A teaching by Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara. A group of twelve of us lived on the streets in Lower Manhattan for four days, practicing meditation and experiencing how it is to survive without money or cellphones. It was a renunciation and a pilgrimage, a way to give up all our habitual comforts and resources and to open up to reality, to the conditions of the world of which we are [...]
How to Make All Your Work Meaningful
Whether you’re waiting tables or washing laundry, meditating or making art, the key, Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara teaches, is always to savor the task at hand. Find a calm space and sit comfortably. Try to view what you experience as neither bad nor good. Sit at ease and let the sounds in. Feel your body; allow the sensations in your body to be present and not blocked off. Include [...]
What might “Ordinary Zen” look like?
I tend to photograph my sangha, the Village Zendo, at aesthetic high points. Like when we're on retreat and there are 80 of us meditating in black robes, sitting in the big old church we rent in winter. Or when Enkyo Roshi stands at the altar in a cloud of incense. We look exotic, like Zen monks. But in 2011, I started to ask about our ordinariness. What do we look like [...]
Feminine Principal
The principal figure in Buddhism is the teacher, a role traditionally dominated by men. Andrea Miller profiles three women teachers — Trudy Goodman, Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara, and Lama Palden Drolma — who are changing the face of Buddhism and making the teachings whole. In a hospital room in Buffalo, New York, Trudy Goodman had a spiritual experience she had no way to [...]
Our Moment of Possibility and Joy
Who am I, really? Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara shares three teachings that have given her solace and strength as she’s asked that question. Conceived as part of our “Rainbow Dharma” coverage focusing on LGBTQ Buddhists, the lessons here are universally helpful to us all. The walls that separate us seem to be falling away. These days, many of the old constructions and categories [...]
Rainbow Dharma: Teachings and articles for, about, and by LGBTIQ Buddhists
Our culture, thankfully, is increasingly embracing the fact of diverse sexual and gender orientations. Yet everyone—gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, intersex, asexual, cis, straight—struggles with questions about identity. It's easy to interpret the Buddha's teachings on emptiness as meaning that sexual or gender identity is irrelevant. But that's simply not true. As Roshi Pat [...]
The Work of the Moment
Like the monk who strived so hard he couldn’t see the goddess right behind him, if we push too hard for results we miss what is most intimate. When we and our work are one, says Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara, even the most mundane of life’s activities are profound and beautiful. Several years ago, I was in the Catskills with a colleague, celebrating the completion of a [...]
Which River Will You Cross?
Whether buying products on the Internet or Skyping with our students and teachers, we instantly recognize our interdependence, and yet how about when we walk outside our door? It feels as if the ways of teaching and studying the dharma are changing at an accelerated rate. Today, with apps, blogs, tweets, and podcasts, there are numerous possibilities for connecting with people [...]
Profile: New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care
When his grandmother Mimi got sick, Koshin Paley Ellison became her primary caregiver and moved into a hospice with her. “I found myself in the midst of this loving and intimate relationship with my grandmother,” he says. “I went to the meetings with doctors and nurses and I felt really at home. But the weakest link in the care team was the chaplain. He’d come into the doorway [...]
Maezumi’s Petals
Short teachings by five senior members of the White Plum sangha: Bernie Glassman, Bonnie Myotai Treace, John Daido Loori, Pat Enkyo O’Hara, and Dennis Genpo Merzel. The One and the Many In Zen, there are two ways of describing reality. Basically, one says that reality is all One, that everything is Buddha. The other describes the manyness of reality, its multitude of diverse [...]