used the model of the Buddha's life to shape not only their own but the societies in which they live.

Studying sutras is one way to awaken this heart/ mind. this big mind as Shunryu Suzuki calls it. And the same goes for our ability to embrace moment to moment awareness.. This moment that is free of description and temptations. In my own practice, the floor has become the greatest anchor…as my eyes fluctuate between closed and partially open the moment I look at the floor, it lifts the haze of the imaginary space, hurling me back to reality. Likewise, when we study sutras as a spiritual practice, the principles of these prayers began to infiltrate our lives and inform us of a different way of being that we can engage. I must engage it. I cannot just think about it. But the thinking is an important beginning. There is no one-sided practice… that is just more wanting mind.

We have largely been conditioned to believe that we need to constantly push ourselves very hard and make strenuous efforts to attain, achieve, or become this or that. We often bring this same mentality to our spiritual practice, believing that we must make strenuous efforts to awaken and realize our true nature. Dogen Zenji described practice as the dharma gate of ease and joy. He emphasized diligent and wholehearted effort, just sitting, not trying to become or attain anything. In Zen, this is often referred to as wise effort or effortless effort. We will examine this dharma gate of ease and joy.

In Zen we are taught that we have everything within us to be awakened and enlightened. However, we, in our conditioned mind, create barriers that hold us back from tapping into our authentic self and to live how we are meant to. How many times do we miss what is right in front of us? How can we see what we need to see? Let us explore these questions and share our lived experiences on this path.

Our lives are constructed of stories. Some are handed down to us, others take form from the outcome of events in our lives. Stories are the stuff of our sense of self, and when habits develop around them, we are constrained, we suffer. To realize new possibilities is how we transform our lives and discover new meaning.

Five years ago, our founder Seijaku Roshi died.  As time passes the number of people who actually knew Roshi steadily decreases. But his presence is still here with us and will always be with us. Last year the Jizo-an Zen Community celebrated its 40-year anniversary. There have been a number of changes since Roshi's passing, primarily to make the Dharma available to more people. Roshi had a vision of planting the dharma here in South Jersey.  Creating a place where community members, students and monks, could come together to train and realize themselves. Please join the monks as we pay tribute to our founder and his vision.

Paradox is both a powerful word and an important aspect of Zen practice. We often don't feel very comfortable with paradox. We prefer to have our life neatly arranged and packaged. But, Zen points to a very different way of being. The reality is that we live much of our entire life in the midst of paradox. Thich Nhat Hanh taught that life is both terrifying and beautiful all at once. Zen teaches us to embrace this great paradox in our everyday life, and to be fully present for all of it.

Traditionally sangha referred to the community of ordained monks and nuns, but today the term sangha, includes all Buddhist practitioners, lay and ordained. The Buddha taught that each of us is responsible for our own journey of awakening "Be an island unto yourself." But at the same time, the Buddha left us a precious legacy, the teachings (dharma) and the community (sangha). We are never alone if we embrace the three refuges. The existence of Sangha is what makes Buddhism a living, applied spiritual tradition rather than a mere philosophy. We support and are supported by each other.

The "mysterious principle" Master Linji Yixuan (the founder of Rinzai Zen) is centered on direct, spontaneous awareness. He taught us to stop seeking enlightenment outside of ourselves in scriptures, Buddha figures, or even the concept of Nirvana and to recognize our own true unconditioned nature. There is nothing to gain, no path to follow, and nothing special to achieve. True liberation is simply having enough confidence in yourself to stop looking for it and live in awareness as an ordinary person.

Everything we encounter — our bodies, relationships, thoughts, and circumstances, is in constant flux. Yet much of our suffering arises from resisting this truth or attempting to secure what cannot be held. Accepting impermanence opens the door to a more intimate, compassionate, and vivid way of being. Rather than leading to detachment or despair, this intimacy with change allows us to meet each moment with freshness and care—because it will not come again in the same way.

