Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Sunday 09/04/2022
Shugen Roshi introduces the theme of our 90-day Fall Ango Intensive training period, “Moon Thusness.” If you’d like to learn more about our Ango program and possibly participate, please click here: https://zmm.org/teachings-and-training/ango/
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei
Zen Center of New York City, Fire Lotus Temple, Sunday 09/04/2022
Hojin Sensei offers opening reflections on the Fall 2022 Ango training period, introducing the primary texts that training students will be working with as well as the themes of art practice, nature contemplation, and Dogen’s Fascicle “The Moon.”
Dear Sangha,
Looking toward this Fall 2019 Ango, I feel the excitement and trepidation of a child starting a new school year, eager to learn, and fearful that I will fall short. I gain courage knowing we will be learning together as a sangha, and walking with the green teeming mountain into yellow, orange and brown, before going quiet.
When Shugen Roshi asked me to serve as Chief Disciple, I felt intimidated and humbled taking on this role. Like starting other service positions, I sense it will be awkward, challenging, and with the help of sangha, deeply rewarding. Hojin Sensei once said, as she was training a group of us to be servers, “this is a place where we learn to fail gracefully.” The graceful part, for me, is what we create together as we each do our best to practice sincerely, and hold our own shortcomings and those of others lightly.
May we study and embody each facet of the Noble Eightfold Path during this ango in order to transform our own suffering and the suffering around us. With Right Intention, let us clarify our aspirations for the ango, and strive ardently to be of benefit in this troubled world. We manifest Right Effort by showing up for each other in the wee hours of the day whether at home or in the zendo, and make this difficult and rewarding practice possible by doing it together and leading others by our own example. May we sip from the honey cup of our peaceful dwelling over the next 90 days, creating a Buddha-verse of kindness and clarity.
Love,
Katie Yosha Scott-Childress, began practicing with the MRO in 2005, became a student of Daido Roshi in 2007, and received the precepts in 2014. Living near Mt. Tremper, she has been able to participate in the life of the Monastery in different ways over the years, first bringing her two children to the Zen Kids program, and currently serving as a NBPS practice adviser. She works as a public library director, and has a creative urge that sometimes takes form in cooking or making clay pots.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, 4/04/2019
The second Fusatsu talk of the Spring Ango on Dogen’s fascicle “Refrain from Unwholesome Action.”
Bear Gokan Bonebakker, Senior Monastic
Zen Center of New York City, 3/31/2019
Gokan takes up Dogen’s opening lines of the Ango fascicle, “Refrain from Unwholesome Action,” and asks what is refrain from? Gokan suggests we cultivate reverence.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery, 3/29/2019
Even in our ignorance of the impact we have on others, karma is created. Hogen Sensei explores how we can use dharma practice to investigate what it is to “just refrain from,” both wholesome and unwholesome activity, as Dogen describes in the fascicle being studied during this Ango.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, 3/14/2019
This Fusatsu talk invites us to reflect deeply on Dōgen’s teaching from the Spring Ango study fascicle: “Refrain from unwholesome action. Do wholesome action. Purify your own mind. This is the teaching of all buddhas.” Shugen Roshi explores how all actions (positive, negative, and neutral) are unborn, undefiled, and are reality manifest in various ways. Study of our thoughts, words, and actions with an undivided heart offers insight to understanding intentions, desires, and karma. Refraining from unwholesome action is how is “the power of practice immediately actualized” which Dōgen describes.
Prabu Gikon Vasan, Senior Lay Practitioner
Zen Center of New York City, 11/18/2018
Gikon uses the teachings of early Theravada nuns, in particular the experience of Kisa Gautami, to examine the meaning of true freedom, and relates their struggles our modern day experiences of meeting barriers and attachments.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Saturday 10/01/2022
From the True Dharma Eye, Case 148 – Dongshan’s “Teachings of the Insentient”
“When we don’t hear the teachings of the insentient the world beyond ourselves can seem dead, inert, and uninteresting. Maybe that’s why we have to keep turning up the volume. And having more and more. And now let’s create worlds that don’t even exist and live in them. What kind of dangerous is this?”
“When we don’t have such moments that reveal to us, that peel back the curtain a little bit and show us there is more right here right now in the most unexpected of places. Of course we expect it in the mountains and beautiful places, but as Donghan said, it’s ceaselessly expounded. Radiantly.”
