Earth Dreams: Zen Buddhism and the Soul of the World

• Like a Mountain

  Greetings Friends,I am returning from 10 days of monastic practice at my former home, Great Vow Zen Monastery. While I was there I had the opportunity to celebrate my teacher Chozen Bays Roshi’s 80th birthday, to practice and lead the annual outdoor sesshin that we call Grasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin and to facilitate a precepts ceremony. I love monastic practice. I love merging with the great activity of awakening. I love the depth of practice that opens up when we sustain the gaze on our true nature and allow the bodhisattva vow to flow through us. I love being in this process of liberation and love with others. Many of us are asking:* How to live in a world on fire?* What is an appropriate response?* What should I do with my life?The heart of practice awakening seems to turn these questions on their head, and ask instead what do you call the world?And, who are you?And what is your life?Many great thinkers have posited that we can’t solve problems with the same mind that created them. What happens when we dare to step out of the problem-solving mind all together? What happens when we look directly into the assumptions we make about ourselves and the world? What happens when we gaze into the nature of life/death?When we are willing to even begin to entertain these questions, and know ourselves beyond thought and label—another world opens up. Someone said recently “it’s like I’m inhabiting a different body.”The body of this world, is our body. The body of mountain, space, silence is also our body.The Zen Buddhist tradition is alive with teachings from practitioners, contemplatives, and mystics who were engaged in this kind of inquiry. Who sustained the gaze on the great matter, and invited us to realize this great body of awakening.During sesshin we were chanting and practicing with Dogen Zenji’s Mountains and Waters Sutra. In this sutra, Dogen Zenji invokes Mountains as a metaphor for the nature of our mind. Mountain presence points us to the ever-abiding presence, spaciousness and silence of our own awake awareness.Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the Mountains and Waters Sutra.Mountains and rivers right now are the actualization of the ancient Buddha way. Both mountains and rivers abide in their true form and actualize true virtue. Mountains and rivers transcend time and are alive in the eternal present. They are the original self and they are emancipation-realization. Mountains are high and wide. The movement of clouds and the inconceivable power of soaring in the wind comes freely from the mountains.We can re-write this paragraph replacing Mountains with “we” or “our true nature”. Below is an example.We–right now are the actualization of the ancient Buddha Way. We abide in our true form and actualize true virtue. We transcend time and are alive in the eternal present. This is our original self—emancipation-realization. Our awareness is high and wide, the movement of thought and the inconceivable power of awakened activity comes freely from Mind’s nature.Really this is an invitation to embody Mountain. To give over your body and life to the body and life of Mountain. Once when we were practicing with this sutra during a summer practice period my teacher said:If you practice with Mountain everyday for the next 60 days, it will change you.Let yourself be a Mountain, and in that realize how you already are still, silent, spacious, safely rooted—lacking nothing.The video above is a guided meditation on Being a Mountain. In my experience Mountain practice opens up an essential aspect of zazen. I invite you to try it out. And don’t be shy, let your wild Mountain body-mind rest in its fundamental space.You have always belonged to this great body of awakening.You have never been separate.I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, Astrologer and Artist. I offer 1:1 Spiritual Counseling sessions using IFS and Hakomi (somatic mindfulness). I also offer astrology readings. Check out my website to learn more. I currently live in Columbus, OH and am a supporting teacher for the Mud Lotus Sangha.I currently have a few openings in my Spiritual Counseling practice for the Fall. I offer a four-session intro package for $250. Weekly Online Meditation EventMonday Night Dharma — 6P PT / 9P ET Join weekly for drop-in meditation and dharma talk. This is where the Summer Read is happening if you want to join the discussion and practice live. Schedule here.This coming week we will be exploring case 25 & case 33 (Nyozen’s Pale Moon of Dawn and Bodhidharma’s flesh)Feel free to join anytime. Event lasts about 1.5 hours. ZOOM LINKIn-Person in Columbus, Ohio through Mud Lotus SanghaWeekly Meditations on Tuesday, Wednesday and ThursdayRetreats, Meditation instruction and other events can be found on our website. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amykisei.substack.com/subscribe

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• Remember Being A Flower?