The Heart Sutra, possibly the best known text of Mahayana Buddhism, is said to be the pure distillation of wisdom (prajna). Perhaps because of both its profundity and brevity, the Heart Sutra is the most familiar of all the original teachings of the Buddha. An English translation can easily be printed on one side of a piece of paper. Also the Sino-Japanese version of the Sutra lends itself well to chanting. The Heart Sutra seeks to cut our dualistic thinking at the root.

The Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path begins with Right View or Understanding and Right Intention. Understanding our nature and this Way of Being in the world is essential. But we must go beyond just understanding. We must skillfully apply the practice and live it in our daily life. Our life is our practice - no separation. This is Realization or Actualization. To experience liberation is to bring the teachings to life and make them real, for ourselves and for all beings. To live authentically in the world is to actualize the Dharma in our everyday life. Nothing special, living Zen.

When we embrace a practice like Zen, we realize how difficult it can be to stay on a path that is so radically different from how we have been conditioned to show up. Deep inside, we know that we are not truly being our authentic selves and we consciously decide to search for something that can lead us to be who we naturally are. This practice is not for our personal development or growth. However, that is something that naturally happens. This practice offers the opportunity to show up in the world the way we are truly meant to, and when we do this, we are transformed and liberated.

As human beings, we all wish for happiness and peace in our lives, and we wish not to suffer. Yet, we experience so much sorrow, discontent, and suffering, and we are often left feeling hopeless or helpless, unable to comprehend this suffering. The Buddha's teachings are about liberation from suffering. But what does it really mean to be liberated? Perhaps the fundamental obstacle is that we do not really understand our suffering, nor how to truly cultivate happiness. This evening, we will look at suffering, happiness, peace, and liberation - how to see them more clearly.

The Platform Sutra of Hui-Neng, the sixth patriarch of Chinese Zen is one of the most influential texts of Chan Buddhism. According to Hui-Neng, Buddha nature is the true nature of all beings. We therefore don't need to purify our minds, rather we need to shift our perspective so we can see our true nature. Hui-Neng was an illiterate woodcutter who attained enlightenment, and who went on to demonstrate the depth and clarity of this insight. His example has demonstrated to generations of Zen students and spiritual seekers that awakening is attainable in this lifetime regardless of education or social standing.

How can we let go of judgments and self-judgments, living only in the present moment? Can we see this moment as sacred, accepting ourselves and others as they are, accepting and letting go of the past? We're both separate and together, perfect and complete, revealing right here, right now. What are we waiting for? We will examine these questions, these koans together.

Upaya, or skillful means, is a hallmark of not only Zen practice and training, but of the entirety of the Buddha's teachings. How do we live skillfully, moment by moment, in a world on fire, a world with so much division, injustice, and strife? The Buddha's teachings are a prescription for how to liberate ourselves from this pervasive suffering. However, it is not a blanket, one-size-fits-all prescription, but a way of living skillfully with the ever changing circumstances, causes and conditions of life.

In simple terms: we crave more, different and new. When one learns how to 'look' desire is constantly there, knocking and knocking like a sales man who has exactly what you want yet knows you don't need. This seems to be true whether it's for more love or more cars or more fear. The reality is that desire creates this constant conflict within us. This is why most humans breathe very shallowly…like a boa constrictor that's tight enough to hold you down but not tight enough to cut off the flow of air.

Our social contract is based on mutual respect and recognition of our common interest. There are those who have become quite adept at pitting ourselves against ourselves; against each other when we are all truly dependent on each other. There are some who find advantage in focusing on superficial differences rather than our profound shared identity. The Eye of the Heart knows better— we all share a common heritage in the earth, the sea and the stars. We must vow to reinvigorate a view of the sacredness of all things if we are to if we are to survive and even thrive in this life.

Much like creating music, life is of the nature of change and flow. Just as chord changes and progressions constantly create and re-create the flowing rhythms of music, life too unfolds and is constantly in creation according to the ever changing nature of life's flowing rhythms. When we wrestle against that unfolding flow, then life, like music, becomes stagnant and its natural evolution and creative aspect is diminished within us.

