Sunday Talks

In the world of anxiety and stress we can always help others. And that’s what we do. The thing is not to seize a delusion to believe in.

We don’t get much say over what the world does and we don’t get much say over what enters our minds. Our job is to hold steady for the world, for those to come, to make a path for people to follow.

Some time ago, I wrote a poem called, “Thank you is red.” OK, but what other colors are on the horizon?

The old boat is sailing off laden with its gifts and sorrows, and the New Year—who knows what it will bring, what we will discover, what new fear will confront us and what we will love?

For all creative activity we must step from a high place without guarantees. There is something exhilarating about that act. That’s the way to live!

People go to abandoned places to search for their true nature. At such a moment, honored one, where is your true nature?

What is the heart of any big question? We are swimming in a sea of uncertainty and the mind wants to fill in the blanks. Yet our questions are much smaller than what’s on offer, what’s possible as an answer—the whole universe might be doing something through me.

“What is this?” asked the eccentric Zen teacher Budai, holding up odd objects to a crowd. The universe is an intimate net, its jeweled facets contain everything, including the smell of fresh toast. All living beings must turn toward the ultimate. This is deeper than any sorrow, horror, disgrace. The strangeness and beauty of now, of life, is beyond explanation. And this moment has always been here.

Salt and sauce—the taste of life is complex. Even in times of deprivation, persecution and war, the flavor of life may include radical happiness. In Zen, we don’t have to know the solution, we just put the next foot forward. We ally with the capacity of life to dissolve outrage and the need to be either right or wrong. Difficulty and richness accord with each other. Walking the path is the gift of Zen, feeling the ancestors’ gifts of salt and sauce.

Explaining things can put you in a bind. The humor of emptiness—a little eternity creeping in—is a panacea, and mind just undoes its problems. If we try to make sense of things, therein lies suffering. “You can’t really explain what inspires.”

We are fortunate to have incredible original music from talented musicians in our Sunday temple meditations and PZI retreats. Here are five guitar solos composed and performed by Jordan McConnell in 2023.

Takuan Soho, creator of the renowned golden yellow daikon pickle, was a poet, artist, calligrapher, master of the tea ceremony and Zen priest of Tokai temple—a master of the creative response. The arts of Zen are responses to our meeting whatever circumstances arise—death, war, love, loneliness, natural changes.

What are the special properties of gifts? You can not force giving. And the Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. Happiness is involuntary like the grass returning. Sorrow is involuntary like autumn leaves.

Takuan Soho—whose death poem was one character: dream—taught the dangers of a distracted mind. Son of a samurai, he understood how to lose your life. Circumstances need not be extreme. We can lose our lives any moment when we rely on devices or install veils between us and the unfixed motion of reality.

John Tarrant retells the mythic story of Belinda and the Monster, Italo Calvino’s version of Beauty and the Beast. The archetypal forces personified in the story are present in all of us. Can we allow ourselves to feel all that we are? What is the monster? Where do you find yourself in the story?

Even a delicious rest must end. The Dao suffers no plans but its own, and our bodhisattva path requires that we bring it back into the world. In Zen, the path goes on and on—we find more ways to grow the ways we love our lives. We are not trying to reach a place of endless tranquillity.