During the final week of Ango leading up to Rohatsu Sesshin and Bodhi Day, we are inspired by the Buddha’s awakening -- when he realized his true nature. Many of us have this aspiration, which can motivate us to practice.

In Zen practice, we study our reactivity to things, the extra reactions we put on top of uncomfortable feelings. In this way, the uncomfortable feelings become the most powerful gateway for practice.

Our theme for this year’s Ango practice period is “Appreciate Your Life as the Awakened Life.” Our practice, indeed, is this very life. We have everything we need, right here, right now. We work with what we have, and we wake up to it. Your life, just as it, is the Awakened Life, already.

True appreciation is a deep and intimate practice. It requires a quality of attention and acceptance which may be difficult at first. In this talk, Gyodo Sensei offers some steps to deepen into full open-hearted appreciation. We’re told by the dharma that our life is the life of the Buddha. Can we really see that and experience that directly?

Dukkha, often translated as “suffering," is more precisely translated as insufficiency, or dissatisfaction. The Buddha taught that this is the root of our dis-ease. The Buddha also taught that there is One — our Buddha Nature -- who is completely satisfied. What gets in the way of you being satisfied?

The second chapter from Maezumi Roshi’s “Appreciate Your Life.” focuses on the fundamentals of the practice of zazen (sitting meditation.) While it may seem largely practical, these basic instructions are the whole of Zen practice and point to something much deeper.

In this talk, Gyodo Sensei gives an overview of the tradition and theme for our Fall Ango intensive practice period, and shares about Eon Zen's Ango programs. Ango, which translates as "peaceful dwelling,” has been a traditional 90-day practice period in Zen for centuries.

Dainin Katagiri Roshi wrote that “when you touch this basic nature of life, you feel relief. This is your final abode, your terminal station… a new life opens up, everywhere, in all directions.” What would it be like to feel this kind of boundlessness and fearlessness? Is my life not open in all directions already? How is it not?

In Buddhist practice, we see that the human condition creates a basic self-centered attitude which is unsatisfactory and causes suffering — this is the first noble truth. With continuous practice, or "Gyoji," as described by Master Dogen, there is a shift in the basic attitude towards our life.

How do we work with challenging feelings when they arise -- sadness, fear, anger, guilt and shame? It is common to want to avoid or push these feelings away. However, when we don’t identify with them, strong feelings are often a powerful doorway to non-dual consciousness.

In the White Plum Zen lineage, we receive the sixteen Bodhisattva Vows when we formally commit to the Zen path in a Jukai ceremony. But making the intention to live by vows is available to all of us. As Jan Chozen Bays says “Vows act like a conduit for our life energy.”

Zazen is simply being with life as it is. Without any need to change it, grasp after it, or figure it out. It isn’t a passive, however — in Zen, we see how we are actively engaged with our life AS life, which is endlessly, infinitely changing and fluid. It is also seamless; this infinite variety, which is our life, is one with unity. How do we experience this unity within differences?

Eon Zen Senior practice leaders Geoff Shōun O'Keeffe, Lisa Gakyo Schaewe, and Sam Sokyo Randall share their own paths into Zen practice, followed by questions and discussion.

In Zen we talk a lot about no self — but what is this no self? It points to the reality that there is no "fixed" self. We actually have many selves, perhaps an infinite number of internal perspectives, all co-existing. Some, perhaps, in conflict with others. How might we love, nurture and integrate all of our selves to be more fully embodied in our lives?

Gyodo Sensei explores a passage from Hongzhi's Cultivating the Empty Field on leaving home: "Face Everything, Let Go, Attain Stability." When we truly leave home in the deepest sense, letting go of the attachments and habits of our conditioning, we come home to our life.

In this talk, Gyodo Sensei share a passage from Hongzhi's Cultivating the Empty Field titled “ The Practice of True Reality.” The practice of true reality is to be present with true reality, even when we face hardship or adversity. Zen path embraces meditation as the front door for shifting our relationship with ourself and our hardships. To practice true reality, vulnerable and open, tender and unhindered.

Eon Zen Dharma Holder Geoff Shōun O'Keeffe shares about the Three Tenets of Zen Peacemakers: not-knowing, bearing witness, and taking action that arises from not-knowing and bearing witness. He offers Roshi Eve Marko's recent reflections on the violence and fear in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine as a profound practice of the three tenets.

