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Earth Dreams: Zen Buddhism and the Soul of the World: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Amy Kisei
Zen Buddhist teachings point to a profound view of reality--one of deep interconnection and non-separation. Awakening is a word used to describe the freedom, creativity and love of our original nature. This podcast explores the profound liberating teachings of Zen Buddhism at the intersection of dreamwork and the soul. The intention is to offer a view of awakening that explores our deep interconnection with the living world and the cosmos as well as to invite a re-imagining of what human life and culture could be if we lived our awakened nature. Amy Kisei is a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Somatic IFS Spiritual Counselor, Astrologer and Artist. She practices and teaches at the confluence of spirituality, psychology and somatics--affirming a wholistic path of awakening. You can learn more about Amy Kisei's upcoming retreats and/or 1:1 work on her website: https://www.amykisei.org/ amykisei.substack.com
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- 4 days ago31 min
Nothing in this World Frightens Me
Greetings!It’s Leo season (how is it the over 50% of people I know are Leos?) I have had the joy of some travel over the past month—Mud Lotus Sangha did our first weeklong sesshin at Saranam Retreat Center in WV, I saw Bob Dylan in concert in Cincinnati and spent a few days on the Atlantic shore immersed in Ocean Mudra Samadhi.I’m back in Ohio for a couple of weeks and then I will be heading to Great Vow Zen Monastery for a jukai ceremony and our Grasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin followed by a week of residency.Today though I want to share a koan that has been a companion for these last few weeks. It’s Case 36 in the Hidden Lamp: The Old Woman, Joshu and the Tiger.One day wehn Master Joshu was outside the monastery, he saw an old woman hoeing a field. He asked her, “What would you do if you suddenly met a fierce tiger?” She replied, “Nothing in this world frightens me,” and turned back to her hoeing. Joshu roared like a tiger. She roared back at him. Joshu said, “There’s still this.”One thing I love about koans like this is that they speak the language of awakening, right in the everyday activities of life.Imagine weeding in your garden, and someone came up to you and said. What would you do if you suddenly met a fierce tiger?What would you do?So Joshu is a seasoned Zen teacher, and this old woman is seasoned in the wisdom of life and may also be a Zen master.What is Joshu doing? Who is this tiger?Is he talking about her? About himself? Another teacher with insight? Tigers can refer to a zen adapt/teacher who is wise, fierce—dangerous for the ego.He also could be testing her. How do you stand with yourself? How do you stand with this fierce wilderness we call life/the world/spiritual path?He is also talking to us. How do you stand with the wild unknown?Nothing in this world frightens me. She says. She may also be saying, you don’t frighten me. I don’t frighten me.Here is someone seasoned in the wisdom of life, loss, change. She has lived through the death of loved ones, famines, wars, times of abundance. She has been child, maiden, mother, sister, friend, elder.And yet, she says, nothing in the world frightens me. That’s a powerful statement for anyone. Feel into that for a moment. Try it on. Say the words. Nothing in the world frightens me.Could that be true for you? Where do the words come from when you say them? What happens?Is there a place in you that is fearless? That doesn’t suppress fear, but also isn’t afraid of it? Or does the statement invoke fear, call forward the things that are unsettled in your heart?This koan invites us to study the dharma gate of fear. To truly study fear means we also study liberation, compassion, the refuge of the dharma, and everything else that is connected to fear. In my experience some fears are hidden, they arise in the moment—a living tiger comes (ever have an encounter with a wild animal?) or it comes in the form of diagnosis, job loss, stomach sickness. When fear arises we get to see its shape, and what else arises in its wake. Some fears arise in relationship to other emotions, some fears wake us up and connect us to what matters most, some leave us deeply present, some send us worrying or bring the body into a panic state.Other fears are more front and center. They are in response to the life we are living now. Do you have fears that you are navigating in your life now? How does fear arise? Do they come as images? Well acquainted worries? Memories? Parts of yourself?What happens in your body? What does fear feel like? Are other emotions present as well? How does the mind react to fear?Rilke says it this way in letters to a young poet, “Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”Dharma practice offers us supports in meeting fear. All the practices we have can be supports: mantra, breath, grounding in the senses, opening to spaciousness, feeling fear directly in the body.Often when we stay with fear and try to get to know it we see that it too is made of sensations, thoughts, memories, feelings—that arise and pass. Sometimes compassion arises or we have insights about the nature of fear and what is it connected to. As we practice with fear, confidence develops that we can feel fear. That we don’t have to be afraid of it.Tremendous inner power can come from this. Throughout spiritual traditions we see depictions of sages, buddhas, bodhisattvas, shamans, gods who have relationships with fierce animals, with tigers, lions, snakes, elephants.When we are no longer afraid of our fear