  Being FlowerOn Monday night during meditation we sat together as a community of flowers. Sun flower, daisy, rose, violet, marigold, milkweed, celosia, echinacea, blue vervain, poppy, queen anne’s lace, crocosmia, zinnia.We were studying the koan Case 19 from the Hidden Lamp, Flowers in the Buddha Hall.The nuns of Tokeiji were famous for their beautiful elaborate flower decorations on Buddha’s Birthday. Zen Teacher Yodo, the abbess wrote a verse for the occasion:Decorate the heart of the beholder,for the Buddha of the flower hallin nowhere else.Her attendants also wrote verse. Ika wrote:Throw away into the street the years of the past.What is born now on the flower dais—let it raise its newborn cry.Why sit as a flower? It might seem foolish or arrogant. Maybe it is.But its part of the invitation of the koans. To be inhabited by them. To practice seeing through the face of a sunflower—breathing in light—deeply connected to earth and sky. Opening petal by petal into this troubled and mysterious world.Some call the wide-eyed flower jasmine.Some call the wide-eyed flower thorn.The wide-eyed flower doesn’t care what you call it.I bow to such freedom. —RumiWe’ve spent our lives practicing our human conditioning. Telling ourselves things that aren’t true about our worth, our lacks. Reinforcing a sense of separation, loneliness, fear.What happens when you take-up the practice of being a flower?How does a flower respond to you human thoughts and worries?What does a flower think of your so called problems?We find flowers throughout the buddhist teachings and koans. The Buddha gave a whole sermon—holding up a flower. There are recorded stories of practitioners having awakening experiences upon seeing a flower. flowers are silentsilence is silentthe mind is a silent flowerthe silent flower of the world open—IkkyuRememberingIn this koan the nuns of Tokeiji are re-enacting the story of the Buddha’s birth where flowers rained from the heavens. The story is ancient and the ceremony seems to have roots prior to buddhism. We build a flower bower in the shape of a white elephant that came to Maya in a dream. We decorate the bower in the fresh flowers of spring, and bathe the awakened child who stands on Great Mother Earth, pointing to the sky with one hand and the ground with the other.There is something child-like and innocent about creating a flower dais and bathing the baby buddha in sweet tea. I don’t know the origins of the ritual, but it was something that we practiced when I lived at the monastery, and is part of the Japanese Zen tradition. When we prepare for and participate in the ceremony, we are practicing a kind of remembering. Remembering our own child-like innocence. Remembering how malleable and playful the heart-mind of a child is. Remembering a time in our life where our imagination was ripe. And we really were flowers. Or could become one at anytime. A time when hours could go by and we were perfectly content to sit and watch the daisies bob in the wind. Where we made crowns and wands and palaces out of flowers. A time when we could consult flowers for advice, and laugh with them in yellows, oranges, rubies and pinks.This remembering stretches back before childhood, before we were born.We are remembering who we are—before thought, before we got overly identified with this body. We are remembering our unborn buddha mind—our awakened nature.Yodo’s poem is a reminder that the baby buddha in the ceremony—is us. Our buddha nature, our awakened nature is only right here.Sometimes appearing as a flower, a face, anxiety, fear, aloneness, beauty, love.All appearances are inseparable from the spacious embrace of our buddha nature.Yet, we forget. So we practice remembering.The baby buddha ceremony is a practice of remembering. Seeing flowers can be a practice of remembering. Zazen, chanting, bowing, the precepts, IFS, yoga, dancing all can be practices of remembering. I recently was invited to give a teaching to the Pause Meditation Community on the theme of remembrance. As I was contemplating the theme, I rediscovered Joy Harjo’s poem Remember. And remembered the importance of poetry in our practice of remembering. What is important to remember? What do you want to remind yourself? How do you remember?Here’s a poem I wrote to help me Remember to RememberRemember breathHow it breathes you, even as you sleepAnd your mind drifts here and thereEven when you feel most aloneIts gentle rhythm soothes youAnd gives you your lifeLet yourself feel this ocean inside youRising and fallingLet yourself find your way back to yourselfThrough the sensations of breathRemember and you are awareYour senses open to a world of wonderHear, see, feel, taste, smellThis is your wild and precious lifeAll is connectedYou are part of this one lifeRemember that all is changingMysteriously experience unfoldsThese thoughts are just passing throughNothing is fixedNothing is finalHow you feel now will changeIs already changingFeel the river of your lifeDrink from itRemember silenceLet yourself hear belowThe murmur or yelling of thoughtBefore the music or the noiseSilenceThough it seems we are alwaysTrying to cover it overOr fill it upSilence remainsFeel your own inner silenceBefriend itListen to its wisdomLet it show you something about whoYou really areRemember the goodness that you areFeel the sincerity in your heartCan you let yourself feelThe kindnesses that shape youOpen to joyFor no reasonIts here, even in the heartbreakEven in the painEven when it feels farthest awayRemember this is your lifeIts a good lifeIts worth livingFeel its preciousnessRememberFor a deeper dive into this koan listen to the dharma talk where we explore more deeply some of the symbolism in the Buddha’s birth story, as well as Amala Roshi’s commentary to the koan found in the Hidden Lamp. Join Patrick Kennyo Dunn this coming Monday for Case 20: Shonin’s Shadeless Tree.I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, Astrologer and Artist. I offer 1:1 Spiritual Counseling sessions using IFS and Hakomi (somatic mindfulness). I also offer astrology readings. Check out my website to learn more. I currently live in Columbus, OH and am a supporting teacher for the Mud Lotus Sangha.Weekly Online Meditation EventMonday Night Dharma — 6P PT / 9P ET Join weekly for drop-in meditation and dharma talk. This is where the Summer Read is happening if you want to join the discussion and practice live. Schedule here.Feel free to join anytime. Event lasts about 1.5 hours. ZOOM LINKIn-Person in Columbus, Ohio through Mud Lotus SanghaWeekly Meditations on Tuesday, Wednesday and ThursdayRetreats, Meditation instruction and other events can be found on our website. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amykisei.substack.com/subscribe

