Radiance of the Dark

2004 - 2005 | Springs Mountain Sangha, Colorado Springs, CO and Mountain Cloud Zen Center, Santa Fe, NM A bouquet of talks on the Heart Sutra, the distillation of the vast Prajna Paramita literature of the Mahayana. That's Prajna Paramita herself, the mother of buddhas, above. Because the Heart Sutra is a distillation, it's dense, nothing extra, bracing. Turns out when you pour in the stories and associations that surround it, the potion becomes sweeter and more complex. The first talk is the most straightforward introduction to the text, and after that, well, it wanders where it wanders - being the heart of the world and all.

2004 - 2005 | Springs Mountain Sangha, Colorado Springs, CO and Mountain Cloud Zen Center, Santa Fe, NM A bouquet of talks on the Heart Sutra, the distillation of the vast Prajna Paramita literature of the Mahayana. That's Prajna Paramita herself, the mother of buddhas, above. Because the Heart Sutra is a distillation, it's dense, nothing extra, bracing. Turns out when you pour in the stories and associations that surround it, the potion becomes sweeter and more complex. The first talk is the most straightforward introduction to the text, and after that, well, it wanders where it wanders - being the heart of the world and all.

Springs Mountain Sangha, Colorado Springs, CO | April 9, 2005, April 28, 2006 The old folks talked about how we all unfold sutra scrolls from our toes as we walk and our mouths as we speak, waving from the bright green tips of our new growth and falling out the tops of eggs as we peck them open. It's spring, the season of unfoldings both delicate and flamboyant — a good time for two talks inspired by artists. The first is an exhortation inspired by an old-style preacher and painter, Hakuin Ekaku of eighteenth century Japan — whose, um, directness I seem to have been channeling a bit that night; the second is a meditation on how koans are like the paintings of Johannes Vermeer, seventeenth century Dutch master of the pervading light. Hakuin would probably be pleased that his Prescription for the Penetrating-One's-Nature-and-Becoming-a-Buddha Pill was passed around during a retreat, while Vermeer might be surprised to find his oil and canvas evocations of peace enlisted to show how we work with koans, and koans work with us.

2004 - 2005 | Springs Mountain Sangha, Colorado Springs, CO and Mountain Cloud Zen Center, Santa Fe, NM A bouquet of talks on the Heart Sutra, the distillation of the vast Prajna Paramita literature of the Mahayana. That's Prajna Paramita herself, the mother of buddhas, above. Because the Heart Sutra is a distillation, it's dense, nothing extra, bracing. Turns out when you pour in the stories and associations that surround it, the potion becomes sweeter and more complex. The first talk is the most straightforward introduction to the text, and after that, well, it wanders where it wanders - being the heart of the world and all.

Springs Mountain Sangha, Colorado Springs, CO | April 9, 2005, April 28, 2006 The old folks talked about how we all unfold sutra scrolls from our toes as we walk and our mouths as we speak, waving from the bright green tips of our new growth and falling out the tops of eggs as we peck them open. It's spring, the season of unfoldings both delicate and flamboyant — a good time for two talks inspired by artists. The first is an exhortation inspired by an old-style preacher and painter, Hakuin Ekaku of eighteenth century Japan — whose, um, directness I seem to have been channeling a bit that night; the second is a meditation on how koans are like the paintings of Johannes Vermeer, seventeenth century Dutch master of the pervading light. Hakuin would probably be pleased that his Prescription for the Penetrating-One's-Nature-and-Becoming-a-Buddha Pill was passed around during a retreat, while Vermeer might be surprised to find his oil and canvas evocations of peace enlisted to show how we work with koans, and koans work with us.

2004 - 2005 | Springs Mountain Sangha, Colorado Springs, CO and Mountain Cloud Zen Center, Santa Fe, NM A bouquet of talks on the Heart Sutra, the distillation of the vast Prajna Paramita literature of the Mahayana. That's Prajna Paramita herself, the mother of buddhas, above. Because the Heart Sutra is a distillation, it's dense, nothing extra, bracing. Turns out when you pour in the stories and associations that surround it, the potion becomes sweeter and more complex. The first talk is the most straightforward introduction to the text, and after that, well, it wanders where it wanders - being the heart of the world and all.

June - October 2019 | Northern Coast of California An erratic series prompted by the erratic events of our times, in hopes of offering ways to hold their complexities, grieving what there is to grieve and remembering the veins of gold that mend a broken tea bowl — the radiance in the shattered, the unexpected beauty of the mended.

June - October 2019 | Northern Coast of California An erratic series prompted by the erratic events of our times, in hopes of offering ways to hold their complexities, grieving what there is to grieve and remembering the veins of gold that mend a broken tea bowl — the radiance in the shattered, the unexpected beauty of the mended.

