DELIVERANCE

5 of 5 in my series of worship folder cover art for the Sundays of August. The pastors are focusing on the Old Testament lectionary texts, working with the theme of "Restoration and Renewal." Once I created the first paper cut collage, the others came to me in quick succession. It was serious play!

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"Deliverance"
Jeremiah 15:15-21

SUCCULENCE

4 of 5 in my series of worship folder cover art for the Sundays of August. The pastors are focusing on the Old Testament lectionary texts, working with the theme of "Restoration and Renewal." Once I created the first paper cut collage, the others came to me in quick succession. It was serious play!

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"Succulence"
Isaiah 51:1-6

PRESENCE

3 of 5 in my series of worship folder cover art for the Sundays of August. The pastors are focusing on the Old Testament lectionary texts, working with the theme of "Restoration and Renewal." Once I created the first paper cut collage, the others came to me in quick succession. It was serious play!

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"Presence"
Isaiah 56:1, 6-8

SILENCE

2 of 5 in my series of worship folder cover art for the Sundays of August. The pastors are focusing on the Old Testament lectionary texts, working with the theme of "Restoration and Renewal." Once I created the first paper cut collage, the others came to me in quick succession. It was serious play!

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"Silence"
1 Kings 19:9-18

ABUNDANCE

1 of 5 in my series of worship folder cover art for the Sundays of August. The pastors are focusing on the Old Testament lectionary texts, working with the theme of "Restoration and Renewal." Once I created the first paper cut collage, the others came to me in quick succession. It was serious play!

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"Abundance"
Isaiah 55:1-5

BON ODORI

Bon Odori. Tacoma Buddhist Temple. 

 

Good food. Good friends. Brief worship. Dancing for the ancestors. Taiko drumming.

GLOSS

I am studying the sixteen bodhisattva precepts.

In the program in which I'm enrolled, we have to write glosses on each of the precepts. "[P]ut your reflections into a gloss, usually a paragraph on each precept, though it can become a creative project, as well." So I created "dharma gates" to represent each of the precepts. 

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The Three Treasures are in blue. The Three Tenets (Pure Precepts) are in red. The Ten Mindfulness Practices are in yellow.

Marks-A-Lot permanent marker on Montana Black spray paint on cardboard. Japanese kanji on labels.

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Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to master them.

Dharmas are boundless; I vow to comprehend them.

Reality is boundless; I vow to perceive it.

 
The third of the four Bodhisattva/All-Embracing Vows, in three translations/expressions: (1) Sonoma Mountain Zen Center; (2) Kazuaki Tanahashi; (3) Upaya Zen Center.

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I don't regard my life
as insufficient.
Inside the brushwood gate
there is a moon;
there are flowers.
 
—the poet Ryōkan, translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi

ONE-DAY SIT

Now sit steadfastly and think not-thinking. How do you think not-thinking? Beyond thinking.

—from "Fukanzazengi" by Dōgen

 

My spot of "focus" for the day, although not really "seen" for most of that time, except indistinctly.

 

I'm exhausted but in a good way, even though I mostly sat staring at a wall.

WORDLESS PROCLAMATION

Zazen is wordless proclamation.

—Nyoze Kwong, Abbot of Sonoma Mountain Zen Center

STORM of FORMS

Tonight's sit was a storm of forms arising from emptiness. (Except emptiness is form, and form is emptiness.)

The ticking of the clock on the wall. 

The scent of someone's sweat. 

Sirens of emergency vehicles, near and far. 

Sighs and soft exhalations. 

The chatter of my own mind. 

The humming of the heater when it was on. 

The fluctuating temperature of the room. 

The aroma of Eiheiji incense. 

The pins-and-needles burning of numb legs. 

The dripping of the leaky pipe supplying the water fountain. 

The flicker of the candle on the altar. 

The slight smell of urine on a nearby cushion or the floor. 

People talking loudly in the alley behind the building. 

The shifting of someone in a chair.

And yet: simply showing up for the present moment.

ALTAR

I bought a small black metal side table and a couple of bamboo cutting boards at IKEA to build a simple and inexpensive home altar. ("Practice" is my word for 2026.)



