Top Highlights

• When I teach zazen I often tell people that it’s kind of like a yoga class where there is only one posture and you hold it for a very long time.
• Zazen is not meditation or concentration. Zazen is the peaceful and joyful gate to the dharma. The whole universe opens up to you. If you do it this way you’ll be like a geek at a comic book convention or like Luke Skywalker when he hit the thermal exhaust port. Then the dharma will manifest before you and darkness and distraction will vanish like ...
• Each time I get caught up in thought, I adjust my posture. I have never once found myself caught up in thought and not had my posture go subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) wrong. The body follows the mind. Once I’ve adjusted my posture, I continue until the next time I get caught in a thought. And then I do it again. And again. And again. You get ...
• For me, zazen is kind of the same. I ride my nonthought for as long as I can, then I crash and get right back on it again. How long I stay there depends on factors beyond my control. It depends on what’s been going on for me that day or that week, how much I’ve eaten, how much sleep I’ve gotten, what the person next to me smells like, and an endles...
• this, there are two books in print in English just about “Genjo Koan,” and both are excellent and worth seeking out: Realizing Genjokoan by Shohaku Okumura (Wisdom Publications, 2010) and Dōgen’s Genjo Koan: Three Commentaries, edited by Mel Weitsman, Michael Wenger, and Shohaku Okumura (Counterpoint Press, 2013).