The antidote for the poison of ignorance of delusion is wisdom, or clear seeing into our true nature. But this wisdom is not something you can attain — and there is no shortcut. It arises as embodied experience through the practice of not-knowing or not-abiding in anything. Including not abiding in not-abiding. No one to abide. No one to not-abide. Not getting stuck anywhere.

In the Shobogenzo, Dogen encourages us to “simply release and forget both your body and mind and throw yourself into the House of Buddha.” Releasing our ideas about the ways things are, our preferences, opinions, and truths, and our desire for clarity, "then there can be no obstacle in anyone’s mind.” This spirit of practice is essential.

Ignorance is one of the three poisons that the Buddha taught which create all suffering, and it’s also the root of all three. To counteract ignorance, we have to choose to live with what is, including our confusion — to radically accept everything, including ignorance itself. This is the spirit of the Holy Fool, the grace of foolishness. Can you live like this, and also not attach to ignorance either?

As lay practitioners, we are called to explore our relationships with self, with others, and with our work in the world. How do we tell the difference between the egoic voice and our deeper voice — the voice of our true self — in these relationships?

In Zen retreats, we practice walking meditation. We carry the same focus and awareness of our sitting meditation into movement. Thich Naht Hahn said to “walk as if your feet are kissing the Earth.” What did he mean by this? How can we connect with our lives in the deepest way possible?

When we turn the light inward and become a lamp unto ourself, we find our true power, our agency. In our delusion, we often give this power away. What type of wisdom and power unfolds when we make the decision to practice? How does agency differ from willfulness? How do we take responsibility for our actions, for our life?

The Buddha taught “Be a lamp unto your self.” To study the self, to become fully intimate with our life, we practice not resisting or grasping at anything we experience. Through this practice, we fundamentally shift our relationship with ourself, and find our true power — our agency — in our life, in our relationships and in our work in the world. This is the path of Zen.

Often we react to a situation by elevating ourselves or blaming others arises when we feel fearful and vulnerable. Making ourself bigger or more important is a self-preservation mechanism. With our Zen practice, we can see this tendency and how it comes from a feeling of separateness. What is happening when we blame others? Can we accept that we don’t have to defend anything?

What is delusion? Zen Master Dogen said "To carry youself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is enlightenment." Do you experience yourself as experiencing things? Or is life just happening?

It’s a common human tendency to overthink, to have and hold onto opinions, to seek meaning, to categorize and analyze. Our brains do what brains do. And ideas and concepts are very enticing. They can also be useful, at times. Our practice is to hold them lightly — to not identify with our thoughts or to get too caught up with them. We have all we need to practice being who we are.

Reflecting on her life as an artist and her experiences working with people displaced by the fires on the island of Maui, Eon Zen Practice Leader Lisa Gakyo Schaewe invites us to look deeply into the bardo of our own lives.

GYODO SENSEI | Impermanence is a primary seal of Buddhism -- it is the reality of life. Everything is always changing. We’re always in transition from one state to another. Our habit patterns of our mind are not very oriented to appreciating this constant transformation. Bardo practice help us to experience this at the most intimate level.

Faith, Doubt and Determination are the Three Pillars of our Zen Practice. Together, these qualities can serve as a firm foundation for our practice and as a useful guide to see where we may be out of balance.

Our karma is perpetually giving life to our life, and surrendering parts of our life into death. This is how we live-and-die. Eon Zen Senior Student and Practice Leader Lisa Gakyo offers words reflecting on this from Pat Enkyo O’Hara Roshi, Pico Iyer, and Taizan Maezumi Roshi.

Be still. Look and don’t turn away. Listen to what your heart tells you to do. The Three Tenets are a core Zen practice. It is about waking up to the reality of the oneness and interconnectedness of all life, and then doing everything we can to relieve suffering in a suffering world.

In our life, we make and cling to distinctions, alive and dead, dreaming or awake, enlightenment or delusion — but it’s not like that. Everything seems to have a real existence, but when we look deeply and see reality as it is, we realize the line from the Lotus Sutra: "this fleeting world is like a phantom, like a dream.”

Tibetan Teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche wrote about the experience of the Bardo as being both confused and awake at the same time, of the possibility of experiencing both absolute sanity and complete madness simultaneously. Both/And. This bothness is the quality of awakeness, of Zen -- to have all of our experience present at the same time.

Our Head Trainee for Fall 2023 Ango shares the Taoist story of the Farmer who goes through a series of events that might be judged as fortunate or unfortunate to explore the experience of the Bardo.