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• The Shape of Faith

  This life is mysterious.I often marvel at how there is so much more that we don’t know then that we do. Walk into a forest or a city.Even if I knew every being in the forest by name.Will I ever be able to comprehend the relationships between them?The relationships between the cells in my own body?Even the mystery of what a tree is, this tree—the sycamore standingright here, at the entrance to the park.I can stand in her regal presence.I can feel together for a momentthe majesty of being rooted—And then my mind tumbles back into the mystery of being.Two bodies, appearing in the vastness of space.What is this wonder?I have been contemplating faith. More accurately I have been noticing faith. There is a certain unnamed faith we enact as we go on living on a planet spinning and hurling through space. In a sea of inter-relations that we can barely comprehend—cosmic, spiritual, geo-politcal, interspecies, elemental. What is happening here is much more mysterious then what our language allows us to express. What we are can not be named with conventional speech.What is faith?What do you have faith in?I find dharma practice to be an awakening of faith. Radical faith that allows us to peer into our assumptions about who and what we are. That allows us to open to the mystery of being. That allows us to rest in our true nature, the openness that we are.Who are we if we are not our thoughts about the world?If we aren’t our memories or feelings about the future?If we aren’t our theories or deeply held beliefs?What is experiencing this?Who are you really?This weeks dharma talk is an exploration of Case 15 from the Hidden Lamp: The Woman Let’s it Be. During the talk we explore faith, breakthrough koans and the simple and profound practice of “let it be.” On Monday you can join us live for meditation and a dharma talk. We will be exploring Hidden Lamp Case 19: Flowers of the Buddha Hall.Hope to see you there. Or sometime soon!I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, Astrologer and Artist. I offer 1:1 Spiritual Counseling sessions using IFS and Hakomi (somatic mindfulness). I also offer astrology readings. Check out my website to learn more. I currently live in Columbus, OH and am a supporting teacher for the Mud Lotus Sangha.Weekly Online Meditation EventMonday Night Dharma — 6P PT / 9P ET Join weekly for drop-in meditation and dharma talk. This is where the Summer Read is happening if you want to join the discussion and practice live. Schedule here.Feel free to join anytime. Event lasts about 1.5 hours. ZOOM LINKIn-Person in Columbus, Ohio through Mud Lotus SanghaWeekly Meditations on Tuesday, Wednesday and ThursdayRetreats, Meditation instruction and other events can be found on our website. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amykisei.substack.com/subscribe