The altar is ready for shikantaza ("just sitting").



I also purchased a 4-inch camphor-wood mokugyo (fish drum) for chanting at home.

BODHI DAY / RŌHATSU

A blessed Rōhatsu / Bodhi Day to everyone. (12/8 is the day commemorating the enlightenment of the Buddha.)

For me, this past year has been a year of learning and listening and living the practice. I’ve done a lot of reading.

The first stack is the books I read with the Buddhism Today Reading Group. 

January

The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise by Pico Iyer.

February

Mountains and Rivers Sutra: Teachings by Norman Fischer transcribed and edited by Kuya Minogue.

March

Good Citizens: Creating Enlightened Society by Thich Nhat Hanh.

April

Refuge in the Storm: Buddhist Voices in Crisis Care edited by Nathan Jishin Michon.

May

The Buddhist and the Ethicist: Conversations on Effective Altruism, Engaged Buddhism, and How to Build a Better World by Peter Singer and Shih Chao-Hwei.

June

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chödrön.

July

The Free Mind: Finding Clarity in a Digitally Distracted World by Dza Kilung Rinpoche.

August

Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity & Love by Oren Jay Sofer.

September

Illumination: A Guide to the Buddhist Method of No-Method by Rebecca Li.

November

The Poetry of Grief, Gratitude, and Reverence edited by John Brehm.

My favorite books of this stack were Refuge in the Storm, a book about Buddhist health care and chaplaincy by various authors, and Illumination, a look at the core teachings of Chan (Zen) Buddhism.

The second stack is the books that are part of my “Cutting In” reading project based on the Shobogenzo. The other books are primarily commentaries expounding upon various fascicles (essays) found therein. 

• Treasury of the True Dharma Eye edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi. 
• Dōgen's Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki edited by Shohaku Okumura. 
• Being-Time: A Practitioner's Guide to Dōgen's Shōbōgenzō Uji by Shinshu Roberts.
• Mountains and Rivers Sutra: Teachings by Norman Fischer transcribed and edited by Kuya Minogue.
• Realizing Genjokoan: The Key to Dogen's Shobogenzo translated and commentated by Shohaku Okumura.
• How to Raise an Ox: Zen Practice as Taught in Master Dogen's Shobogenzo by Francis Dojun Cook.
• Shōbōgenzō: Zen Essays by Dōgen translated by Thomas Cleary.
• Receiving the Marrow: Teachings on Dogen by Soto Zen Women Priests edited by Eido Frances Carney.
• Master Dōgen's Zazen Meditation Handbook: A Translation of Eihei Dōgen's Bendōwa with commentary by Zen Master Kōshō Uchiyama Roshi, translated by Shohaku Okumura and Taigen Daniel Leighton.

It’s been a challenging and compelling time of exploration, examination, and reflection.

The third stack is the “other” Buddhist books I’ve been reading in between the other two stacks. 

• The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women edited by Florence Caplow and Susan Moon.
• Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life by Shunryu Suzuki.
• Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice by Shunryu Suzuki.
• Taking the Path of Zen by Robert Aitken.
• The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics by Robert Aitken.
• Sky Above, Great Wind: The Life and Poetry of Zen Master Ryokan translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi.

The Hidden Lamp is the most interesting of this stack because my South Sound Zen sangha is reading and discussing the various koans and accompanying commentaries together. Each week, I get to discover how much I missed in my reading and/or the insights and discoveries of my fellow readers.

MOMENT

"Accepting each moment as a brand-new moment is what is meant by beginner’s mind. What you are experiencing may be similar to what you have experienced before, but it is not the same."

—Illumination by Rebecca Li

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Tonight was a "beginner's mind" sit for me. My Zen group filled the room, so I was seated on a meditation bench rather than a cushion. The incense irritated my throat a bit during walking meditation. But it was wonderful to simply sit alone together. I ran sword meditation drills through my head as a focus. It was a beautiful moment.

THE HIDDEN LAMP

"This collection is for everyone who is looking to complete the broken circle that exists in all our great religions—and in our hearts and world." 

