Ruth Denison is the founder and resident teacher of Dhamma Dena Desert Vipassana Center in Joshua Tree, California. She is the first generation of women teachers of vipassanā in the West, and has been teaching at Insight Meditation Society in Barre since its inception in 1976. Ruth shared her life story and thoughts with Insight's editors while teaching at IMS in the fall of 1996. Ruth, you have a fascinating and unusual life story to tell. Can you share some of it with us? How did you get … [Read more...]
Sitting Just to Sit
The intimacy of practice is the practice of non-separation, of being at one with whatever is happening. We tend to think that we are not all right now—we're too fearful, greedy, angry, whatever—and if we take up some spiritual practice we can improve ourselves. By doing this, we think, we will be all right at some moment in an imagined future. This is the mind that works on the "in order to" principle—we are always doing this in order to get that, or to be that. Yet this very tendency—to … [Read more...]
Finding Our Place
Myoshin, you have been teaching at IMS and other retreat centers quite a bit these past few years. How did you first get involved with Buddhist meditation? I grew up in Western Canada, and from a very early age was drawn to nature. I found a sense of belonging there, a refuge from a chaotic and often painful world. It was in high school that I first read the book Siddhartha [by Herman Hesse]. This book touched a sense of possibility in me that I'd also felt from being in nature. Something was … [Read more...]
The Aṭṭhaka-vagga of the Sutta Nipata
Issho Fujita is a Japanese zen monk who has been the resident teacher at Valley Zendo in Chariemont, Western Massachusetts since 1987. This article is extracted from a weekend workshop offered at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in March 2000. My interest in studying this Pali text is an attempt to go back to the Buddha himself. Of course, we don't know exactly what he said. But according to most scholars the Pali texts are the earliest available teachings of the Buddha. And the Sutta … [Read more...]
Zazen Is Not the Same as Meditation
These remarks are excerpted from course handouts given by Rev. Fujita at a workshop called “The Lived-Body Experience in Buddhist Meditation" he taught at BCBS in March, 2002. There seems to be a common misunderstanding about zazen, which some people think of as a technique for reaching a state of “no thought.” Such an understanding of zazen assumes that a certain state of mind can be reached by manipulation, technique or method. In the West, zazen is usually translated as “Zen meditation” … [Read more...]
Sharing What You Love
Trudy Goodman lives and teaches in Los Angeles, and is a member of the Boston-based Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapist (IMP). She has been practicing Dharma for many years, in both the Zen and Vipassanā traditions. Trudy, in addition to being a long-time dharma practitioner and teacher, you are also a trained psychotherapist. What do you think of the recent confluence of these two traditions? I’m interested in the ways these two different traditions are already enriching one … [Read more...]
A Tiny Dot in a Vast Universe
An interview with Issho Fujita For the last eighteen years, Reverend Issho Fujita has been the resident teacher at Pioneer Valley Zendo, a Soto Zen practice center in Charlemont, western Massachusetts. He has taught a weekend retreat on Dogen Studies at BCBS each year for the last ten years. He has recently decided to move his family back to Japan. The Insight Journal talked with him about his hopes and aspirations in such a move. Would you talk a little bit about what it was like growing … [Read more...]
Lights Upon the Path: Great Faith, Great Courage, Great Questioning
At BCBS, September 2004 This evening I would like to follow up on what Stephen was saying in the morning about being careful, about energy, and about protecting, but I would like to look at the subject more from the perspective of the Zen tradition. Zen talks about cultivating three great attitudes—great faith, great courage and great questioning—and I think it is here that we find a continuation of the Buddha’s teaching about care, energy and protection. Faith, I think, corresponds to the … [Read more...]
It’s About How to Live
Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara is the abbot of the Village Zendo in Manhattan. She is a Soto Zen Priest and certified Zen Teacher in Maezumi Roshi' White Plum lineage. She received priest ordination from Maezumi Roshi and Dharma Transmission from Bernie Tetsugen Glassman Roshi. She holds a Ph.D. in Media Ecology, and taught at NYU for twenty years. One usually thinks of a Zen temple as tucked away peacefully in some fold of the misty mountains. I’m guessing this is not quite the case with you in … [Read more...]
Seeking the Seeker
I once asked my teacher, Anagarika Munindra-ji, ’’What is the dharma?” He said, very simply, “Dharma is living life fully. ” When we practice mindfulness meditation, many things arise in awareness. We typically turn our attention to each thing in turn—different thoughts, feelings, body sensations, states of mind. We often don’t turn our attention to that which is doing the observing, that which seems to be doing the thinking, that which is aware. This is what I want to do today—to actually … [Read more...]