June - October 2019 | Northern Coast of California An erratic series prompted by the erratic events of our times, in hopes of offering ways to hold their complexities, grieving what there is to grieve and remembering the veins of gold that mend a broken tea bowl — the radiance in the shattered, the unexpected beauty of the mended.

June - October 2019 | Northern Coast of California An erratic series prompted by the erratic events of our times, in hopes of offering ways to hold their complexities, grieving what there is to grieve and remembering the veins of gold that mend a broken tea bowl — the radiance in the shattered, the unexpected beauty of the mended.

June - October 2019 | Northern Coast of California An erratic series prompted by the erratic events of our times, in hopes of offering ways to hold their complexities, grieving what there is to grieve and remembering the veins of gold that mend a broken tea bowl — the radiance in the shattered, the unexpected beauty of the mended.

A day of remembrance. How do you memorialize something that hasn’t happened yet? The United Nations says that a million species could go extinct in the coming decades. What will that look like coming across our news feed? Imagine that the extinctions are announced one by one as they occur : How many alerts per day will that be? (Memorial Day, May 2019)

An ongoing series imagining from a perspective both wide and piercing some of the deep stories underneath the climate crisis and the future of humans

An ongoing series imagining from a perspective both wide and piercing some of the deep stories underneath the climate crisis and the future of humans

An ongoing series imagining from a perspective both wide and piercing some of the deep stories underneath the climate crisis and the future of humans

When the foundation stone for Notre-Dame de Paris was laid in 1163 everyone, architects to stonemasons, knew they’d be working on something they wouldn’t live to see completed, nor would their children or grandchildren. They couldn’t be certain that the engineering would hold, or what the light, filtered through rose windows into a stone glade, would be like. (Earth Day, April 2019)

/*What does Dongshan teach? The dark way, the bird path, and the open hand.*/ At the edge of the sea, the rumble and roll of the waters pull on some deep memory of our first, floating home, when we were diaphanous, barely matter, aeons before the empires of thought and industry were built upon the land. Wind pours through the coastal forest, joining the boom of the waves, and the world is a unity of impersonal and completely consoling roar. (Bodhi Day, December 2018)

An erratic series prompted by the erratic events of our times, in hopes of offering ways to hold their complexities, grieving what there is to grieve and remembering the veins of gold that mend a broken tea bowl — the radiance in the shattered, the unexpected beauty of the mended.

An erratic series prompted by the erratic events of our times, in hopes of offering ways to hold their complexities, grieving what there is to grieve and remembering the veins of gold that mend a broken tea bowl — the radiance in the shattered, the unexpected beauty of the mended.

An erratic series prompted by the erratic events of our times, in hopes of offering ways to hold their complexities, grieving what there is to grieve and remembering the veins of gold that mend a broken tea bowl — the radiance in the shattered, the unexpected beauty of the mended.

An erratic series prompted by the erratic events of our times, in hopes of offering ways to hold their complexities, grieving what there is to grieve and remembering the veins of gold that mend a broken tea bowl — the radiance in the shattered, the unexpected beauty of the mended.

October - November 2008 | Cerro Gordo Temple, Santa Fe, NM | Pacific Zen Institute, Santa Rosa, CA Looking at dharma gates, the ancestors, the Great Mysterious at the heart of things, and more, from the perspective of Yunmen’s “In the whole world, in the midst of the cosmos, there is a treasure, hidden in your body. Holding a lantern, it goes toward the buddha hall. It brings the great triple gate and puts it on the lantern.”

October - November 2008 | Cerro Gordo Temple, Santa Fe, NM | Pacific Zen Institute, Santa Rosa, CA Looking at dharma gates, the ancestors, the Great Mysterious at the heart of things, and more, from the perspective of Yunmen’s “In the whole world, in the midst of the cosmos, there is a treasure, hidden in your body. Holding a lantern, it goes toward the buddha hall. It brings the great triple gate and puts it on the lantern.”

October - November 2008 | Cerro Gordo Temple, Santa Fe, NM | Pacific Zen Institute, Santa Rosa, CA Looking at dharma gates, the ancestors, the Great Mysterious at the heart of things, and more, from the perspective of Yunmen’s “In the whole world, in the midst of the cosmos, there is a treasure, hidden in your body. Holding a lantern, it goes toward the buddha hall. It brings the great triple gate and puts it on the lantern.”

