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.

Applying ourselves wholeheartedly to our meditation practice, shifts happen. The discursive mind settles down. What is the awareness that persists? It is more intimate and subtle than you can imagine.

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.

In this talk, Gyodo Sensei shares Maezumi Roshi’s reflections on the Buddha's Eight Awarenesses of the Enlightened Person to explore how to work with these feelings. Most importantly, to see that uncomfortable feelings are not in the way of being enlightened — they are the Way. 

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.

Zen Master Dogen Zenji said, “Do not travel to other dusty lands forsaking your own sitting place. If you cannot find the truth where you are, you will never find it.” Your life, just as it, is the Awakened Life, already. Do you believe that? What gets in the way?

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. To experience the gift and blessing of life even with all its pain and heartbreak.

We’re told by the dharma that our life is the life of the Buddha. Can we really see that and experience that directly? How can this be Buddha, the Awakened One, right here? This is appreciating your life as the subtle mind of Nirvana.

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.

Can we be completely satisfied even when we have a desire or aspiration for something? 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.

The specificity of our zazen posture connects us to our life in the most intimate way. As Maezumi says, “Everything is here right now. Zazen is our life, the life of the Buddha Way… Each of us IS the Way. This is the kind of zazen we should appreciate.”

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. The Ango tradition dates to the times of monsoon season in India, when the community could not travel and so hunkered down, living life, studying and practicing the dharma together.

We might think of Ango as a "walled garden”or refuge. Today we can take refuge from the "monsoon" of modern life. It is a protected and nourishing heart-space for you to cultivate and deepen in practice together with others who share your aspirations.

Our theme for this year's Ango is Appreciate Your Life as the Awakened Life. My first teacher Maezumi Roshi said:

No one can live your life except you. No one can live my life except me. We do not see that our life right here, right now, is nirvana. Our practice is to close the gap between what we think our life is and our actual life as the subtle mind of nirvana. Or more to the point, how can we realize that there is really no gap to begin with? Appreciate the world of just this! There is nothing extra.

Zen is all about closing this gap.

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.” As the Heart Sutra says “No hindrance in the mind, no hindrance, therefore no fear.”

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?

There are many different attitudes or orientations that we might hold toward our life. 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. Norman Fischer says "Bodhisattvas don’t mind much what happens to them. Their lives are larger than the plans they may have had for them.” In other words, we radically accept everything.

What happens when we don't resist anything and actively embrace everything in our life? When we enter into a fully participatory relationship with the Universe?

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 this talk, Gyodo Sensei shares ways to work with these feelings in our Zen practice, including The Great Heart Way practice developed by his teachers, Roshi Ilia Shinko Pérez and Roshi Gerry Shishin Wick.

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. They are practical, dynamic and applied differently in different circumstances. They are alive for us, all the time. Living by vow is lifelong. We never finish. We never once and for all “conquer” greed, anger, and ignorance. And yet, we keep going.

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? Can we let everything and everyone be perfectly as they are, and also appreciate the beauty and wonder of difference? This is the fundamental mystery of the Universe.

All of us come to practice through unique doorways based in our karma, and no two paths are alike, some straighter, many circuitous. As Ram Dass said, "We're all just walking each other home."

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.

When we disown or deny some of those voices, it can create a lot of disfunction. Working with vows can be helpful to see what we might be bypassing — what is getting in the way of realizing our vows? 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.

How do we live our life freely, not following conditions, and not turning away from them either?

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. To throw ourself so completely into our experience, into our hardship, that hardship disappears.

When we resist adversity, we end up reinforcing that adversity — and we also reinforce a fixed sense of self in opposition to adversity. Our 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 (not holding onto ideas or positions) bearing witness (not turning away), 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. As she writes “woe unto us if we have lost the ability to feel another’s pain.” How do we include everyone and everything in our empathy and compassion? How do we take action without taking a fixed position? 

Read Eve Marko’s blog post here: "Where Am I Living?"

Learn more about the Three Tenets of Zen Peacemakers

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. Our ignorance or lack of awareness and unconsciousness of our true nature creates a false sense of self. Instead of living in reality, we live in denial or fantasy, which perpetuates the other two poisons, craving and aversion.

To counteract ignorance, we have to choose to live with what is, including our confusion — to radically accept everything, including ignorance itself. Master Joshu said “I do not dwell in clarity.” This is the spirit of the Holy Fool, the grace of foolishness. Can you live like this, and also not attach to ignorance either? To live without any contrivance?

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?

How do we let go of our self-centered motivations and step into our true calling? If my practice is to let go of everything, when I have let go, what happens next?

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?

For many of us, we dash about, always in a hurry, scarcely conscious that we are walking the Earth, always thinking about the next thing we have to do. Our feet might be kissing the Earth, but we don’t know it. We’re missing the most intimate thing. 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.

Peter Doobinin, co-founder of New York Insight Meditation Center, wrote that “Mindfulness, according to what the Buddha taught, is a practice of conscious decision making — it’s a practice of making choices, beginning with the decision to put our mind on the breath, which leads to true happiness.”

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.

(apologies for the poor video quality due to technology issues that evening)

Eon Zen Senior Student and Practice Leader Lisa Gakyo Schaewe shares her experience with the 7th Grave Precept along with excerpts from Nancy Mujo Baker’s book “Opening to Oneness: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to the Zen Precepts.”

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?

Our view of ourself as a separate self and our ideas often get in the way of seeing this, creating a contraction in the body-mind that is self-reinforcing. This is why not-knowing is such a big part of our practice. In zazen, if we're truly practicing, we can explore this edge. Can we let go of our contracted, deluded view and allow experience to experience itself? Can we wake up to reality?

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. To keep it simple.

In his book, “Seeing One Thing Through,” the late Roshi Sojun Mel Weitsman remind us that "the practice of zazen is just 'to be’… If you can settle on just being, you can experience your completeness.”

How simple. We have all we need to practice being who we are.

LISA GAKYO SCHAEWE | 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.

Who am I? Who are you? Where am I in relation to space, time, intention? Where are you? Am I ok? Are you ok? What is ok? How do you know?

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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.

If we feel each moment deeply, then we also feel everything always changing. Realizing this is an opportunity to really deepen into our true nature, our awakened mind. Trungpa Rinpoche refers this as the “island in the stream.”

What is the ground beneath the changes? What is it that experiences these changes? What doesn’t change?

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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. Faith is the experience that we are fundamentally awake and that we can actualize that nature through the practice of zazen. Doubt is the inquiry into this reality. What is this? Who am I? Who is awake?

The more your faith, the bigger and deeper the questions. When we return again and again to this experience of awakeness through deep absorption, we fully internalize our identitification as that awakeness. No matter what arises, we sit in “the condition of openness,” as Maezumi Roshi called it. Does your faith diminish when things go differently than we expect?

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