In our current state of the world we witness how misinformation spreads like a virus. We witness again and again how easy it is to manipulate others, create division, and spread hatred through wrong speech. In the eight fold noble path the Buddha instructed us on the importance of right speech. When we pay close attention to our words and use them skillfully we can create heaven on Earth. Let us understand and realize the power that lies in the word and how to utilize this power for the benefit of humanity.

"You are Buddha, you are perfect and complete". Most of us would vehemently disagree... for good reason too. We spend lifetimes unconsciously creating fantasies about who we think we are. Just like if you took a dog and trained it to be a killer, there would be no surprise if that were to actually occur. But the dog's true essence is not a killer. We too have 'trained' ourselves to see life through certain filters and so our actions turn out to be direct responses to the distorted lens that we unconsciously created. To understand this, one simply needs a new way of looking. Zazen was created for this exact purpose...it is the ability to recognize the formlessness in the form. Right here, right now, a mental formation...does it contain anything at all?

Eihei Dogen, the great master of Soto Zen, taught that when we know something intimately, it ceases to exist in the old way and, as a result, so do we. Dogen was a lover of nature. He built his monastery deep in the mountains near streams. In the Mountains and Rivers Sutra he wrote about the mountains and rivers, the wind and clouds, as direct expressions of the great body of the Buddha, the whole earth body as well as your body, and my body. These mountains and rivers of the present are the manifestation of the way of the buddhas and ancient sages. Each abides in its own, dharma state, exhaustively fulfilling its virtues. What Dogen is pointing to is the immediate, non-dual experience of our lives using the language of our natural world.

What does it mean to practice the Noble Eightfold Path's 'Right View'? How do we walk the Buddha's teaching of the Middle Way? ​ Master Shitou shared his deep insight into these questions with two profound poems that became the foundation of the Soto Zen School: The 'Sandokai' and the 'Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage.' We will look into maintaining this life of balancing the Absolute and the Relative, not two.

How does one practice without attachments to goals or gaining anything? Zen does not place an emphasis on advancing through stages of practice, or expectations of achieving anything. But when one embraces this path wholeheartedly, we mature as a result of opening the heart, seeing through delusions, and directly experiencing the transformative fruit of practice in our life. ​ Unobstructed, the primordial mind naturally sees the Way. The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures poetically captures this transformation of mind to heart as we travel and mature along this path.

From a Zen perspective, animals teach profound spiritual and philosophical lessons like living fully in the present moment, unconditional love, natural joy, letting go of past hurts and the wisdom of rest. ​ Through their honest communication and mindful presence, they encourage us to be more patient, compassionate, and to find peace by letting go of over-thinking and focusing on the here and now. In addition, confronting the suffering of animals enables us to develop renunciation, compassion, and Bodhichitta, so that we are ever more strongly motivated to train in all the Buddhist practices that will lead to lasting mental freedom for our sake and for the sake of all beings.

For those touched by awakening, the complexities of existence allow for words to be molded like clay… and so poetry lends itself to the wonderful mysteries of what lies beyond the temporal and transitory…not allowing the reader to fully put their finger on it, for it would just be another case of the finger pointing at the moon. Each time the Dharma is composed into intellectual and coherent vocabulary, it wrangles the reader into a fury of grasping at concepts and the tangible world. Poetry on the other hand, invites curiosity and depth as well as an openness that allows room to breathe.

In 1994, the late American Zen master, Roshi, Bernie Glassman founded the Zen peacemakers; an organization of practitioners and teachers that has grown globally. He also established the Three Tenets of the Zen Peacemakers, a path of practice to relieve the suffering of all beings through contemplative social action. Those three tenets – Not Knowing, Bearing Witness and Compassionate Action are a framework to work towards a more compassionate and enlightened society; a wounded world that appears so divided and in need of healing.

When we begin walking this path, we start the process of taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. Then, we may come to the realization that we are ready to take formal refuge as we experience the transformation that naturally happens when we make the genuine commitment to fully embrace this way of being in the world. Let's explore the meaning of the powerful statement and action of taking refuge.

