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Book Review – Cultivating the Empty Field
This is a follow-up to my previous post about the book “Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi”. This book is edited and translated by Taigen Dan Leighton and Yi Wu. I would consider this a classic Zen text and one every practitioner, from beginnings to masters should have. Included are…
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Essay – Guides and Turning Points
How did I get here? An important question I throw into the air while reading, writing, and drinking coffee on a cold morning with early sunlight across the fields. In this current state of being, I awoke a few years ago after sleep walking through most of my life and leaving my path up to…
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Book – Not answers, but where to look
The one single book that has helped me to focus, let go, and where to find the answers is “Cultivating the Empty Field” by Zen Master Hongzhi. This was recommended years ago by Hanakia Zedek, and along with his friendship, has truly been life changing.
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Essay – Paths and Questions
How do we know if the path we are following is meant for us, and is not someone else playing tricks on our consciousness? Can our awareness be tricked, and an outside system is leading us elsewhere? How is awareness bred to be on our own best interest, and work for us, and not be…
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Zen Master – Quote by Dogen
Eihei Dogen (1200-1253) Founder of Japanese Soto Zen “Studying the Buddha Way is studying oneself. Studying oneself is forgetting oneself. Forgetting oneself is being enlightened by all things. Being enlightened by all things is causing the body-mind of oneself and the body-mind of others to be shed. There is ceasing the traces of enlightenment, which…
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Poem – As Years Pass
A quiet moment as the sun sets. Fields emerging from thinning snow. What is distant is near – train horn and coyotes cause us to look over tree tops into the horizon. Logically I know the concept of time, a forward motion from here to there, from present to future – a progression – time…
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On “Dualism”
I am reading the “Cultivating the Empty Field” for the second time, and also Dogen’s “Moon in a Dewdrop”. From this perspective I have been working to understand Dualism and Nondualism. In a nutshell, here are my thoughts, and I want to see if I am even close to understanding the basic concepts. In Nondualism: 1.…