Teachings

Provisionally speakings | Liturgy | Dharma Discourse

How do we reverse climate change?

by wfsadmin | May 9, 2024 | Guest Essays | 0 Comments

by Kazuaki Tanahashi Kaz is a widely known Japanese calligrapher, author, and translator of Zen texts. Climate in your life The Earth will no longer be as we know it and humanity may not survive if we don’t make drastic changes in our mind, behavior, and lifestyle....

The Privilege of Liberation

by Mushin Crisman | June 21, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

America in 2023 is struggling with the reality of privilege in the face of its aspirations for diversity, equity, and inclusion. For many, these questions of social and economic justice have condensed into one word, “woke”. Being woke is a badge of honor to some,...

Identifying with Identity

by Mushin Crisman | June 14, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

In the 21st century West one of the socio-political ‘hot topics’ is gender identity. For the first time in modern history, what it is to be female, male, or non-binary, is being openly discussed, clarified, and hopefully, accepted. From a Zen perspective this is...

Collections of Things

by Mushin Crisman | June 7, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

Remember those big questions: “Who am I?”, “Why am I here?”, “What’s the meaning of life?” Questions unanswerable in words. Here’s an easy one: “What am I?” Provisionally speaking, “I” am a collection of things. Early Buddhist thinkers were reductionists. Like...

What does ritual have to do with IT?

by Mushin Crisman | May 31, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

Joseph Campbell once said something like, “ritual is the embodiment of myth”. In Zen, the myth is the enlightenment of Shakyamuni Buddha, our practice is the ritual. A Zen student asks, “What is Zen ritual?”. A Zen teacher answers, “Everything”. In the Buddha’s...

Stillness Is…

by Mushin Crisman | May 24, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

The 6th Ancestor in the Ch’an lineage, Dajian Huineng, once stood in a courtyard listening to novice monastics looking up at a flag flapping in the wind. One monastic said, “The flag is moving.” The other said, “The wind is moving.” Huineng said, “The mind is...

Here ‘It’ Is

by Mushin Crisman | May 17, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

A joke: A person exits a bar and sees an other frantically looking for something under the streetlight. They offer help, saying, “What did you lose?”. The increasingly desperate person says, “My keys!” “Where did you lose them?” “Over there, in the dark!” “Why are...

Trust in Zen

by Mushin Crisman | May 9, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

What is trust? What is trust in Zen? The English word ‘trust’ comes from the Old Norse, traust, meaning confidence, protection, support. It’s like a moose crossing a frozen pond. The moose first gently places one hoof on the ice, touching it, testing its...

“I” is the Trigger

by Mushin Crisman | April 30, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

What does “being triggered” mean? In Western popular culture, being triggered is having a pathologic response to present experience caused by memory of prior experience. Provisionally speaking, the process of triggering, either pathologic or non-pathologic, is...

Impermanence: Difference and Change

by Mushin Crisman | April 22, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

Impermanence is one of the core teachings of Buddhism. It is another way of saying nothing is unchanging; every ‘thing’ is changing (really?). However, for the ordinary waking mind, knowing change is a challenge. What ordinary mind mostly knows is difference. When...

Life is a Life-changing Experience

by Mushin Crisman | April 17, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

Riders on the Storm People come to Zen centers seeking something. They come as “seeker”s. Often their visit was triggered by trauma, loss, heartbreak. Sometimes just a hollowness, a felt not-wholeness. Life could be, should be more. More than what? More than it...

What is it to Wake Up?

by Mushin Crisman | April 10, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

2,500 years ago, Siddhartha Gautama had an experience which changed humankind…he “awakened”. He was henceforth known as “the Buddha”, meaning “the Awakened One”. What does it mean ‘to wake up’? Is it more than a descriptive metaphor of the Buddha’s experience? If...

Making Sense of Sentience

by Mushin Crisman | April 3, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

Every time we meet as a sangha, we close our practice by chanting the Four Bodhisattva Vows. The first of these is, “sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them”. What exactly are sentient beings? What does Zen mean by sentience? The English word sentience...

