Eon Zen

The ox herding pictures represent a map of the spiritual path. Brought to practice by the experience of our suffering and the sense that something is out of alignment, we embark on a journey. We find that this path is non-linear and each stage is rich with its own opportunities and pitfalls.

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.

In the fifth stage, we reap the benefits of discipline. We broaden the aspects of our lives that are informed by awakened nature. There may not be fireworks, but there is profound and subtle deepening that affects others as well as yourself.