First, the Buddha, and then Dogen Zenji, in their final lessons to us, described eight qualities to guide us as Bodhisattvas in training. These eight are necessary to develop if we are to become true adults and to step past the un-resolved, erratic emotions that continue in the unconscious mind, so that we may actualize the Buddha field in our everyday life.

In Buddhism, the three poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance are regarded as mental, afflictions, that cloud the mind, and are the root cause of our suffering and discontentment. Our conditioned reaction is to see these poisons simply as enemies that must be avoided or eliminated. But, what if we see them as our teachers and the very springboard to insight and awakening?

In Zen we do a lot of bowing. But there is so much more to a bow than just bending. Bowing is a practice of gratitude and non-duality. It is a physical expression of the Buddha's teaching. The dropping away of the ego and its myriad attachments. A bow represents the merging of heart and mind, compassion and wisdom.

These two possibilities are relative and absolute or if you like, awareness and ignorance…the point of speaking about the one reality is to help an individual pull himself out of the one-sided relative reality that 99% of us live in—me and you. Like everything in life, this requires balance, diligence, and effort. Just as a seesaw works best when the two weights are similar, our lives find balance when we live in a way that brings harmony to the world around us. So, awareness has the ability to recognize the stories that keep relative beliefs alive, and in that process absolute reality becomes more and more apparent.

We have largely been conditioned to believe that we need to constantly push ourselves very hard and make strenuous efforts to attain, achieve, or become this or that. We often bring this same mentality to our spiritual practice, believing that we must make strenuous efforts to awaken and realize our true nature. Dogen Zenji described practice as the dharma gate of ease and joy. He emphasized diligent and wholehearted effort, just sitting, not trying to become or attain anything. In Zen, this is often referred to as wise effort or effortless effort. We will examine this dharma gate of ease and joy.

There is a frequently quoted Zen saying - Seven times knocked down, eight times get up - that speaks to a core aspect of practice and training: namely, the cultivation of unflagging perseverance, even in the midst of the most difficult circumstances. The dharma points to the essential nature of great determination on the spiritual path because it recognizes the necessity for deep resolve in our ever changing lives and surroundings.

Attending to the breath​ is the simplest of instructions for marshaling our attention into the current moment. Yet we tend to fall back again and again into thinking about, musing, judging and projecting our wants and needs upon our experience of it. Fortunately we can train the mind with a simple hint to maintain our focus and deepen our practice of zazen — stealing our attention back from the wandering mind and into the silent source of being.

For many traditional religions, doubt is often seen as a weakness, a lack of faith, or the very antithesis of faith. Seen in this way, mere belief can harden into unquestioned dogma or doctrine. However, in Buddhism, and perhaps especially in Zen, Great Doubt is one of the foundations of practice, and is interconnected and inseparable from Great Faith. The great Zen Master Boshan taught that unlike the hindrance of skeptical doubt, we must always arouse Great Doubt in our practice, for it holds our continuous practice upright and awakens our sense of wonder. We will look at the significance of Great Doubt in our life, and its interconnectedness with Great Faith, not as dogma or doctrine, but as a living and unfolding experience.

It's been 50 years since the fall of Saigon, the moment that ended the Vietnam War. The fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, signaled the end of South Vietnam. In the chaos leading up to that day, hundreds of thousands fled, many by sea, in search of safety and a future. The total loss of human life from the war is staggering. According to the Buddha, the mind is the source of all actions. It is most dangerous when we believe that our way is the only way for humankind. If we see deeply into the fact that all beings are interconnected, we will stop blaming, arguing, and killing. To practice nonviolence, we first need to create true harmony within ourselves.

