What does it mean to be a Zen teacher? Sometimes I’m a rock in the surf. The New England coast. I see it from above, the spray rising from the rock. I hear the roar. I try to find the spot where the student’s waves break and roar. I stumble along with students, trying this and that, sometimes koans, sometimes not, looking for a place where that particular student’s surf crashes. When we find the place, I can feel it. There is a tension that Freud called “resistance.” Sometime

Roshi Bernie Glassman taught us to go up and down the mountain at the same time. Going up the mountain refers to our efforts to realize the oneness of life. We go up the mountain seeking enlightenment. We come down the mountain to help others. There are a lot of Zen people who don’t agree with Bernie. They argue that if we try to help others before achieving enlightenment, we will do more harm than good. Perhaps they’re embracing the Buddha’s first Pure Precept, ordinarily

Maybe we don’t realize it until we get up there in years. Then we see it all around us. Friends die. Institutions crumble. What can we do to avoid this pain? There is a story passed back and forth among Buddhists that attachments are the cause of suffering. As the story goes, we can get rid of our suffering by getting rid of our attachments. We can begin by letting go of stuff. Every time a bag of clothes that I haven’t worn in years goes off to the Viet Nam Vets I feel bet