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• A Wild Love for the World

  Greetings Friends,Here we are in the heart of summer. I am writing this a week after the passing of beloved eco-dharma elder Joanna Macy. We are also in the middle of our summer read of The Hidden Lamp: 25 Centuries of Awakened Women. The koan story that we explored this week was Case 13: Chen’s Mountain Flowers and the commentary happens to be written by Joanna Macy. So I want to take the time in this post as well as the dharma talk audio to appreciate Joanna Macy’s life, work and practice through the lens of the koan.Chen’s Mountain Flowers: China 7th-9th CenturyChen was a laywoman who traveled far and wide, visiting famous masters. After she realized enlightenment, she composed the following verse.Up on the high slopes, I see only old woodcutters.Everyone has the spirit of the knife and the axe.How can they see the mountain flowersreflected in the water—glorious red?Joanna wrote about and lived her life with a wild love for the world. This was demonstrated in her activism, her translations of Rilke’s Book of the Hours, her work at building containers to help those engaged in the on-the-ground activism to connect with the emotional and spiritual side of their work and her own dharma practice. The koan Chen’s Flowers also speaks to a wild love for the world. One we are invited into through Chen’s simple poem.I want to share an excerpt from an interview with Joanna Macy where she is speaking about her love for this earth/world, being less afraid of her fears and belonging—we are already home, she says:It is so great a privilege to be here on Earth at this time. I have had the good fortune to drink from three great streams of thought—the buddhadharma, systems thinking, and deep ecology. Each gives me another way to know Gaia and to know myself. Each helps me be less afraid of my fears. I have had the joy of helping others experience this too, of seeing them take the Work That Reconnects further, building our collective capacities and our trust in reciprocity.Being fully present to fear, to gratitude, to all that is—this is the practice of mutual belonging. As living members of the living body of Earth, we are grounded in that kind of belonging. We will find more ways to remember, celebrate, and affirm this deep knowing: we belong to each other, we belong to Earth. Even when faced with cataclysmic changes, nothing can ever separate us from her. We are already home.Our belonging is rooted in the living body of Earth, woven of the flows of time and relationship that form our bodies, our communities, our climate. When we turn and open our heart–mind to Earth, she is always there. This is the great reciprocity at the heart of the universe. My gratitude to all. May we experience “sheer abundance of being,” as Rilke says, and know that we truly belong here.Here are some resources if you would like to connect more to Joanna Macy’s Life Work.On-being—An interview with Krista Tippett and Joanna Macy where several Rilke poems are sharedWork that reconnects—Joanna Macy’s website with lots of free resourcesLion’s roar interview—An interview with Joanna Macy about Buddhist practice and Eco-dharmaAs I turn over this koan and Joanna Macy’s teachings and legacy I find many invitations for practice. Below are three that I am working with this week.An Invitation to Study WantingChen talks about how the woodcutters know only knife and saw. Taking from the earth is their way. What are the knives and saws in our own life? How do we cultivate the courage and generosity to make space for our own wanting, our own desires? What is it like to pause and feel the sensations of wanting without pushing them away, and also without indulging? What else accompanies wanting? And can we make space for those emotions, sensations, beliefs or memories?I find when I make space for wanting, I often open to the gift of this life being experienced through my senses, it feels tender and quivering like a reflection in the water. But good, real. Gratitude follows quite naturally.The Color Red as a Mindfulness BellChen’s poem is short and simple, and yet the glorious red rings loudly. I found myself noticing red after reading this poem. So I took it up as a mindfulness practice. Allowing myself to really notice the shades of red in my life. To take time and linger with them, to feel the glory and boldness of ruby, cherry, vermillion, scarlet, crimson. Red also became a mindfulness bell, calling me to open my other senses—to really see, hear, smell, taste, feel. To let my awareness open and my thinking mind silence. Red awakened aliveness. I started to see how my neighbor’s overalls, the cardinal on the river trail, the summer rose, the stop sign and brake lights were all in cahoots—helping me to awaken to our shared buddha nature.Wild Love for the World PracticeWhat if your love for the world and your grief for the world could co-exist? What if you took them both for a walk? Where would you go? What would you see? What is your own poem to express this wild love?i meet my sorrow in the lazy river, who doesn’t mind my shy sadnessbut instead lets it float along with the gaggle of geese who seem to be deep in meditationi don’t try to pretend that i know anything when i walk along the riverits more like meeting godwho seems to shine out of each of us unhindereda light so honesti almost don’t lose myself in its playful lovingListen to the dharma talk for a more extensive dive into this koan and Joanna Macy’s legacy. May we each discover that we too are already at home, and live with a wild love for this life. Feel free to share your reflections, thoughts or your wild love for the world poem in the comments section. Next week we will be exploring Case 15 in the Hidden Lamp, The Woman Lets it Be. Summer Reading Schedule can be found here.I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, Astrologer and Artist. I offer 1:1 Spiritual Counseling sessions using IFS and Hakomi (somatic mindfulness). I also offer astrology readings. Check out my website to learn more. I currently live in Columbus, OH and am a supporting teacher for the Mud Lotus Sangha.Weekly Online Meditation EventMonday Night Dharma — 6P PT / 9P ET Join weekly for drop-in meditation and dharma talk. This is where the Summer Read is happening if you want to join the discussion and practice live. Schedule here.Feel free to join anytime. Event lasts about 1.5 hours. ZOOM LINKZen Practice opportunities through ZCOGrasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin—August 11 - 17, in-person at Great Vow Zen Monastery (this retreat is held outdoors, camping is encouraged but indoor dorm spaces are available)In-Person in Columbus, Ohio through Mud Lotus SanghaWeekly Meditations on Tuesday, Wednesday and ThursdayRetreats, Meditation instruction and other events can be found on our website. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amykisei.substack.com/subscribe

