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

NO SELF, NO PROBLEM

"Perhaps the reason Buddhism and other spiritual traditions use metaphors so frequently is because they sidestep the gatekeeping functions of the interpretive mind."

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No Self, No Problem: How Neurobiology Is Catching Up to Buddhism (2019) by Chris Niebauer. Peek behind the Matrix of your own mind by reading this book. The short take: your left brain "interpreter" is lying to you about almost everything, as it spins story after story and keeps your non-verbal right brain enslaved. Each chapter ends with a way or two to explore and/or experience the concepts it presents. This was a fascinating and brisk read. I highly recommend it.

Checked out from the Puyallup Public Library.

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"Compassion is all about the big picture, at which the right brain excels. I would add that true compassion only occurs when we can imagine ourselves in the position of another."

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"Maybe you meditate, practice mindfulness, and feel very spiritually grounded when you do, and later the ego comes back online and is frustrated to find out that you've run out of coffee."

WORDLESS PROCLAMATION

Zazen is wordless proclamation.

—Nyoze Kwong, Abbot of Sonoma Mountain Zen Center

THE WAX CHILD

"Hundreds of years I have lain here and heard you chatter; you humans like so much to talk, from the moment you are born until you die you are engaged in babble. All that is around us will someday fall. Some of it sooner than you think." [74]

"No one wants to eat me, but here I am for consuming. I was made a delicacy of shadows. Give to me not what you give me: eyes, attention, thoughts. I will have meat, human blood, a field of skin. The warmth that belongs to the firstborn under the willing arm, insufferable softness." [126]

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The Wax Child (2023) by Olga Raven. Translated (2025) by Martin Aitken. This is the novel equivalent of the cinematic black metal of Agalloch. The conceit is that it's narrated by a wax doll created by one of the main characters, Christenze, who will soon be accused of witchcraft in 1620s Denmark. Strangely enough, all of the above works perfectly. I was enthralled from the beginning, and, had I not been sick, would have finished this in one sitting. It's a fever dream of a novel that is evocative, haunting, and an unfortunate story. (But the wax child makes it sing!) There is a lyricism in the prose, and the author weaves in texts from historical documents in a like manner. I highly recommend it.

Borrowed from the Pierce County Library System.

RYŌKAN

The breath going out, the breath coming in

over and then over again

know that this is itself the proof

that this world never ends

—Ryōkan

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It was a beautiful day. It was a challenging day.

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I spent time studying the poetry of Ryōkan. I spent time with The Child. I spent time sitting with my South Sound Zen sangha. I spent time in pain. I spent time reading.

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Another translation: 

Out breath

and in breath

know that they are

proof that the world

is inexhaustible.

NOVEMBER

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball."
—from "Loomings" (chapter I) of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.

“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year”
—Emily Dickinson.

BECOMING YOURSELF

"It is easy to explain what Suzuki Roshi does not mean by [the practice of "becoming yourself"]. He does not mean perfecting your self-image or cultivating a unique style to broadcast. He does not mean learning how to be who other people think you are, or even who you think you are or should be. He does not mean trying to get a handle on who you are. Don't try to figure out who you are."

—Jiryu Rutschman-Byler

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"Our way of sitting is to become yourself."

—Shunryu Suzuki

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I sit. I sit to become myself. I sit in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki, who introduced Soto Zen to America. I sit in the lineage of Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen. I sit in the lineage of Daruma, the founder of Chan (Zen).

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Becoming Yourself (2025) is published 54 years after Suzuki's death and 55 years after his seminal Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. In it's best passages, Becoming Yourself reads a lot like the works of Dogen, which I find compelling and challenging.

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.

ILLUMINATION

Sunset. Backyard dojo. Sword meditation with 舌 / shita.

"Think about this: You always have your body with you. This makes it a wonderful meditation tool because, guess what? Your body can only be here in the present moment. Your body cannot be someplace else in the future, and it cannot return to the past. You are here. Body and mind are intimately connected. This is why it is precious to have the body to practice with, so make use of it. Be grateful your mind can always follow your body back to the present moment." 

—Illumination by Rebecca Li

ILLUMINATION

"There is a story that when someone asked Zen Master Shunryū Suzuki, 'What is enlightenment?' he replied, 'Enlightenment? I do not believe you will like it.'"

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Tonight, I told my Buddhist Reading Group that I "felt seen" while reading Illumination by Rebecca Li. It examines the obstacles and challenges one can encounter during Chan (Zen) meditation. And I have experienced them all, in one form or another. But it's also a good way to check one's practice and revisit the concept of "beginner's mind." Knowing what one is doing, whether for good or ill, allows for clarity and awareness.

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.

