Penetrate the true meaning of the Heart Sutra, says Karl Brunnhölzl, and nothing will be the same again. The secret is to make it personal. There is no doubt that the Heart Sutra is the most frequently used and recited text in the entire Mahayana Buddhist tradition, which still flourishes in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Tibet, Mongolia, Bhutan, China, parts of India and Nepal, and, [...]
4’33”
In 1952 composer John Cage shook the music world with his most radical composition to date: 4'33", known unofficially as “the silent piece.” Kay Larson explores its Zen-inspired lessons in her new book, Where the Heart Beats. It’s the end of August, 1952. Carolyn and Earle Brown, John Cage, David Tudor, and M.C. Richards are all driving up the Hudson Valley together, headed to [...]
Journeys: Found in Translation
Danny Fisher reflects on how important learning scriptural languages like Pali has been for engaging his Buddhist practice. One of the most valuable parts of my education as an engaged Buddhist practitioner has been my study of Pali—the Middle Indo-Aryan language in which the earliest Buddhist texts are preserved. Not being a particularly adept linguist, I resisted the [...]
Kobun Chino’s Legacy
Kobun Chino came to America in 1967 at the request of Suzuki Roshi and spent the next thirty-five years helping spread the dharma in the West. Shoho Michael Newhall recalls his teacher’s life. Kobun Chino Otokawa Roshi, who is often referred to simply as Kobun, was born to an esteemed temple family in the mountainous snow country of Japan. He was a gifted young man, [...]
The Koan in the Refrigerator
All he wanted was an egg. Instead Sam Guthrie got a close-up look at his compulsive need for order. When I was seventeen, I would wake up at 4:30 in the morning and put on my ripped black jeans, drab olive T-shirt, blocky engineer boots, and black leather jacket bristling with punk rock safety pins. Then I’d stagger out of my cluttered studio apartment, get on my motorcycle, [...]
Commentary: Three Levels of Transmission
"When you spend a week immersing yourself in lineage," says Lewis Richmond, "It becomes deeper than an idea, and you actually start to feel its presence in your body and the surrounding space." Recently I empowered two of my senior students—Rinso Ed Sattizahn and Kuzan Peter Schireson—as full-fledged independent Zen teachers, in a weeklong ceremony we call dharma [...]
Ask The Teachers: How do I stop meditation from making me feel isolated?
Question: There are times on the path when I feel isolated from society and the people around me. Perversely, this always seems to be when I am meditating the most and really clearing my head. Superficialities and consumptive tendencies seem very exaggerated, and I find myself feeling alien in the world around me. I don’t think this is the proper response. What can be done to [...]
Let’s Talk: Can You Imagine?
Ralph Steele asks us to consider what a racially and culturally diverse American Buddhist community would be like. I remember the days of being a retreat addict, chasing that sweet sensation of getting high. The dharma teachings often tasted dry, like dust in my mouth. However, hearing teachings was not my primary motive in attending Vipassana, Zen, and Tibetan retreats [...]
The Road to Modern Buddhism
Buddhism In the Modern World Edited by David L. McMahan Routledge, 2012 $39.95; 352 pages For years a private entertainment of many Buddhists I know has been to collect funny or irritating instances of collisions between the mass media and Buddhist images, words, and ideas. There is in fact a website partly devoted to this pursuit, theworsthorse.com, whose author, Rod [...]
Book Briefs
Norman Waddell translates the letters of the seventeenth-century Japanese Zen master and revitalizer of the Rinzai tradition, Hakuin Ekaku (1685–1786), in his new book, Beating the Cloth Drum (Shambhala 2012). The letters are Hakuin’s personal correspondence with monks and lay practitioners, as well as his dharma heirs. Described by one of his chief disciples as having the gaze [...]
