Il-Bung’s tea

The Dharma talk today starts with a Zen Masters poems from my days at the American Zen College. I sit quietly in the looking-for-ox room. A cool wind blows on my face from the open window. A bell rings across the dharma tower. A lamp quietly illuminates the Lotus platform.

This is Zen

Abbot Will Rauschenberger’s Dharma Talk – 7/25/2021 Morality, meditation,  and wisdom as defined by Hui-neng in the Platform Sutra. Feature Image – “The Five Buddhas” oil painting by  Robert Dika.

Equanimity in Diversity

Guided by your original nature, your true face, everything is illuminated. With a reading from: ” The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng .”  — Pine, Red.

Eat Cake

Dharma talk – Sunday, July 4, 2021.  “Equanimity, and cake”

The Still Point

The great way is the still point permeating all movement. “Moonlight on water”

Linji’s Grandfatherly Advice

On this Fathers Day, 6/20/2021, Will reads from The Record of Linji (Linji Lu). Linji is the great grandfather of one of the schools of Zen (Chan) and has a message for us today. “Nowadays, he who studies buddhadharma must seek true insight. Gaining true insight, he is not affected by birth-and-death, but freely goes or stays. He needn’t seek the excellent— that which is excellent will come of itself.”

clouds

Bittersweet Life Lessons

The Road trip to my old homestead in northeastern Pennsylvania was a lifetime in the making. Touching into the deep recesses of my repository consciousness, the storehouse of all memories.  Bittersweet memories intermixing with the present moment like clouds breaking up rays of sunshine. Real and unreal, laughing and crying at the same time. Emotions dragged out of the deep caverns of the forgotten. One flowing into the other. My mother’s ashes placed next to my daughter Karen’s and my […]