Fits and Starts - Zen Poem

Fits and Starts

question and answer
beginning and end
post and comment
fits and starts

these all dissolve
beautifully into one
(a one with no parts)
when we let go
of our heads
and enter our hearts

Short Zen Poems for Meditation - Koans Quotes

© 2010 Benjamin Dean

Zen, the Movie.

To cast away everything, surrendering yourself to the flow of nature and just sitting in meditation. This is the essence of Dogen's Zen Buddhism. In the 13th century, Dogen, a young Japanese monk traveled to China, determined to find his true master. There he found a monk who taught him that sitting in Zen meditation is the true and only path to enlightenment. Returning, enlightened, to Japan, Dogen risked his life to pioneer Zen Buddhism, inspiring the millions of Zen Buddhists who practice around the world today.

Buddha Brow

Buddha Brow

leaning towards Buddha
the Buddha
(unbeknownst to himself)
studies a pamphlet
on meditation
with a furrowed brow

to be that close
to doing away with
measuring distances


Meditation How - Interviews with People who Meditate.

All In The Mind

Interview with Thomas Metzinger:

"I don't deny that there is a self-y feeling. I certainly feel like someone, but there is no such thing. There is neither a non-physical thing in a realm beyond the brain or the physical world that we could call a self, but there's also no thing in the brain that we must necessary call a self."

Don't miss the discussion of this interview on Metafilter

Bigfoot Zen: Bigfoot, Big Boat, Big River, Big Zen

From a post on new Zen blog "Bigfoot Zen":

"Picture yourself on this boat on the river. In that very moment, there is nothing other than the world of the boat. Just as your poling is what causes the aggregate to be a boat, the boat is also defined by the river, and the river is defined by the shore, and the shore is defined by the land just as the land is defined by the sky. In fact, everything in the universe is defining every other thing in the universe, and they are all defining the boat, and you are pushing the boat, and at the same time, the boat is carrying you."

Summer series links Zen and creativity

"'What Zen does is basically take the flow state or the intimacy that happens at peak moments … and you learn how to take that moment and basically have it all the time. When I'm driving a car and talking with you, it's the same mental state that I have when I'm on stage.'"

Zen in their bedside manner - Los Angeles Times

It's not clear in this article if they're actually talking about Zen Buddhism or just Buddhism: "According to the American Hospital Assn., about 68% of public hospitals have a chaplaincy program. But few have Buddhist monks, and none compares with the program at Beth Israel -- where more than 20 Buddhist chaplains and chaplains-in-training offer bedside meditation"

Zen Master Dogen

Dogen was a great reformer of Buddhism, and the founder of the Soto Zen sect of Buddhism. I came across a blog entry about him. A small portion is excerpted below. If you click here, you can read the whole thing.

Dogen speaks clearly of the mind that seeks the way with clarity and how to maintain the intensity of practice over time. We couldn’t ask for a world of more distraction than the one we currently inhabit. To maintain our commitment to practice over 50 or 60 years requires that we find a way to refresh ourselves daily; there is no formula that works for everyone. We each find our own life koans to keep us awake. And we are not in monasteries where the routine is set up for us, responsibilities provided, and practice times reliable. One cornerstone of waking up is meditation and finding the strength of commitment to the Way to return to our practice daily.

However far we “stray” it is always good to remember

The key to cultivating the Way is knowing that your own mind is originally pure, that it is neither created nor destroyed, and that it is free of discrimination. The mind whose nature is perfectly pure is your true teacher and superior to any of the Buddhas of the ten directions you might call upon.

Zen At The Movies - Treeleaf Zen

"'Awakening' though Zen Practice occurs when we come to see clearly that the show is just a show and we see the wondrous timeless light sweeping 'us' in too that arises from some half-hidden projector beyond our view and how the story is largely written by us too thus change the mind and radically change the movie script"

He takes this analogy interesting places. A good read.

The Gangster That Became A Buddhist Priest.

Tadamasa Goto, one of Japan’s most notorious underworld bosses, is to enter the Buddhist priesthood less than a year after his volatile behaviour caused a rift in the country’s biggest crime syndicate.

As leader of a yakuza – or Japanese mafia – gang, Goto amassed a fortune from prostitution, protection rackets and white-collar crime, while cultivating a reputation for extreme violence.

Tomorrow, his life will take a decidedly austere turn when he begins training at a temple in Kanagawa prefecture south of Tokyo, the Sankei Shimbun newspaper said today, citing police sources.

The 66-year-old, whose eponymous gang belonged to the powerful Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate, was expelled from the yakuza fraternity last October after a furious row with his bosses over his conduct.

Wild Fox Zen: The Other Shore Arriving

"Do not think practice leads to the other shore. Practice exists as the other shore arriving as our practice because this practice is always this arriving of the universe."

Tao Teh Ching

"This web site is a tool for the study of how different English language translators rendered the ancient Chinese text of the Tau Teh Ching."

Of equal if not greater interest is the discussion this site sparked on Metafilter.com