Category Archives: Nona Strong Roshi

[AUDIO AND TEXT] Tonight I’d like to offer some expressions from a teacher named Susan Murphy, who comes to us from the lineage of Robert Aitken Roshi and John Tarrant Roshi. In her book, Upside-Down Zen: Finding the Marvelous in the Ordinary (Wisdom Publications, Boston, © 2006), Susan Murphy shares her experience of living ZenContinue reading “just sitting”

[AUDIO AND TEXT] What follows is a little bit esoteric, maybe even confused, and for that I beg your forbearance tonight. This is about an experience that I’ve heard related from others who practice the way we do. There are times when we perceive the field of our experience as being full of objects withContinue reading “no edges”

[AUDIO AND TEXT] Here are some words about emptiness. This first quotation comes from a book titled, Original Teachings of Ch’an Buddhism. Chang Chung-Yuan. Pantheon Books (a division of Random House). 1969. pp 48-49. When Hung-chih Cheng-chio was asked, ‘How is it that substance is lacking in the reality of purity and Void?’ he replied:Continue reading “a realization to relish”

[AUDIO AND TEXT] In the New Testament, we have Jesus stating his relationship with God in several places. For instance: Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. (Jn 14:10, NIV) And this, announcing the coming of the Holy Spirit: OnContinue reading “ourselves and the infinite”

[AUDIO AND TEXT] I was reading an article in the summer issue of Tricycle magazine (the Buddhist journal, Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 84-86). The article, by a man named Douglas Penick, is about the journey of old age, and it cites the poetry of Basho, the 17th century Japanese master. It’s a beautifully writtenContinue reading “whither?”

[AUDIO AND TEXT] Note: this is the first of two talks. The second is “No Fixed Point in Which We Can Rest.” Here’s an alleged quote from the actor Edward G. Robinson about the inner craft of acting. I think it also might apply to ourselves and our daily lives. He wrote, simply: Every oneContinue reading “it’s all made up”

[AUDIO AND TEXT] Note: this is the second of two talks. Please listen first to “It’s All Made Up”. Last week’s talk, “It’s All Made Up,” was I think a little unsettling to some of us, myself included, to tell you the truth. This week, I want to read some passages from a few spiritualContinue reading “no fixed point in which we can rest”

[AUDIO AND TEXT] I think we can all agree that we all must be able to maintain a certain presence of mind in order to conduct ourselves through our daily lives. We must be able to connect with the happenings of our days, in our personal circumstances and in the larger world, and in thatContinue reading “presence of mind to absence of mind”

[AUDIO AND TEXT] We spend a lot of energy on the question of self; i.e., just who or what is this self I call me? Who, in fact, is the “I” who’s even asking these questions? Since that seems to be a fundamental question that all of us experience – from time to time, atContinue reading “what defines us?”

[AUDIO AND TEXT] Here is a familiar story from Zen lore. It’s about Rinzai (Linji in Chinese) and an unnamed monk, and it’s often referred to as “Rinzai’s True Man of No Rank.” Today, we’d say “true person,” and many recent translations do use that terminology. But here’s the story as presented in a collectionContinue reading “setting our self aside”