Episode Details

Greetings Friends,

Happy April Fool’s Day!

Last week I had the opportunity to co-facilitate a Zen sesshin in the mountains of West Virginia at Saranam Retreat Center.

Sesshin, a zen-style silent meditation retreat which translates as touching the heart-mind, has been a huge part of my adult life. While living at Great Vow Zen Monastery, I practiced sesshin together in sangha for a week every month. Such is the rhythm of monastic life we enter this cauldron of awakening together and let our hearts and minds simplify to reveal their true nature.

Preparing for sesshin has a feeling of preparing for death— for opening to oneness is not the ego’s domain.

Sesshin is grounded in the aspiration to awaken with all beings. An impossible vow that truly we are entangled in, this springing forth of great love is actualized through our practice—realized in this heart.

For the dharma teachings are not just “good ideas” but insights we can come to know in our bones, as our body-mind.

There is something utterly incomprehensible about sitting together in silence and allowing ourselves to be touched by the great mystery.

To return from sesshin is impossible, and yet—here we are.

Back from the dead, changed, transformed. Heart’s silent presence alive in our inter-relations. Vow awakened and lived into here-and-now.

This is compassion!

During sesshin we practiced with Dogen Zenji’s Mountains and Waters Sutra. Which I have been giving dharma talks on over the last few weeks, during the online Monday Night Dharma. This week we explored the practice of circling back to study ourselves. In the Mountains and Waters Sutra, Dogen says:

The blue mountains devote themselves to the investigation of walking; the East Mountain studies “moving over the water.” Hence, this study is the mountain’s own study. The mountains, without altering their own body and mind, with their own mountain countenance, have always been circling back to study themselves.

We encounter circles throughout this path of practice. As I said above, I circle back to sesshin regularly. Many of you have the experience of circling back to this practice of zazen-meditation. The study of the mountains and rivers sutra is a circling back to a teaching I have practiced with for over a decade. What do you find yourself circling back to in your practice-life? As we enter the season of Spring, what is beginning again for you? How are you circling back to yourself?

This circling back to study ourselves is one of the core instructions for zazen practice—to recognize our original self, the unborn buddha mind. Listen to the Dharma talk for more explorations of this teaching in the Mountains and Rivers Sutra. I reference the chant-able version of the Mountains and Waters Sutra which you can find here.

Below is a poem inspired by the practice of circling.

Mountains Circling Back to Realize Themselves Circle back study yourself Who are you? What hears? Who is breathing this breath? What feels the heart beating, the touch of clothing, longing, aspiration? Circle back and listen to yourself What is your heart’s song? Do you know the compassion that you are? Are you in touch with this aspiration to awaken, to liberate all beings? What is the shape of your vow? What is the size of your heart? Can you see that it truly includes the entire world? Circle back and be yourself See that you too are mountain, and flowing You were never born, you will not die Circle back and love yourself For you are dying, too Wonder at this Self This miracle that you are Let yoursel