—Zoketsu Norman Fischer, from the Foreword

The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women, edited by Florence Caplow and Susan Moon

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The meditation community I've joined, South Sound Zen, exists in two versions. There is an in-person Thursday group that sits zazen in two 25-minute sessions, walks kinhin for 10 minutes, chants, and hears a brief shared reading. This is a recent incarnation, and how I typically participate. But there is also an original online Tuesday version that sits briefly (10 to 15 minutes) and discusses various Buddhist readings and teachings for the rest of the hour. I was able to participate in the Tuesday offering for the first time and it sang to me.

I enjoyed the reading of a koan, and accompanying commentary, from The Hidden Lamp, as well as the discussion that followed. Everyone was invited to share their thoughts on the reading, which was welcomed, as I would have otherwise likely just listened. The gentle nudge to share what I encountered in the text, made me see it anew. The observations of others helped to deepen the text even more. It was exactly what I've been searching for the past few months, so I purchased a copy of the current book and am ready to sit again next Tuesday.

WEIGHING EMPTINESS

"The situation of being left high up in midair is indeed terrifying and maddening existentially, for knowing that things, ideas, and values have no self-nature and that there is nothing whatsoever to cling to is an unbearable threat to our whole way of life. It deconstructs our conventional worldviews so relentlessly that nothing is left to rely on and feel certain of. And yet, this is precisely what practitioners must grapple with—a complete collapse of the reificational way of thinking and its implications. Only then can they realize a truly liberating, responsible religiosity."

—page 44, "Weighing Emptiness," Dōgen on Meditation and Thinking: A Reflection on His View of Zen by Hee-Jin Kim

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For the past year or so, the Zen notion of "emptiness" keeps bubbling up in my thoughts. 空 / kū can mean sky or emptiness or the air or space. So this notion of suspended in kū is terrifying. The related concept of 無 / mu which can mean nothingness or to be non-existent or void is likewise terrifying in its own right. So when I encountered the essay "Weighing Emptiness" by Hee-Jin Kim on a research visit to Pacific Lutheran University's Mortvedt Library, I knew I needed to spend some time with the book in which it is found and all six essays. (I've made it through the first three.)

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Hee-Jin Kim is as erudite and dense and chewy and mind-blowing and compelling as I find Dōgen to be. Kim's commentary is an order of magnitude more accessible, however, which is helpful.

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In the quote above, I'm reminded of Christ's kenosis, his self-emptying referred to in Philippians 2:7. "[Christ] made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness." I'm also reminded of Pip floating in the vast expanse of the sea in "The Castaway," chapter 93, of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. "The sea had jeeringly kept [Pip's] finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul...and therefore his shipmates called him mad...So man's insanity is heaven's sense..." To be stretched out between the mortal realm and the heavens, as Christ on the cross or Pip in the indifferent void of unbound ocean, as though hanging over the abyss (as one actually is) and to be aware of such, is likely to unhinge one's mind from the mundane, the ordinary, the everyday. Encountering emptiness, and the very ground of being, as one who is part of that emptiness yet differentiated (or so it would seem) from it, would appear to open up a "wound" in one's being. A separation. A gulf.

Then it gets more personal. (Or less personal, perhaps.)

When I broke my arm, the existential crisis it presented left me two responses. As my arm hung in space, swinging like a pendulum that I could not control, I knew I needed to get to the ground so that I didn't pass out. (While my arm may have been suspended in space, apparently the rest of my body was not.) That was the first response. The second response was to scream—because of the pain, because of the rupture from what I expected versus what was happening, from the break that occurred that was more than just physical damage. I continued to scream and scream and scream. I did so until the EMTs that arrived gave me ketamine to quiet me. That was after the morphine.

Either the combination of morphine and ketamine or, more likely, an accidental overdose of ketamine, provided further rupture. "Troy" continued to do things in "my" absence. I learned of interactions and conversations between medical personnel and "myself" that I do not remember. Some of it is on video or I wouldn't believe it. So who is it that had those conversations? Were they patterned responses? Did "I" reside elsewhere while my physical appearance acted on "my" behalf? Did "I" return to the "Ground of Being," "emptiness," "God" for a few moments before "I" differentiated once again? Were there two representations of "Troy" due to the break; was I fractured as an echo of the structural "collapse" of part of my body?