“And so we stop and turn the light around. And look deeply. And make contact. And make contact…”
Danica Shoan Ankele, Senior Monastic and Dharma Holder
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Friday 09/30/2022
Recognizing our afflictions, our kleshas (states of mind such as anxiety, fear, anger, jealousy, desire, depression, etc…) Can we appreciate them? How can we use them? Can we get close up and allow ourselves to be vulnerable? Shoan reflects on this “Gate of Vulnerability.” Without our own share of difficulty and pain, would we be embarking on a path of waking up? That’s why the human realm is considered so auspicious, because if you’re born in the god realm, life is so good you don’t do anything to actually liberate yourself. As Thich Nhat Hanh said: “No mud, no lotus.”
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Thursday Evening 09/29/2022
Dharma Talk during the Mountains and Rivers Sesshin Fusatsu Ceremony
Buddhism speaks of the “Bodies of the Buddha.” For instance, Master Dogen, in his Fascicle The Moon, speaks of the Boundless Body and the Buddha Body. Shugen Roshi reflects on how the Fusatsu ceremony invokes these bodies, and how, when we are practicing the dharma, they begin to appear from within our own vows, out of our selflessness… “So we return to these vows, these precepts. We reflect, we invoke the names of the Buddha, the four vows, the three treasures… to remember again, and align ourselves with what is important… it is not a rule, it is not a creed, it’s not even Buddhism, not at it’s heart… but you could say it’s you.”
Ely Seiryu Rayek, Senior Lay Student
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Wednesday 09/28/2022
Seiryu offers his understanding of the dharma of everyday life, dependent co-origination; the practical reality of ceaseless becoming.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Sunday 09/25/2022
From the Book of Serenity, Case 75 – Ruiyan’s “Constant Principle”
We might normally think we understand that nothing lasts, everything is impermanent, yet we suffer from our misunderstanding of this all the time, for instance when something happens and we react thinking oh, this is forever, this is the way it’s going to be from now on, I am this, I am that,…. This is why it’s so important to deeply study our suffering; not just know that we suffer, but to deeply study the intricate details of how we suffer.
Chris Yudo Abraham, Senior Lay Student
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Sunday 09/18/2022
From Shunryu Suzuki: “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind”
What is beginner’s mind? Where is beginner’s mind? Yudo describes his path in zen practice as one of appreciating Beginner’s Mind and the constant returning to Zazen as the heart of it.
Patrick Yunen Kelly, Senior Lay Student
Zen Center of New York City, Fire Lotus Temple, Sunday 09/18/2022
Yunen offers insight into the thusness of negative experiences and emotions. He explores what comes when we allow sad to just be sad, tribulations to simply be tribulations.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Sunday 09/11/2022
From The Blue Cliff Record, Case 35 – The Dialog of Manjusri and Wu Cho
“In the first moment of contact, what we see, what we hear, is not obscured. Sound and form are purely real, they are just as they are, they are not anything other. But our mind, in an instant, before we know it, without our seeing it, floods that image or that sound or that taste, or touch, with all of our mind’s karmic burden. All our perceptions, our views, our beliefs, our memories, and so on. While our senses simply perceive things, non-obscured, our mind then begins to in a flash obscures and gives meaning, which is taught. Everything in society teaches us what those things mean. All of those ways we separate and exclude and include and create conflict and wealth and poverty, the whole mass of suffering.“
“To be able to separate the profound from the naive, to distinguish a jewel from a stone, is actually necessary. If we can’t discern within our own practice of what is practice according to the dharma and what is not, what is a serving or habitual desire, and what is an impulse or sense of a direction that we can trust, it’s going to be very difficult to practice. So we need to learn how to distinguish. But to do so without malice, without ill will. With clarity. And without infusing a sense of absolute truth into those things that we are discerning.”
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Sunday 09/04/2022
Shugen Roshi introduces the theme of our 90-day Fall Ango Intensive training period, “Moon Thusness.” If you’d like to learn more about our Ango program and possibly participate, please click here: https://zmm.org/teachings-and-training/ango/
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei
Zen Center of New York City, Fire Lotus Temple, Sunday 09/04/2022
Hojin Sensei offers opening reflections on the Fall 2022 Ango training period, introducing the primary texts that training students will be working with as well as the themes of art practice, nature contemplation, and Dogen’s Fascicle “The Moon.”