2009 - 2011 | Cerro Gordo Temple | Santa Fe, NM Recent revelations of the moving, illuminating, maddeningly partial stories of our East Asian women ancestors are beginning to make the story of Chan and Zen more whole. These meditations on books about East Asian monastics and Japanese laywomen are filled with new metaphors and imagery, as well as practices, created by these geniuses on the margins of our tradition.

2009 - 2011 | Cerro Gordo Temple | Santa Fe, NM Recent revelations of the moving, illuminating, maddeningly partial stories of our East Asian women ancestors are beginning to make the story of Chan and Zen more whole. These meditations on books about East Asian monastics and Japanese laywomen are filled with new metaphors and imagery, as well as practices, created by these geniuses on the margins of our tradition.

First given at the Vernal Equinox Allegiance to the Most Beloved Retreat in 2013.

February 2010 | Desert Rain Retreat | Tucson, AZ At the start of a life with koans, we're in relationship with a Secret Lover, that whispered commentary on things that's always with us. Over time our allegiance shifts and we're more often slipping between the roles of Guest and Host, offering and receiving with others, with the vastness itself. subjects : Linji, Layman Pang, Fayan, sorrow, guest, host, secret lover

Founding Teacher Board of Directors, ex officio

July 2013 | Vallecitos Mountain Ranch | Vallecitos, NM These talks accompanied a week spent immersed in the Three Bodies – of form, dream, and the vastness Ã

July 2013 | Vallecitos Mountain Ranch | Vallecitos, NM These talks accompanied a week spent immersed in the Three Bodies – of form, dream, and the vastness Ã

July 2013 | Vallecitos Mountain Ranch | Vallecitos, NM These talks accompanied a week spent immersed in the Three Bodies – of form, dream, and the vastness Ã

July 2013 | Vallecitos Mountain Ranch | Vallecitos, NM These talks accompanied a week spent immersed in the Three Bodies – of form, dream, and the vastness Ã

March 2013 | Mountain Cloud Zen Center | Santa Fe, NM This talk introduces Lunar Dharma, a vision of the koan way as an underground countercurrent to institutions and orthodoxies, connecting us to ancient and revivifying sources of the wisdom that grows in the dark. subjects : incantation of the lunar dharma, countercurrents, dreaming, endarkenment

November 2-4, 2012 | Mountain Cloud Zen Center | Santa Fe, NM One of the most beautiful aspects of the origin of the koans is their deep connection to the Chinese language, especially in its earliest forms. We spent a weekend getting to know some characters that are ancestors to the koans, amazing creatures who offer us the possibility of beautiful interruptions, which break what appear to be inevitable karmic chains, returning us to the realm of the free self and the original vow.

November 2-4, 2012 | Mountain Cloud Zen Center | Santa Fe, NM One of the most beautiful aspects of the origin of the koans is their deep connection to the Chinese language, especially in its earliest forms. We spent a weekend getting to know some characters that are ancestors to the koans, amazing creatures who offer us the possibility of beautiful interruptions, which break what appear to be inevitable karmic chains, returning us to the realm of the free self and the original vow.

November 2-4, 2012 | Mountain Cloud Zen Center | Santa Fe, NM One of the most beautiful aspects of the origin of the koans is their deep connection to the Chinese language, especially in its earliest forms. We spent a weekend getting to know some characters that are ancestors to the koans, amazing creatures who offer us the possibility of beautiful interruptions, which break what appear to be inevitable karmic chains, returning us to the realm of the free self and the original vow.

August 2012 | Omega Institute | Rhinebeck, NY These three talks were given as part of a Shambhala Foundation weekend on Embracing Change in Your Life. Do you trust your life? How is change sometimes like geology, sometimes like seasons, or weather? What's it like to actually rest in not knowing? subjects : change, transition, Dharma, trust, life, seasons, geology

August 2012 | Omega Institute | Rhinebeck, NY These three talks were given as part of a Shambhala Foundation weekend on Embracing Change in Your Life. Do you trust your life? How is change sometimes like geology, sometimes like seasons, or weather? What's it like to actually rest in not knowing? subjects : change, transition, Dharma, trust, life, seasons, geology

August 2012 | Omega Institute | Rhinebeck, NY These three talks were given as part of a Shambhala Foundation weekend on Embracing Change in Your Life. Do you trust your life? How is change sometimes like geology, sometimes like seasons, or weather? What's it like to actually rest in not knowing? subjects : change, transition, Dharma, trust, life, seasons, geology

April/May 2012 | Cerro Gordo Temple | Santa Fe, NM Nonduality is an iron cliff of a word, so these two talks attempt to create some footholds by considering the essence of nonduality as the shimmer of things, and its activity as the way everything is flowing in and out of everything else. subjects : nonduality, tathagatha, alaya vijnana, simultaneity, Middle Way, function, /*Lankavatara Sutra*/, /*Platform Sutra*/