Conditioned by a world that strives to "win," it's not easy to see how this sense of "I must become something or someone" is the underlying cause of suffering. For many reasons, it's rare for us humans to recognize that what we are, at any given moment, is enough...and so ambition becomes the con-man for the ego...the dog chasing it's tail. If you can step back (or out) of the clouds of the one illusion, you may get a glimpse that even when you succeed at whatever you're striving after, there is also this sense of "not enough" behind it. This is discontentment or, if you like, suffering. Passion on the other hand expects nothing in return...it sees the whole process as the reward, as well as the understanding that the skill which one acquires has very little to do with it anyway. That's the gift. You simply return the favor by illuminating it whichever direction you walk.

"There is, monks, this way that leads only to the purification of beings, to the overcoming of sorrow and distress, to the disappearance of pain and sadness, to the gaining of the right path, to the realization of Nirvana – that is to say the four foundations of mindfulness". These are the opening words of the Buddha's discourse on mindfulness in the Satipatthana Sutta. We will examine the Buddha's instructions relating to the seventh practice of the Noble Eightfold Path, Right Mindfulness. These instructions for meditations exploring the experience of our bodies, feelings, states of mind and objects of mind lead us toward the attainment of liberation and the complete end of suffering.

This sutra is a wonderful example of how easy it is to misunderstand teachings of the Buddhadharma. The sutra recounts a story of one of the Buddha's monks, Arittha, who lived in the Anathapindika Monastery in the Jeta Park with the Sangha...Arittha was heard by his brothers to say that 'sense pleasures were not an obstacle to the practice', which of course went contrary to the teaching of the Buddha. The monk, in his refusal to admit that he was wrong, continued to spread this message wherever he went. The point to this sutra is that, not only is it easy to misunderstand the Buddha's 'words,' but also the spirit of such teachings, and in doing so, actually bring harm to oneself and others... the Buddha uses a metaphor of knowing how to properly catch a snake, and intrigues us with a very deep and intricate teaching about the six 'wrong' perceptions.

"The Great Way is not difficult, it only avoids picking and choosing." These are the words of the Third Patriarch of Chan, Seng Ts'an. This phrase is perhaps the greatest single-sentence summary of Zen practice. In other words, if we transcend all preferences, distinctions, and opinions or dualistic views, the true nature of reality is revealed and "everything becomes clear and undisguised." However, the mind experienced by us in daily life is not totally the True mind; it seems as though the distinctions and opinions become like 'films' that we project onto the world and, because of this, it has become very difficult for us to see reality...or in the words of Suzuki Roshi, "things as it is." To experience each moment without the 'film' that blurs our reality, we must learn to recognize that the film even exists...this is discovered through samadhi meditation.

Humility, the feeling that we all share common ground – feeling neither superior or inferior to others – is both a prerequisite to awakening and an expression of mature spirituality. Central to our practice is the phrase "I don't know" which permeates every aspect of Zen. It stands as a powerful symbol of humility and openness. It's an acknowledgment of the inherent limitations of our understanding, a conscious letting go of certainty, and an embracing of the profound mystery that characterizes our existence.

In Zen Buddhism, faith and doubt are inseparable. Along with determination these three make up what are known as the three pillars of practice…. Great Faith, Great Doubt and Great Determination. Faith in Buddhism has nothing to do with believing in anything outside of ourselves. It's faith in our own true nature. However, it does require faith that Zen practice is worthwhile, faith in the reality of what the practice can lead to, faith that there is the possibility for awakening, and faith that it is possible to find our way to that reality in spite of seemingly endless obstacles.

The lines of reality have always been blurred by the fantastic hallucinations and desires of the mind...this is at the core of the Buddha's teachings- The 'mind made reality' and Reality are very different. In the last 200 years or so, man continues to make impacts on the earth and the psyche of future generations that propel us faster and faster into a state of believing that more and more stuff will bring true happiness...stimulate me!!! Because of that, we see more hyper sensitivity, more anger, more division, more desire and less compassion, community and joy. Though the times may be different than that of Siddhartha, the mental states are the same. We all get stuck. The Buddha way is a means of returning to what is important and how to BE that in life. The Three Refuges encompass that...they show us how to live in a way that respects ALL life; How to learn from All experiences and how to share that in ALL our activities.