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 ZEN MASTER SOENG HYANG

From her dharma talk:

One of my favorite metaphors is: you’re crossing a desert and you’ve gotta get from point A to point B, ... because you’re needed over at point B. So there’s no choice. It’s like a Bodhisattva vow. You’ve decided you’re gonna go over to point B. And you’ve gotta get across this desert. And even before you start walking, you know it’s a seven day trip, ... and you have three days worth of water. But you don’t rationalize it like that. Oh, wait a minute, I can’t go. I don’t have enough water. You just go anyway. So you just start walking, and try to spare the water. But it turns out, ... yep, it was three days worth of water. So the water’s gone. You can drop the water container and keep walking. Try to rest a bit. There’s no shade, just sun and sand. So, the whole thing is that you still understand point B,... that you’re needed and that’s your job to get over to there. So maybe by day four and a half you’re on your face, because you just don’t have it. Your muscles aren’t getting what they need, and you’re just dehydrated basically. So you just lie there with your face in the sand dehydrated, and you’re still heading toward point B. That’s the whole point in Buddhism, ...you can call it reincarnation, but it doesn’t matter what you call it, ...in your consciousness if you still understand point B, your Bodhisattva job, even if you die right there...which you’re going to,... you’re still gonna get there, ...you’re gonna get there. Because that’s your vow and that was your direction. It was ingrained in your consciousness. So you can’t measure it like: Oh, I can’t get it done. It’s not possible. You can get it

done. You just keep walking. You just keep working at it. No matter what your time frame is. You just do it. So that’s why we always say: just do it. No matter what, just do it. So the sad thing is if you don’t know your vow; you don’t know your direction. But that’s easy to find. If you just sit still for a while, it appears. It appears.  

Walking Meditation

Congratulations

James

James Siminak of the Woodstock Zen Group took the five precepts. Above he receives his precepts burn.

His Buddhist name is Do Mun, which means

Gate Path. 

Margaret McKenzie,

director of the

Ten Directions Zen Community, became a 

senior dharma teacher

and was given her green, ceremonial kasa. 

& Margaret

A Zen Master Visits Woodstock...

In July, we had the pleasure of hosting Zen Master Dae Kwang Sunim, Abbot of the Kwan Um School of Zen. He gave a wonderful dharma talk at the Unitarian Church and later joined us for our Thursday night practice at Ji Hak Sunim's.

From his dharma talk:

"So meditation at it’s core is keeping what we call a just now mind. So all these meditation techniques that you read about like following your breath, keeping you’re eyes open, saying a phrase to yourself, even like the Jesus prayer,... all of those things are just techniques pointing,...pointing to this original mind. And that original mind is the thing that’s important for human beings to experience because that’s where true happiness is. It isn’t in the likes and the dislikes. Most people think that happiness comes from satisfying your likes and getting rid of everything you dislike. But unfortunately, and you don’t have to take my word for it, unfortunately that doesn’t happen, because that’s what we call outside happiness. So outside happiness is based on circumstances external to your original mind which are always changing, ... always changing. And the most brutal way it does it is through age. So no matter what happens, ... well maybe you’ll die of an accident before it happens, but old age, sickness, and death, those things come to every human being and then,... gone, ...then where do you go? So I asked: Where do you come from? Where do you go? So those questions can be answered. Unfortunately, the books don’t have the answers. In fact, Zen doesn’t have the answers. Every human being has these inside, if they look. So these meditation techniques are teaching you how to look inside to find this true self that isn’t dependent on likes and dislikes, ... and isn’t dependent on outside situations. So how you do that is... you just have to start doing it. And nobody can do it for you. You know your husband can maybe make you do it, but then you’ll stop. And I can force you to do it, but you’ll stop. You have to do it yourself." 

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