April/May 2012 | Cerro Gordo Temple | Santa Fe, NM Nonduality is an iron cliff of a word, so these two talks attempt to create some footholds by considering the essence of nonduality as the shimmer of things, and its activity as the way everything is flowing in and out of everything else. subjects : nonduality, tathagatha, alaya vijnana, simultaneity, Middle Way, function, /*Lankavatara Sutra*/, /*Platform Sutra*/

March 2012 | Mountain Cloud Zen Center | Santa Fe, NM The Lankavatara Sutra says that we project thoughts into the world and think they're real, but it's possible to drop those projections and return to our heart-mind's natural unity with the world. In 18th-century Japan, Kobayashi Issa turned these teachings into poetry, showing us how to move toward this liberating state of projectionlessness in the midst of our poignant lives. *subjects :* Lankavatara Sutra, koan introduction, D.T. Suzuki, Issa, dreaming, reincarnation, tathagata

March 2012 | Mountain Cloud Zen Center | Santa Fe, NM The Lankavatara Sutra says that we project thoughts into the world and think they're real, but it's possible to drop those projections and return to our heart-mind's natural unity with the world. In 18th-century Japan, Kobayashi Issa turned these teachings into poetry, showing us how to move toward this liberating state of projectionlessness in the midst of our poignant lives. *subjects :* Lankavatara Sutra, koan introduction, D.T. Suzuki, Issa, dreaming, reincarnation, tathagata

February 2012 | Desert Rain Zen Group | Tucson, AZ This collection of foundational dharma talks was given at a retreat in which a ceremony for sensei Tenney Nathanson was performed. Topics covered include an introduction to retreats; the foundations of koan practice; teachers, traditions, and lineage; and mindfulness and concentration practices. subjects : Santoka, retreat, relaxation, silence, koan practice, Tenney Nathanson, Andrew Palmer, Sarah Bender, sensei, mindfulness, concentration, tathagata

February 2012 | Desert Rain Zen Group | Tucson, AZ This collection of foundational dharma talks was given at a retreat in which a ceremony for sensei Tenney Nathanson was performed. Topics covered include an introduction to retreats; the foundations of koan practice; teachers, traditions, and lineage; and mindfulness and concentration practices. subjects : Santoka, retreat, relaxation, silence, koan practice, Tenney Nathanson, Andrew Palmer, Sarah Bender, sensei, mindfulness, concentration, tathagata

February 2012 | Desert Rain Zen Group | Tucson, AZ This collection of foundational dharma talks was given at a retreat in which a ceremony for sensei Tenney Nathanson was performed. Topics covered include an introduction to retreats; the foundations of koan practice; teachers, traditions, and lineage; and mindfulness and concentration practices. subjects : Santoka, retreat, relaxation, silence, koan practice, Tenney Nathanson, Andrew Palmer, Sarah Bender, sensei, mindfulness, concentration, tathagata

February 2012 | Desert Rain Zen Group | Tucson, AZ This collection of foundational dharma talks was given at a retreat in which a ceremony for sensei Tenney Nathanson was performed. Topics covered include an introduction to retreats; the foundations of koan practice; teachers, traditions, and lineage; and mindfulness and concentration practices. subjects : Santoka, retreat, relaxation, silence, koan practice, Tenney Nathanson, Andrew Palmer, Sarah Bender, sensei, mindfulness, concentration, tathagata

February/March 2012 | Cerro Gordo Temple | Santa Fe, NM The way we seem to be assimilating Buddhist teachings in the West is as mindfulness, which has many helpful applications. It also has some pitfalls, which become clear when we consider mindfulness in its traditional context. These talks explore mindfulness not so much as a miner's lamp practice of attention but as heart-mindfulness, with its sense of open and loving attention, focus on unselfing, appreciation for what we can't make conscious, and constant recollection of the vastness of the present moment. subjects : mindfulness, unselfing, heart-mind, private buddha,Yehuda Amichai, Simone Weil

February/March 2012 | Cerro Gordo Temple | Santa Fe, NM The way we seem to be assimilating Buddhist teachings in the West is as mindfulness, which has many helpful applications. It also has some pitfalls, which become clear when we consider mindfulness in its traditional context. These talks explore mindfulness not so much as a miner's lamp practice of attention but as heart-mindfulness, with its sense of open and loving attention, focus on unselfing, appreciation for what we can't make conscious, and constant recollection of the vastness of the present moment. subjects : mindfulness, unselfing, heart-mind, private buddha,Yehuda Amichai, Simone Weil