Jules Shuzen Harris teaches Zazen, the meditation practice at the heart of Zen Buddhism. There are many forms of meditation that offer you the opportunity to cultivate stillness and open up space in your life. One such form, zazen, has both outward and inward instructions in how to engage your awareness in the immediate, uninterpreted experience of the present moment. [...]
Up in Smoke: A Buddhist pot-smoker on quitting weed
Pot use is finding new acceptance across America. So why, after a long love affair with weed, has this Buddhist kicked it to the curb? I’m pretty pro-marijuana. Certainly people can have problems with it—people can have problems with just about anything—but lots of people are able to use pot more or less harmlessly, and have enjoyable, even fruitful experiences doing [...]
The Problem of Evil
There may be no good or evil in absolute reality, but in the relative world there certainly is. When people do such terrible things, can we really believe in human goodness? Zoketsu Norman Fischer tackles the problem of evil. Beheadings. Drone attacks. Suicide bombers. Mass shootings in malls, movie theaters, and office buildings. Religious fanatics slaughtering [...]
How Do I Work with My Fear of Other People’s Anger?
You can’t stop people from being angry at you, advises Insight Meditation teacher Gina Sharpe, but you can change how it makes you feel. Question: Buddhists talk a lot about working with your own anger, but what about other people’s anger? One of my main problems in life is that I’m afraid people will get angry at me. That makes me vulnerable, lack strength, and fear [...]
What is Pure Land?
When beings awaken to buddhahood, their realization affects the environment around them. In Mahayana Buddhism, this idea was extended to assert that buddhas exist in a purified sphere of realization that reflects their blissful, enlightened perception of reality. Free of all ignorance, aggression, and attachment, this environment is called a pure land or buddha-realm. All [...]
It! It! It!
Eeek! Eeek! Eeek! the bird cried. It! It! It! And the world as Peter Coyote had experienced it ended. Forty years after his first sesshin, the actor and writer finally gets the point of Zen. The Rohatsu (Great Cold) sesshin—a week of intensive Zen meditation—takes place in early December ending on the eighth, the day commemorating Buddha’s enlightenment. At Green Gulch Zen [...]
How to Meditate with Noise
I can’t seem to escape from external noise when meditating. What should I do? We’re usually counseled to find a quiet nook in which to do our meditation, especially when starting out, so that we can focus on the task at hand. Assuming that you can’t sniff out such a haven, there’s really only one thing you can do: sit with the noise. After all, getting comfortable with [...]
The Elephant in the Meditation Room
Does Buddhism mean you have to be a liberal? In this opinion piece from the May 2015 Lion's Roar magazine, Buddhist and lifelong Republican Christopher Ford argues that the answer is "no." The Buddhist conservative moves among his fellow practitioners a bit like a unicorn circulating at a garden party. I don’t mean that people react with hostility, though I’ve occasionally [...]
What is emptiness?
A Zen master might whack you with his stick for asking such a question, never mind what he’d do to us for trying to answer it. Nonetheless, here goes. Emptiness is the central insight of Buddhism, and what makes it unique among religions. According to Buddhism, neither we, nor other beings, nor any phenomenon in the universe, has a permanent, separate, and independent core, [...]
I’m Buddhist. My partner isn’t. Can it work?
Of course! It’s lovely to be able to share your Buddhist practice—or anything else important—with your partner, but if you can’t, should it really matter? Healthy couples don’t have to be just like each other. (And if you think about it, it’s probably better when they aren’t.) Does your partner give you the mental and physical space needed to work on your practice? Do you, [...]