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

PIG at the CROSSING

Pig at the Crossing (2024) directed by Khyentse Norbu. This two-hour-long movie was slow, weird, existential, and exactly what I needed right now. I'm sure I missed many cultural cues and touchpoints in this Bhutanese film, but there was plenty for me to grasp.

The story follows a young man who is killed in an accident, but doesn't realize such for a while. Scenes linger for some time and then shift suddenly. Sounds drops off into silence or echoes after a long absence. Characters sometimes change appearance. A few scenes try to convey nonlinear, nonsequential time. Will the modern distractions and attachments of cellphones, Instagram, Tik Tok, pregnancy tests, Viagra, and the smell of gasoline ("the scent of civilization") keep one from rebirth and/or enlightenment? Yes. No. Perhaps.

Viewed as the May selection of the Tricycle Film Club.



"Whatever we do we leave footprints. But... some footprints destroy you. Some footprints destroy others. So you have to be careful my dear friend."

BEING-TIME

Let's get existential!

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I'm not going to pretend that I completely understand everything I'm reading from Dogen's masterwork the Shobogenzo. I don't! But I have Shinshu Roberts to help guide me through one of its ninety-five fascicles/essay, "Uji."

I first encountered her initial thoughts on "Uji" in Receiving the Marrow: Teachings on Dogen by Soto Zen Women Priests, edited by Eido Frances Carney. I found her teaching compelling enough that I wanted more. And here it is.

Shinshu Roberts breaks down "Uji" into manageable parts and comments upon them. She defines terms. She explores what Dogen is doing in this essay and how it connects to other essays in the Shobogenzo, which I find extremely helpful to my current "cutting in" project.

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It was interesting to learn that Dogen took a term consisting of two kanji, 有時, and transformed it. When they are combined, they read as aru-toki, "for the time being." When they stand alone, they read as u, "being," and ji, "time." So he takes the characters, figuratively breaks them apart, and then stitches them back together.

So the notion of uji, "being-time," is not only philosophically dense, but also linguistically rich. And bent like a reed by Dogen.

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"When we realize the nondual nature of a dharma position or particular being-time, we can include everything and avoid getting caught in a constricting story about our current situation. Making up a defining story line takes us further away from the true state of our experience." 

—page 45

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"When Dogen equates time and being, he shifts our erroneous notions of time from time outside the person to time as the person. The dharma position "person" is time. This being-time also includes everything at this time."

—page 50

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"The fact that we are buddha-nature does not mean we will act according to that nature. Expressing buddha-nature (realization) is dependent upon practice, which is the enactment of our true nature."

—page 69

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Did I mention notions of nonduality, nonsequential time, suchness, and the like? No? And I'm only a third of the way through this commentary.

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This is a wild ride and I am glad to have a teacher that is able to dissect Dogen's phrases and wordplay and philosophy and serve up (mostly) digestible nibbles and bites.

BLOSSOM

"'In the mountains' means the blossoming of the whole world."
—Dōgen

"Reality is reborn with every flower that blooms."
—Norman Fischer

"The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom."
—Isaiah 35:1

ZERO at the BONE

That moment when you encounter a kindred soul.

In my recent faith explorations, I have discovered many overlapping books, articles, and authors. Books on Buddhism have pointed me to journals on Christianity. One of those is Comment magazine. A review on the Comment website of Christian Wiman's book Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair found me immediately driving to a nearby bookstore to pick up a copy for my upcoming "bachelor weekend."

I'm finding this mix of poems, quoted passages, short essays, meditations on life and death, and observations on God and faith speaks to my soul. This is the book that I needed for the here and the now. Amen!

FAKE CONFIDENCE

"I miss [my old teacher Miriam's] knack of knowing me and looking like all the answers of life belonged to her, even the impossible ones. I am an adult now and I feel no such surety; I hope I fake confidence as well as she did. Perhaps that is the role of a responsible person—to fake the confidence he doesn't feel so that the young can believe in something. Except there are no young ones any more. I'm not sure who I'm faking for."

—The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley

ETHER

There is Good, not Evil in the Ether
There is Wisdom
There is Reason
There is the Way
The Mind, Empty

—the close of The Ether Scroll by Miyamoto Musashi

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The weather has been slowly warming up. Winter shifts to spring.

The weather has also been mostly dry, allowing me plenty of time in the backyard dojo.

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I've been working on various techniques, forms, and waza. 

I was recently introduced to reverse grip draws (gyakute-nuki, reverse hand grip draw; and yunde-nuki, bow hand draw, with the left hand!) and enjoy trying to perfect them. Additionally, they provide variation in the draws, which means fewer problems assoicated with repetitive motion.

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Visualization is another "technique" I've been focusing upon—thinking about and dreaming about clean lines earlier, and then implementing them now.