Zen can offer something very simple, very direct and readily accessible to anyone seeking inner peace, seeking healing in some form, or seeking answers to questions such as ‘Who am I?’ ‘How can I find meaning in my life?’ ‘How can I live in a most authentic way?’
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Dear Friends and Fellow Practitioners at MKZC,
As we welcome the New Year 2011 in the Western calendar, the Year of the Rabbit in the Chinese Zodiac, I invite everyone first of all to take a …
By Lee Ann Nail
I am amazed that if you ask someone about their dog or cat their hearts and minds open instantly. It’s like saying ‘Open Sesame!’ It can be anybody, Zen student or not. …
By Ed Brickell
In my earliest days of running, when I was chosen for my elementary school’s relay team, I was guided by our coach—a haunted-looking history and gym teacher with small, sad eyes like brown …
Since we are social beings we ourselves are in communion: ontologically, relationship, fellowship, with others. There is actually no living person apart from others. So we discover ourselves, realize ourselves only in the meeting with others; the deeper the meeting, the more we find ourselves and blossom into persons. From a Christian perspective we are even more so created to be in communion, reflecting as we do the very “being-one-together” of the divine Persons in the Trinity, that ultimate secret of God’s life, as shared with us by Jesus.
Here’s Hakuin again: “Nirvana is openly shown to our eyes. This earth where we stand is the pure lotus land! And this very body, the body of Buddha.” And this, this very practice, is where I come to meet myself-in the morning.
Attention is key. Here, for me, is an important synthesis. To what am I paying attention? To what cannot be named or imagined or understood, to “no thing”. I remember that Jesus said the wheat must fall into the ground and die or it cannot give life. That seems the same as saying there is no self. It makes perfect sense even while it makes no sense. It is a hard saying, but I believe it is good to bear it
by Ruben Habito
Editor’s Note: This is part of a series of articles on The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures. View all the available articles of the series here.
By way of preparation for this third picture, let me …
