Happy New Year

 In this new year may you be happy, healthy, free from harm, love life, and awaken.

Appreciate

Photo by Teteki Andrew Atkeiso	What we will acquire by our practice or as a function of our tanden is sometimes very subtle, but subtle enough to catch. With the smallest sound, sometimes the mind will pervade the great universe. Actually, because it is so subtle it can cover the whole world. To appreciate the smallest trivial thing is actually how to appreciate—how to make our life on a cosmic scale.
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 67-12-04-A as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.

Featured Cuke Archives page

Pseudo Dionysius was a 5th century Syrian monk who wrote in Greek The Mystical Theology, his most famous work. It's like the Heart Sutra of Christianity, the via negativa, the neti neti (not this not that) of Advaita Vedanta. An appropriate reading for the holiday season. Listen to the podcast and read the book.

Mind Itself

To study something is to find out what you have learned before. To hear something is to hear what you have studied. And in this way your mind always develops itself by itself. Nothing from outside comes into your mind. All the activity is the self-activity of your own mind.

From calligraphy by Reuven Ben Yuhmin

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 67-12-04-A as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.

Mind Covers Everything

When your mind is directed outward, you lose power in your tanden. When your effort is concentrated inward, you have power within yourself, and everything becomes a part of your hara. If you hear a bell from outside, that sound at the same time arises from your hara or tanden. So, the sound does not come from outside. It comes rather from inside, and you hear your own sound. Nothing exists outside of yourself because your mind covers everything. So, whatever you do, that is your own activity. There is no duality in your activity.

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 67-12-04-A as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.

Lion's Roar Obituary for Hozan Alan Senauke

 

Lion's Roar Obituary for Hozan Alan Senauke

Alan's cuke page

His Caring Bridge page

Power in Tanden

In Zen there are many functions, like to give a shout like thunder, or to whack something. There are many kinds of way. But those activities are based on the power of tanden or hara which you get by our usual practice. That is why in this sesshin especially we concentrate on having more power in your tanden or hara.

Teah Strozer energetically beats the drum as the new abbess

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 67-12-04-A as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.

Original Mind

The point is not to mix up true zazen practice with some other practice like something intellectual because the way we study is quite different. Intellectual study or a physical or an emotional friend also. In those activities or studies our effort is directed to attain something. But in zazen practice our effort is directed in an opposite way. To forget or to stop all thinking and to resume our original mind—the most, inmost content of our mind, before thinking—before we feel something.

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 67-12-04-A as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.

Simple Practice with Hard Effort

To talk about the merits of Zen for beginners is like counting others’ treasures. So, we do not talk about the merit of Zen. The only way is to devote ourselves to simple practice with hard effort.

Zendo at Jamesburg

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 67-12-04-A as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.

RIP Alan Hozan Senauke

Alan Hozan Senauke, abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center, dear friend, and founding member and director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship died on December 22nd, a few days short of a year since the heart attack that put him in a coma. He and his wife Laurie have gone through a monumental struggle since then that many of us shared on his Caring Bridge page. Farewell Alan, great priest and great human being. - dc

Alan's Caring Bridge page. 

Alan's cuke page with link to his podcast