500 Blessed Lives

03/26/25 • 40 min

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Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - 3/26/25 - The Zen koan "Baizhang’s Fox" explores the nature of cause and effect (karma) and enlightenment and is taken up in this talk. Shugen Roshi explores how freedom is not about escaping cause and effect but understanding its nature, and seeing that we have an enormous effect through our thoughts, words and actions. Our intentions and perceptions are what truly binds us. Freeing ourselves and others involves shifting our understanding of how our intentions have much to do with karma—through our ways of working with causes and conditions—and not grasping on to fixed ideas or opinions.

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Realization of Body-and-Mind

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 3/23/25 - “Shedding body and mind” is now a classic Zen phrase, and so what can it teach us about practice? Shugen Roshi explores how a novel translation of the character for “dust” as “body-and-mind” gave birth to a new perspective on zazen practice through the teachings of Dogen, the 9th century Zen master who gave rise to the Soto Zen School. Stability, aliveness and openings to the true nature of reality are all realized through this body. Our own mortal body-and-mind is the site of practice, and living completely in our bodies is an essential pathway of realization. - From the Transmission of Light (Denkoroku) Case 52 - Master Dogen

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Sincerity in Practice

Danica Shoan Ankele, Osho - ZMM - 3/27/25 - Master Hongzhou says, "Contact phenomena with total sincerity - not a single atom of dust outside yourself." How we connect with the world of beings and things can be seen as caring, and within zazen the energy of steady presence and attention is what we offer those we love. It is a potent mix of awareness and sincerity, and it doesn’t take much of that to bring everything to life.