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We found 32 results for "fire".
Ancestors & Fires -SRCZC
John’s Monthly talk at SRCZC November – The time of year for ghosts, memories. We’ve just come through another disastrous fire season. Our ancestors survived fires , plagues, famines great crossings. John reads the teaching on the great zen temple fire of 1374 in which hundreds of thousands of precious texts were incinerated – and yet the temple master told them all had survived – this principle of teachings that nourish us beyond scripture is the core of Zen.
Fire…Living at the Corner of Lucky and Unlucky
“Koan: Two monks roll up the blinds in exactly the same way. The teacher looks at them and says, ‘One gains, one loses.'” October 17, 2017.
Stop the Fire Across the River
Allison presents a talk on another miscellaneous Koan, “Stop the fire across the river.” This is like stopping the war within ourselves: where does this fire arise within us and what form does it take? Passion, anger, demons, delusions all take form within us.
Allison demonstrates the possibility of working with the fire of anger through humor and diligent practice and attention to what flares up within the body. January 22, 2014.
Serenity on Fire
“Two swords are crossed, there’s no way to retreat; you’re a lotus in the fire, you can’t help it – you’re determined to go higher.”
John talks about the concept of enlightenment and serenity, and managing to love and appreciate the inner life of the mind.
When All Buddhas Destroyed – What Remains?
PZI Zen Online: Zhaozhou said, “Clay Buddhas cannot pass through water; metal Buddhas cannot pass through a furnace; wooden Buddhas cannot pass through fire.” Which Buddha survives? The mid loves its ideas, structures, concepts and so does society. Some of those constructs are always dissolving. Discomfort of change in society norms and our own personal norms. As recorded June 10, 2020.
Heart Sutra Variations
The Heart Sutra, like any koan, contains the universe, and so you have to go in somewhere. I want to go in through the “Mantra of Great Magic.” Even the word “mantra” is, in a certain way, a reference to magic, a sort of portable access to reality that you can carry around with you. And the word “magic” is also used for the word “mantra,” so where we use “mantra” to produce magic, there’s a transformative quality about the mantra so that, when you repeat it, when you keep company with it, you end up in its world.
Joy, Mosquitoes & Zen
Joy and peace don’t stop the mosquitoes from biting. All these things have their source in meditation. So you want to open your heart. You want to –whatever it is – during meditation. That’s what he’s saying. Right. It comes from within.
Australia Is Burning
John Tarrant introduces the Queensland Magpie singing fire sirens and walks us through the ancient forests he knew as a child. How do we live the life we live in the face of this vast change? What is this?
Australia is Burning- Audio Talk, Winter Sesshin 2020
John Tarrant introduces the Queensland Magpie singing fire sirens and walks us through the ancient forests he knew as a child. How do we live the life we live in the face of this vast change? What is this?
Leaning Into the Ancestors – SRCZC
John’s SRCZC talk on impermanence and rawness of feeling after the great fires in CA and Queensland. He reflects on the importance of internalizing the teachings and the nourishment of our ancestors within us- outside of our normal paths. Teachings after the great Engakuji fire in Chan koan history. The practice of talking to the ancestors – human or otherwise a source of great knowledge.
Dongshan’s Five Ranks: Poem 4
Two swords are crossed (like in the movies, which actually I don’t think happens in real life, but it’s very popular in the movies. It was popular in the movies like 1200 years ago.) Two swords are crossed. There’s no way to retreat. You’re a lotus in the fire. You can’t help it. You’re determined to go higher. Farther, higher, up , further, more. So two swords are crossed. There’s no way to retreat. You’re a lotus in the fire. You can’t help it. You’re determined to go higher.
Dongshan’s Five Ranks: Poem 5
So we’ve been talking about old poems that are also a map of the path, but they’re a map of the kind where you have to see what rises in your meditation to meet them to find out how useful they are to you. Today we’re on the fifth of the ranks, the fifth poem. Five ranks by an old Zen teacher, and this is the final one, so you now know conclusively that there are only five stages to the path. And it goes:
The Story of the Well Painting
I want to describe the process that I went through over the last year, of making the painting, and I want to do that in the spirit of when something
arises, don’t believe it, and shine your light on it. So in a year, a lot of things can arise not to believe, and they did. But even, if you’re in the meditation hall, five minutes is
probably long enough for plenty to arrive not to believe in.