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• Hearing the Sounds of the World

  Greetings Friends,As we move through our Summer Read of The Hidden Lamp: Stories from 25 Centuries of Awakened Women this week we focused on Case 10: Asan’s Rooster. The koan is one of devotion, deep listening and awakening to our true undivided nature.Here’s the case.Asan was a lay woman who studied Zen with Master Tetsumon and was unremitting in her devotion to practice. One day during her morning sitting she heard the crow of the rooster and her mind suddenly opened. She spoke a verse in response:The fields, the mountains, the flowers, and my body too are the voice of the bird—what is left that can be said to hear?Master Tetsumon recognized her enlightenment.This koan describes an experience of reality, ordinary mind before identification with conditioned habits of separation.What Asan realized— is our natural state. There aren’t boundaries that separate the senses. Our seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking happen in the open field of awareness. There aren’t boundaries between ourselves and the rest of the world. Everything we experience is part of the flow of our life. We are one body. There isn’t some distant “us” apart from the flow of experience.Why don’t we experience this wonder, freedom and intimacy? Well, we are. We do. We are never separate from reality.Its just that our attention gets hooked onto objects. Our habits of distraction, separation, disinterest and wanting things to be different— seem to obscure the open, inclusivity of our awakened nature. And so, we don’t see what is right here, closer then close.This mis-perception is why we practice, we practice to reacquaint ourselves with the oneness, belonging, connection, freedom and love that is our nature, our ordinary mind, our natural state.We practice and have moments of realization, moments of awakening where our fascination with our habits of mind drop away, and we wake-up to the reality of our one life. We wake up to the one body of mountains, buildings, flowers and our body too as the voice of the bird, or the sound of the subway or the ring of the alarm.We are one body. This life is one life. Open your senses and wake-up to our shared life. Feel the spacious presence of mind’s nature, clear, open, wake—all inclusive.In this dharma talk we explore the practice of listening as a dharma gate. This is a rich and deep practice that we can practice in meditation, in our relationships, with ourselves and as we move through the world. Listening invites intimacy, awakens spaciousness and presences. I invite you to practice listening with us this week. Here are some pith instructions for listening as a practice.What are you hearing? Open your senses. Let love guide your listening—as your sense of self opens beyond the limits of the physical body.The body of sound is vast and spacious. It includes the entire world.Listen closely, the sound is better.Be open to the pleasure and joy of listening.Drink it in.Try to listen without judgment, label or preference.Hear sounds as if you were listening to a strange, experimental piece of music.Feel the boundless quality to your listening—no inside, no outside, no in-between.Hear the cries of the world.Hear the joys.Let your listening include the waves of feeling moving through your own body.Compassion arises from this kind of listening.Can you hear the seemingly silent objects that surround you?Hear with your eyes, with your whole body, let all of your senses participate in your listening.Listen to the silence, the apparent source of sound.Is there anyone that can be said to hear?Who is that one?Rumi says: Listen, and feel the beauty of yourseparation, the unsayable absence.There's a moon inside every human being.Learn to be companions with it. Give more of your life to this listening.Give more of your life to this listening.As you reflect on this koan and the practice of listening, what resonates for you?* Have you ever had a taste or glimpse of awakening? What impact did it have on your life?* What is your experience with listening as a practice? * How is listening connected to compassion in your life?I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, Astrologer and Artist. I offer 1:1 Spiritual Counseling sessions using IFS and somatic mindfulness. I also offer astrology readings. Check out my website to learn more. I currently live in Columbus, OH and am a supporting teacher for the Mud Lotus Sangha.Weekly Online Meditation EventMonday Night Dharma — 6P PT / 9P ET Join weekly for drop-in meditation and dharma talk. This is where the Summer Read is happening if you want to join the discussion and practice live. Schedule here.Feel free to join anytime. Event lasts about 1.5 hours. ZOOM LINKZen Practice opportunities through ZCOGrasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin—August 11 - 17, in-person at Great Vow Zen Monastery (this retreat is held outdoors, camping is encouraged but indoor dorm spaces are available)In-Person in Columbus, Ohio through Mud Lotus SanghaWeekly Meditations on Tuesday, Wednesday and ThursdayRetreats, Meditation instruction and other events can be found on our website. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amykisei.substack.com/subscribe

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