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IN THE BARDO
To Tell the Truth
How do you tell the truth? How do I tell the truth? I’ve been working on this question a long time. Francine Prose quotes Hemingway’s...
Birthdays
It bothers me that I still can’t remember my mom’s birthdate. I don’t have any childhood memories of her birthdays. What I remember from...
Going Gray
Two years ago, filling out my passport renewal application, likely for the last time, I stumbled on my height. I’ve been getting shorter...
Oh, Dirk.
In Zen funerals, we talk directly to the departed. I am at a loss for words. I am hoping that words will come. I am picturing you....
Bringing to the Societal Table Those Who Have Been Excluded
This has been the expression of my vow since I found the words in Bernie’s Instructions to the Cook. “Bringing to the societal table...
Visionary Leadership
This has to be the Zen practice. I love the story of the Golden City which the Buddha tells in the Lotus Sutra. It has inspired me. It is...
Magic
Catching the magic is sometimes not so easy. Stumbling into the magic of success is not something to be taken for granted. It has always...
What is Social Action?
The selflessness of social action is not self-neglect just as self-care is not self-neglect. There are four phrases that come to mind,...
No.
What is my “No!” When do I shout it? Do I really shout? “No!” Jesse and Theresa Peterford first met at ICS. Theresa, star teacher, chief...
Infinite Onion
Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to transform them. When I was doing koan practice with Jishu, very briefly in the last year of her...
Infinite Circle
We were serving special needs students at double the district rate. As we have built our schools, I have been guided by, anchored in an...
Mother's Day 2020
Zen’s relationship to mothers has always seemed a bit strange. Mother’s Day, 2020 is also the twenty-fifth anniversary of Maezumi Roshi’s...
Zen Budgeting Through the COVID-19 Pandemic
No one likes budget cuts. They are always painful. This was shaping up to be our most painful budget. Business people say when they are...
The Zen of Budgeting
Coming Soon, a case study in Zen Budgeting: Budgeting through the Covid-19 Pandemic. I am too grandmotherly. The Gateless Gate is the...
Oh, Richard
At a Zen funeral, we talk directly to the person who has left us. Oh, Richard, thinking of you, I smile. We had so much more to do. So...
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Ken Byalin
3 days ago4 min read
To Tell the Truth
How do you tell the truth? How do I tell the truth? I’ve been working on this question a long time. Francine Prose quotes Hemingway’s...
28 views0 comments
Ken Byalin
Feb 184 min read
Birthdays
It bothers me that I still can’t remember my mom’s birthdate. I don’t have any childhood memories of her birthdays. What I remember from...
34 views0 comments
Ken Byalin
Feb 115 min read
Going Gray
Two years ago, filling out my passport renewal application, likely for the last time, I stumbled on my height. I’ve been getting shorter...
30 views0 comments
Ken Byalin
Feb 35 min read
Lifelong Learning
When I invited the teachers who’d told me that they’d already found their dream job to put down on paper what it was that made our...
44 views0 comments
Ken Byalin
Jan 285 min read
Zazen
Listening to Bernie and Genpo talking about what, if any, were the absolutely essential ingredients of Zen, it disturbed me when they...
22 views0 comments
Ken Byalin
Jan 215 min read
Don't Forget Me
I am listening to a decade-old conversation between Bernie and Genpo , their reflection on forty years of friendship and Zen practice. I...
38 views0 comments
Ken Byalin
Jan 145 min read
“I’ve Got It”
It has never been easy for me to talk about kensho, the big “I’ve Got It,” the direct experience of the oneness of life without at least...
27 views0 comments
Ken Byalin
Jan 75 min read
Succession
“When the student is ready, the teacher will come.” I have been intrigued for years by the notion that when the teacher is ready, the...
52 views0 comments
Ken Byalin
Dec 30, 20245 min read
Building Spiritual Muscle
Last week, Dr. Gala put in my third and fourth stents, nine months after he’d done the first two. He’d expected to do them last spring,...
41 views1 comment
Ken Byalin
Dec 24, 20244 min read
No Merit
The account of Bodhidharma ’s meeting with Emperor Wu, the first case in The Blue Cliff Record , is one of those koans to which I return...
17 views0 comments
Ken Byalin
Dec 17, 20244 min read
Working With Koans
When I have talked about koan study, I have often noted how little instruction I received in how to actually work with a koan. The advice...
12 views0 comments
Ken Byalin
Dec 10, 20245 min read
Rewriting
It’s almost two years now since I ventured back into fiction writing. In high school, I fancied myself a fiction writer. In college...
28 views0 comments
Ken Byalin
Dec 4, 20244 min read
Enlightenment Day
It has been 52 years since my father passed, three days after his birthday, in 1972. I had just turned 30. His birthday, December 8, was...
35 views0 comments
Ken Byalin
Nov 26, 20245 min read
Practicing Zazen
We are told as beginning Zen students to notice our thoughts and let them go. As a beginning Zen teacher, I repeated that instruction. It...
26 views0 comments
Ken Byalin
Nov 21, 20244 min read
Imagining ZCLA
The Zen Center of Los Angeles occupies a special place in the history of American Zen and a very special place in my Zen iconography. It...
21 views1 comment
Ken Byalin
Nov 12, 20244 min read
Creations are Numberless
Even before I began to sit regularly, I was attracted by the image of the Bodhisattva, the heroic – to me -- Zen figure who defers his...
31 views0 comments
Ken Byalin
Nov 6, 20245 min read
Oh, Alice
On the end table in Vinnie’s waiting room, opened, waiting for me was a magazine story about Alice Munro. The evening before, eating a...
34 views1 comment
Ken Byalin
Oct 30, 20245 min read
Bernie & Gutei
There are koans that I keep returning to. Gutei’s one-finger Zen is one. Maybe it is wasted on most students in our lineage because we...
31 views0 comments
Ken Byalin
Oct 22, 20245 min read
Manresa
Only about once in 7 years does September 10 occur on a Tuesday. This was one of those years, the 22nd anniversary of the second coming...
23 views1 comment
Ken Byalin
Oct 15, 20244 min read
Attachment
So much of Zen practice is about working with our attachments. I’d caught a glimpse of the danger of attachments before I got to Zen. My...
33 views0 comments
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