Goblins Q & A
Hakuin would paint that as a demon. This is demon number three. Which number demon is that? And the other things is that thing about how the thing we thought was the problem can transform, there is that real sense of what’s wrong with being a demon? If I think there’s a demon obviously I’m it.
Dongshan’s Five Ranks: Poem 3
So there’s something about where we’re located, which is in the middle of nothing, good to know, and then how do you manage there? And also something about expression being eloquent. So what is eloquence when you’re in the middle of nothing? And also something about not reaching for approval, categories, emperors, sages, psychologies, ideas, history, anything that’s not nothing. Okay, so here we are.
Stop the War
And so the certain categories of koans are designed to help us see the implications. We’ve been playing with a few this week, and the one I’d like to do today is “Stop the war.” It’s kind of succinct. Cut it out! Stop the war, or can you stop the war?
Straight Down the Road of 99 Curves
Everybody probably has a road that would come to mind. I remember getting a bus in Tasmania and driving through the west coast mountains to a mining town where I was going to work, get a job, and how the snow was coming down and the bus would just go around this really narrow road like that, and there are certain parts of the world that have truly alarming narrow mountain roads with truly alarming drivers and very ancient buses.
The Storehouse of Treasures – Rising From Stillness Retreat
So I would like to talk tonight a bit about what I’ve been noticing about the journey we’re on together in the ship of sesshin, and then to talk some about this koan the storehouse of treasures, and then we’ll see what happens then.
Trapped In a Stone Grave – Rising From Stillness Retreat
And so you go out to the cemetery and you find your family vault. It looks a little bit overgrown; you haven’t been there for a long time. But you’ve got a key and you put it in and you pull the big stone door and it opens, just like that. It’s great. So you walk in just to kind of pay your respects; you haven’t been here for ages. And a sudden gust of wind….
The Nature of Practice
..a practice is different from a plan. You know what a plan is; you’ve probably made a few of them. A practice has more love in it, because a practice is something you’re doing without being sure of the outcome..
The Bird Path
John says birds can ‘open the sky’ for us when we watch them fly – everything just appears and then is gone without a trace. If we trust whatever appears, that’s a taste of the bird path. Might it be true that no matter what, you’re not having the wrong moment? That you don’t have to disapprove. When it’s difficult, it’s good to know that it’s for us. It’s ours. Life is blessing us all the time. Our thinking/feeling ‘This isn’t it,’ is what we call loneliness. John talks about how our practice asks us, ‘What’s it like to be me? What’s it like to be a tree? A bird? What if I’m a fire? A river?’ My mind and the universe – not much difference.
New Table of Non-Periodic Elements
After you have died and the elements of your body have separated into earth, water, air and fire, where will you go?
Living in the Moment
“Good morning. This morning I wanted to talk a little bit about the experience of relying on the moment that we’re in to make itself. . . .” July 2013.
The Great Way is Not Difficult
“Koans light up a life that may have been dormant in you; they hold out the possibility of transformation even if you are trying to address unclear or apparently insoluble problems.” Originally published in Shambhala Sun Magazine, November 2004.
The Moon Sets at Midnight
We have such a passion to know and to be certain but, in practice, much of what we think of as knowledge is just untested thoughts. As the Heart Sutra says, even thoughts are empty, and if we are willing not to know, willing to walk through life without believing every thought that rises, then we’ll find a path out of suffering.
Method of Decision
“Not deciding it is or isn’t, do you have the courage to be at peace with this? Everyone wants to leave the endless changes, but when we finish bending and fitting our lives we come back to sit by the fire.”
John continues to discuss the 5th koan in the enlightenment cycle, focusing on the concept of “not deciding it is or it isn’t,” and discusses the “method” of zen.