Novelist and Storyteller
Originally penned in 1233 and revised in 1252 by Eihei Dōgen, The Genjō Kōan: Actualizing the Fundamental Point is considered one of the founding documents of Japanese Zen Buddhism. Written as a prose poem, Dōgen´s words are Zen itself, moving, paradoxical, enlightening and living. For almost one thousand years, Zen practitioners and scholars have written …
Continue reading "The Fundamental Point and Make the Dark Night Shine"
https://youtu.be/frUkQOt5AjI?si=075nIAcM6C0GflkA A love letter from a father to the daughter he never met. Available from Bookshop.org or your favorite bookseller
I recently was a guest on Andrew G. Marshall's podcast, The Meaningful Life. You can listen to it here.
Everything changes. Continually. Always. Nothing is ever the same. This is the foundational teaching of Buddhism. We all know this. Yet our perceptions of how we change are often at odds with this teaching. People tend toward behaviors that attempt to hold on to conceptions of they think they are and what they determine is …
“When individuals in our society speak or act out of hatred against a whole group of people based solely on superficial appearance, it is a reflection of the mental state of our whole society. We don’t escape because we are not the ones hating. The challenges of race, sexuality, and gender are the very things …
One of my identities is as a figure skater. For twenty years now, I have been practicing, learning new skills and tricks on the ice. For me, the ice is a source of grace, intimacy, and comradery. I see it as a practice of mindfulness, of Buddha nature, of beingness. On the best days, like …
Continue reading "Recognizing and Transforming Shame: A Zen Approach"
In a long year for our community since the beginning of Covid, we have experienced lockdowns, loneliness, fear and grieving as we mourned our lack of connection and intimacy. During this period, we first flattened the curve and then helplessly watched the wave of infections inundate us. Yet at the same time, we rediscovered community …
There is a Chinese Zen kōan, a teaching story about a pilgrimage that I won’t share with you today. If Zen teachers were lawyers, Zen practitioners would be required to sign a release which states that whenever a teacher says they will not do something, it means the opposite, especially if they use words that …
Recently, I rediscovered posts on Facebook about my travels seven months after my partner René Valdes died in February 2012. While I have preserved much of the immediacy of the record, I have used them to explore the universality of grief. desire and wonder that we feel daily in the pandemic. Oh, and that includes …
Imagine that you were on the Tropic of Capricorn where it passes through Kruger National Park in South Africa at 12:02 PM South Africa time (2:02 AM PST) on 21 December 2020. Besides the amazing animals, you would see the sun reach its southernmost point and for a brief second it stops directly overhead and …
Alan Lessik 