Broad River
The Soul Is a Whirlpool
The ancients may have been wrong about what the soul is, but were they wrong that one exists?
How Deep Is Your Zen?
Zen teachers aren’t there to play the oboe at us, and when they do we can’t recognize it.
The Heart Sutra (a short translation)
Form is no different from emptiness, and emptiness none other than form.
To Unsee a Blue Rabbit
Rather than moving forward from the past behind us to the future ahead of us, we become still in time. Everything is in flux, but not in any direction.
The True Body of the Buddha
If the Buddha did indeed embody oneness with all things, anyone else who does it can only realize their unity with that same thing.
Is Zen Atheistic?
Zen is Zen, whether there are no gods or many gods or one God and regardless of what any deity might be like.
Zero idENtity
“Who are you?” It’s a darn good question. The Buddha Way puts us face to face with it.
Everything Matters, but It Doesn’t Matter
What matters eventually doesn’t matter anymore. And it’s good that it does. And that it doesn’t.
Can We Really Love Everyone?
Is it really possible to have love for everybody, or is it just something we say?
What Do You Mean ‘I Don’t Exist’?
Are Buddhists being serious when they say nothing really exists? Surely not! “Cogito ergo sum” and all that. But what about the fish in the river?
Why Buddhas Don’t Get Hiccups
It’s not completely metaphorical to say that getting out of our own way in zazen is the hiccup trick in reverse.
We All Start Practice for the Wrong Reasons
Zazen is goalless meditation. It is shikantaza, or “just sitting”. It is not “sitting and….”. We do not sit and try, or sit and want, or sit and intend. We just sit. It’s all very simple — as simple as standing on a tightrope.
How To Enter a Zendo
It matters how we enter a zendo. It isn’t a concert. It’s not a job. It doesn’t go anywhere. Here we are — three words that mean the same thing.
What Is Soto Zen Buddhism?
You are that place where the stuff of the universe is shaped like you, and you are inextricable from everything there is. “You” are a gesture the universe is making. Nothing came into being when you were born, nothing will cease to exist when you die. Only the form keeps changing. Your conscious mind is a resonance that comes and goes, a delusion, but a real and useful one.