Seido’s Bench

by Mushin Crisman | March 27, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

Zen Buddhism is an ancestral lineage teaching, a teaching transmitted in part by the recorded ‘meeting and speaking’ of Ch’an/Zen practitioners. These dialogues are called mondo, “questions and answers”. Mondo often seem curt, abrupt, even hostile… “Dharma...

Mantra or Hua-t’ou?

by Mushin Crisman | March 20, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

In the mid-20th century West there were few opportunities to ‘learn’ meditation from a teacher. There were few books, and fewer teachers. In many places the only meditation teacher available taught “Transcendental Meditation”…TM. Without disparaging TM, it was...

Posture

by Mushin Crisman | March 8, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

What comes to mind when you hear or see the word “posture”? Is it a description of a particular conformation of the physical body, a state of mind, a particular attitude, a political stance? In Zen, posture is all these and more. The English the word posture has...

The Mind of Comparison

by Mushin Crisman | February 26, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

Sengcan (purportedly) wrote, “The Great Way is not difficult for those who do not pick and choose.” A lot going on here: “Great Way”, “not difficult”, “those who”. But for now, let’s pick and choose the phrase “pick and choose” to investigate. The mind of picking...

Pedagogy and Methodology

by Mushin Crisman | February 21, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

Pedagogy: “the function or work of a teacher; teaching”. Methodology: “a branch of pedagogics dealing with analysis and evaluation of subjects to be taught and the methods of teaching” A Zen Ancestor said, “It’s not that there is no Ch’an (Zen) in China, just...

Practice Makes …

by Mushin Crisman | February 14, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

Entering the White Forest Sangha Zendo one sees a calligraphy done by Kazuaki Tanahashi Sensei, 行, which he translates as “practice”. It has other meanings: do, act, walk, proceed, even “whatever is done by mouth, body, or mind”. Provisionally speaking, we take it...

Zazen: the Mudra of Wholeness

by Mushin Crisman | February 6, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

In the latter 20th century, as yoga meditation and East Asian iconography emerged in the mind of Western popular culture, the word mudra entered the Western lexicon. Images of yogis seated in cross-legged postures, hands on knees, palms up with the first (or second,...

The Contents of Context

by Mushin Crisman | January 30, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

Provisionally speaking, Zen is all about contents and context. 21 century physicists, examining the fabric of our universe, pose the question “does anything really exist?” One school of quantum theorists state explicitly that nothing, or rather no thing, exists....

Space

by Mushin Crisman | January 24, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

In a previous essay space was considered as a factor in “place”, the impermanent now-here. This essay provisionally presents space as the Dharma-gate to another core Zen tenet…emptiness. Early Buddhism categorized all ‘things’ into two categories: compounded...

Place

by Mushin Crisman | January 16, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

Sometimes the big questions are just too big. Things like, “why am I here”, “what’s the meaning of life”, “who am I”, seem so big that finding a beginning, an entry, is impossible. So let us step back from the really big questions, and consider less big...

No Such Thing

by Mushin Crisman | January 9, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

The word ‘thing’ holds a special place in Zen practice. What is ‘thing’? Whether it is something (some-thing) or nothing (no-thing) it conveys the sense of, well, of “thingness”. When we say “please pick up that thing” to someone, they see where we are pointing,...

Pace

by Mushin Crisman | January 2, 2023 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

Discussing Zen Buddhism, it is easy to take a reductionist stance: “Zen is all about this”, “that is not at all Zen”. These mental postures do have their place, but as with all Buddhist teachings, they are provisional. Provisionally speaking, Zen practice is all...

Just Show Up

by Mushin Crisman | December 19, 2022 | Dharma Discourse | 0 Comments

One of the most common guidelines for participating in Zen practice with others is “follow the schedule”or “let the schedule be the teacher”. Underlying both these admonitions is one of the Zen Buddhism’smany openly hidden teachings: just show up. Just show...

Liturgy

There are three reasons why we chant and read sutras: First, to make an offering to the Buddhist ancestors; second, to create a noble relationship with all beings; third, to unite these first two actions with our Buddhist training.

Chant books are shared in-person and available to download.

Subscribe to Our Newsletter