Eighteen Thousand Universes Through Eighteen Thousand Eyes
Ibn Arabi was a 13th century mystic, poet and philosopher in the Islamic tradition. He lived between Spain and North Africa and produced a prodigious and varied output during his lifetime.
Search Results for: dogen
Discourse on the Absolute Truth
According to Buddhist teaching, clinging to views is an empty and futile way of interfacing with the world.
“When you release it, it fills your hand; when you speak it fills your mouth” – Dogen’s Bendowa
Last week we published the Jijuyu Zanmai, which is the second part of the first half of Master Dogen’s Bendowa, the first text to be written in casual Japanese to explain the Zen Dogen had learned in China under Master Rujing. This text is the very first part of the Bendowa that precedes the Jijuyu… Continue reading “When you release it, it fills your hand; when you speak it fills your mouth” – Dogen’s Bendowa
Buddhism’s Most Basic Teaching: Everything Changes
Shunryu Suzuki on our inability to accept the truth that we and everything around us are in a state of constant flux.
Snow Makes a Mountain
In addition to the volumes of essays and lectures on Zen and Zen practice, Dogen also expressed himself and his teachings through poetry. This particular verse, which reflects on a moment of realization in which the poet’s mind underwent a profound perceptive shift, is written in a Chinese style. The translation is Philip Whalen and… Continue reading Snow Makes a Mountain
Dogen’s Waka on Impermanence
Waka is a Japanese word for poem that surfaced more than a millenium ago to differentiate the Chinese kanshi poems from the work of local scribes. A waka can have a long or short form, and the short ones can often read like haikus, a poetic embodiment of transience. This short one was written by… Continue reading Dogen’s Waka on Impermanence
‘A Heart Slowly Reduced to Embers’: W. G. Sebald on the Fires That Burn Inside and Outside
“From the earliest times, human civilization has been no more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour, of which no one can say when it will begin wane and when it will fade away.”
Dogen – Remember That You Are Alive Only Today In This Moment
In a world where a certain kind of intellectualism is valued over many other human capacities, it’s easy to feel inferior to those we perceive to be smarter than ourselves and to imagine that the things that we do not understand with our intellect will somehow hold us back from a more profound experience of… Continue reading Dogen – Remember That You Are Alive Only Today In This Moment
What is Essential is Only to Understand with Immediacy – from Dogen’s Hokyo-ki
The Hokyo-ki is a short memoir written by Dogen later in his life that chronicles his exchanges with Master Ju-ching (Tendo Nyojo in Japanese, also known as Rujing). Dogen only spent two years studying under Ju-ching at his monastery on Mount Tiantong, but the master’s teachings were highly transformative for the young Japanese monk and… Continue reading What is Essential is Only to Understand with Immediacy – from Dogen’s Hokyo-ki
Returning Home – From Keizan Jokin’s Zazen Yojinki
The Zazen Yojinki, written by 14th century Japanese master Keizan Jokin, covers the fundamental aspects of zazen, the form of Zen meditation.