Since the break, I have relived it every night in my dreams. I break my arm every night. Every damn night. And it is "real." Is it as real as the first time? Maybe. I don't really know. But it is traumatic each time, and I wish it would cease. Yet it continues. Each night, I experience "the situation of being left high up in midair" and it is terrifying. While the physical scars slowly recede, partly due to the invasive (yet elected) insertion of a titanium nail into the center of my arm and healing and rehabilitative exercises and time, I'm not certain that the psychic scars decrease. I continue to hang.

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I continue to read and reflect. As I absorb the words of Kim and Dōgen, I embody them and manifest them. I stitch them into my very being. May I soon know the meaning of "emptiness." I think I'm getting there, but I still have some distance to travel.

FLOWERS

"Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread."

—Dogen, from "Genjō Kōan" ("Actualizing the Fundamental Point")

translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi

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"Therefore flowers fall even though we love them; weeds grow even through we dislike them."

—Dogen, from "Genjōkōan" ("to answer the question from true reality through the practice of our everyday activity")

translated by Shohaku Okamura

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Tonight, during zazen with South Sound Zen, my mind kept wandering back to the flowers on the altar—amidst the scent of Japanese incense, the incessant barking of my body, the wrestling of robes by one of our leaders, and the sounds of the city through the open windows.

There is effort to arrange the flowers. There is effort to place the flowers on the altar. And then they "disappear" while we sit. For that matter, they "disappear" even once we end sitting; most of us, most of the time, don't think about them again. But tonight, I did. And tonight, the line above (the Okamura translation) was referenced by our leader, which made those flowers on the altar bloom all over again for me. Attachment? Perhaps. Beauty and engagement? Yes. And of the (present) moment.

LAN SU CHINESE GARDEN

As the temperatures in Portland moved from the low- to mid-70s of the morning and afternoon to the low-80s of the late afternoon, we sought relief at the Lan Su Chinese Garden in Portland's Chinatown. (And this garden provided such relief. It felt a few degrees cooler than the sidewalks and streets outside its perimeter.) We really just kind of stumbled upon it last minute, so we didn't know what to anticipate. We could see that it was contained within one square block, so my expectations were low.



This garden was radically different in architecture, atmosphere, and tone from the Japanese gardens. Where the Japanese gardens were subtle and understated, this Chinese garden was ornate and overstated. Buildings and structures of the residence of a Ming-era Confucian scholar, his family, and attendants surrounded a small lake at their center. Like the daimyo who would have owned the property at the Japanese garden, this Confucian scholar would have been part of the governing elite of his society.



Stone, water, and plants were the foundations for this garden, just as they were for the Japanese gardens, but the structures really added an element of their own. Wooden posts and pillars, gates and doors and panels, curved stone tile roofs all lent themselves to making this one square block a world of its own. The rest of the city, pressing in all around the garden, "disappeared" in many ways. The noise diminished and unless one looked up and saw the surrounding skyscrapers, one could imaging one's self in 16th century China.



I was fascinated by the way that this garden was claimed and tamed by the human, in a way that felt more overt than the Japanese garden. Chinese hanzi characters spoke from stones, panels, pillars, and carved wooden signs hanging over entryways. Language helped to "speak" form to this space (and time). Stones were large and bold. Shapes and structure were built into paved stone walkways, windows in walls, and ornamental tiles. It was fascinating and a time to see how Confucianism and Taoism played into the architecture of the garden and buildings of this Chinese garden in the same way the Shintoism, Buddhism, and Taoism sculpted the gardens layouts of the Japanese garden.

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Both gardens provided me with plenty of things to continue to mull over and reflect upon, even as I leave the physical spaces behind in Portland.

PORTLAND JAPANESE GARDEN

We visited Portland Japanese Garden, which is really five "collected" styles of Japanese garden, housed on the former grounds of the Portland Zoo in Washington Park. We took a public tour and our guide was one of the directors of the board. She had us hold two Japanese concepts in mind while we explored the gardens: 間 / ma, which means something like "a pause in time" or "empty space" or "negative space;" and 見立絵 / mitate-e, which means something like "look and compare pictures" or "to liken to something else" or even "to see with one's own eyes." These two concepts provided us a framework to interpret the gardens and their elements of stone, water, and plants through our own lenses and worldviews. 

