As we come to the end of our 90-day intensive period we enter a liminal place that can feel like a birth. In surrendering completely to what is happening within us -- in the supportive environment of our practice -- we emerge both exhausted and renewed, baby and mother both. This is the koan of transformation, the tail of the water buffalo that remains after the body passes through the window.

Zen practitioners celebrate the Buddha's Awakening during Rohatsu. While much myth encrusts the historical record of this event, we can follow the Buddha's model of deep investigation through the meditative mind. Many practitioners have felt this inner emergence for themselves, discovering a ground of being that is both personal and impersonal, undeniable and inexpressible.

We are never really outside of our sensory experience or our life story. From them, we create sense and meaning. With conscious Attention and Intention, we shift from a background/foreground to a single ground, creating the field where subject and object dissolve. Then karma and dharma are seen as one.

When we don't take anything for granted, a natural appreciation arises for all that we have been given. This appreciation is the direct experience of the One Heart, and is not contrived. As we atone for our twisted karma, we can be grateful for our positive karma. Every day both are abundantly present!

Calm and steady, linking together all the elements of our lives - A talk by Geoff Shōun

Anger is wisdom energy that has the power to heal. Aggression is when that energy is enlisted by the ego. Our holding capacity for our moment-to-moment sensory experience is what allows us to maintain a connection with the elemental wisdom dimension without a hidden agenda. Talk by Sam Sokyo Randall

Mysterious and vast, the One Body extends through space and time. Its healing potential is actualized through the mysterious and vast power of intention, or vow. Intentions seeded in the past bear fruit now as intentions seeded now will bear fruit in the future. Meanwhile, we are in direct communication with our past and future selves right now. Who can say where it all began?

Anger carries a profound transformative potential, but only if it is felt. If we cut ourselves off from feeling, our anger will ultimately burn down whatever is keeping us from feeling.

We are fooled by others when we look outside for our own self-understanding. When we look inside, we find ourselves grounded as the functioning of awareness itself. “Absolute Subjectivity”. What name does that go by?

Mark Eckhardt shares the dharma of raising a temple in the very place where we stand. For a Black man in America, that place can be a hell.