So this visit was much different than the last time we were there. It was June rather than May. It was warm rather than cool. It was bright and sunny rather than overcast and gray. It was dry rather than misty and or lightly raining. The gardens were filled with a lot of people rather than being sparsely populated.

But here were the things I noticed in the five gardens this time, with a couple of framing devices and a different set of circumstances to guide my attention.



Flat Garden. The flat garden is the "yard" of a large pavilion, the latter having been built in a traditional Japanese architectural style of the Tokugawa shogunate. The railing and the roof of the pavilion porch provide a frame for the picture of the yard. The landscaping of this garden represents the four seasons—a cherry tree representing spring; black pine trees representing summer; Japanese maple trees representing autumn; and the raked gravel representing summer, as well as water (essentially a dry, stone lake). 

Tea Garden. This garden features a tea house and the garden that surrounds it. But I was especially enamored by the canopy of small green maple leaves. I kept looking up. Last time I visited, the history of the tea house and tea ceremony was highlighted, so my attention wandered elsewhere this time. The colors and forms, swaying in a light breeze, were intriguing.



Strolling Pond Garden. This garden is about water and the shore that surrounds it. There is one elongated pond that feels as though it is two ponds, one significantly larger than the other and bisected by Moon Bridge and its lotus finials on the four posts. There is a waterfall and its accompanying large stones. But I was fascinated by the koi and watching them slowly swim along the water's edge searching for algae and insects.



Natural Garden. This "wild" garden is just as intricately planned as the others but feels as though it contains more, even cluttered, when compared to the relative sparseness of the other gardens. Our guide told us to look for moon imagery scattered throughout this garden and once suggested I noticed it everywhere. The gate to this garden has asymmetrical doors, the wider door representing a full moon, the narrower door representing a new or quarter moon. Stones had full and quarter moons carved into them or differently-colored tiles inlaid. And this lantern had a full moon on one side and a quarter moon on its opposite.



Sand and Stone Garden. This is my favorite garden of the five. It has seven stones that "face" a "Buddha stone." The garden illustrates a story of Shakyamani Buddha sacrificing himself to feed seven tiger cubs that are trapped in a valley or large depression. He offers his body as food to sustain them, knowing that he will be reborn to continue his work of awakening. Strangely enough, the story feels very eucharistic.

As in the Flat Garden, the raked gravel represents water. Each "tiger" stone appears to be an island with ripples emanating out from it. Or a head poking up from beneath the surface of a pond or lake. (In some versions of the story, other animals are saved—bears or crocodiles or dolphins. But the truth of the story remains the same.)

BIBLIOMANCY: WHEN THINGS FALL APART

When I purchased the June 2025 selection for the Buddhism Today Reading Group, When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön, I randomly inserted a King's Books bookmark into the book.

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"When I was a child, I had a picture book called Lives of the Saints. It was filled with stories of men and women who had never had an angry or mean thought and had never hurt a fly. I found the book totally useless as a guide for how we humans were supposed to live a good life. For me, The Life of Milarepa is a lot more instructive. Over the years, as I read and reread Milarepa's story, I find myself getting advice for where I am stuck and can't seem to move forward. To begin with, Milarepa was a murderer, and like most of us when we blow it, he wanted to atone for his errors. And like most of us, in the process of seeking liberation, he frequently fell flat on his face. He lied and stole to get what he wanted, he got so depressed he was suicidal, and he experienced nostalgia for the good old days. Like most of us, he had one person in his life who continually tested him and blew his saintly cover. Even when almost everyone regarded him as one of Tibet's most holy men, his vindictive old aunt continued to beat him with sticks and call him names, and he continued to have to figure out what to do with that kind of humiliating squeeze."

—page 117

TEMPLE BETH EL

Shabbat shalom! My small group worshipped with our Jewish neighbors in Tacoma this evening.

This is a detail of one of the two glass burning bush menorot in the sanctuary of Temple Beth El.