- Jun 26, 202630 min
equanimity's full range
Greetings Friends,I have been reflecting on the art of living a life of attention and intention. This is an art form I have dedicated much of my life to, and one that continues to bear fruit as I continue to practice it.What is the art of living?How is attention an art?Last night I was walking home with my partner from meditation, it was dusk. The fire flies had just started to flutter about, offering their pulsating flashes of illumination. The air was warm, a gentle breeze. We took the “longer” route, through residential roads where cone flowers, milk weed, bee balm, lilies and zinnia are brimming and blooming in hell strips and front yards. My body felt satisfied. My heart was full. Appreciation stirred in my cells. As the world darkened and the moon beamed brighter. The art of attention opens us to the magic and mystery of this world we live in, this life that we inhabit. Without thinking about it, we experience a life-world-self that is interconnected, emergent, alive. The art of attention also allows us to actually experience our lives, to let things flow, change. To feel the processes that move through us, to notice when we are hooked into a limiting belief or narrative about ourselves and the world. To notice when we are shutting down a particular feeling or emotion.the art of feeling our livesThis past Monday during our live online meditation group we read from the Hidden Lamp Case 23: Jiao-an’s Sand in the Eye. In it Jiao-an is told by her teacher Yuanwu, that she must, “erase all views” and then she “will finally be free.”Jiao-an responds to this in a verse:the pillar pulls out a bone sideways; the void shows its claws and fangs; even if one profoundly understands, there is still sand in the eye.In her commentary to the koan, Zenki Mary Mocine Roshi writes:When I began practice I struggled with what I took to be the instruction to suppress emotions. I heard that I would find equanimity by not having views, or emotions, and it seemed to me that I was being asked to give up my humanity and my personality. There may have been some such flavor to the teachings I heard, but I think I exaggerated it out of my own fear of the teaching of “no-self” and my own need to do it “right.”I have found that my life works when I do not try to suppress emotions or deny that I have views. When I deny them, they just sneak up on me later and cause problems.She goes on to share a memory about her early years of training at Tassajara where she did practice suppressing an emotion. She reflects:Had I allowed myself to feel the pain, to really physically experience it, I would have been able to let it go rather quickly. This is the emptiness of emotions. They arise, abide and pass away, but only if we allow them to arise in the first place.It is human to have emotions. However, it is our practice to not let them have us. In the years since that experience at Tassajara, I have learned to pay attention to my breath and my body. Then I’m suppressing something, my body feels heavy and my belly feels tense. Then I know to stop, breathe, and ask myself, “What is this?”I really appreciate how Zenki describes the emptiness of emotion, the tendency to suppress and how a certain hearing of the teachings/or experiences of emptiness or equanimity may lead us down the road to suppression.Part of the art of attention is the art of recognizing and then familiarizing ourselves with the empty yet apparent nature of experience. Sensations, thoughts, feelings, emotions, physical discomforts arise through the various causes and conditions that make-up our human life. We, as practitioners, as artists of the Way—can notice the composition of these sensations, feelings, thoughts and emotions. This is the courageous act of feeling our embodied experience, allowing emotions to arise and experiencing our lives. While this may seem simple in written word form—truly it is an embodied art. For we, as humans have developed habits for managing our experience. We have learned that certain feeling states are “bad” or “wrong” or “dangerous”. And have developed skill in ignoring, suppressing or pushing certain emotions away.On the other side there are feeling states, emotions, sensations, thoughts that we have deep habitual tendencies towards entertaining, getting identified with, and believing. The practice of emptiness is the art of experiencing life as it is. To allow what is happening to happen. To trust that we can feel our lives. I always love the analogy of experience being like weather, in that it is always moving through. Some feelings are stormy, some are bright, some emotions feel like layers of gray clouds, others like a light mist. Just like the sky allows the weather to pass through it—the sky of awareness allows the weather of emotion and f
- Jun 21, 202635 min
the size of awakening?
Greetings Friends,Happy Solstice! Here in the northern hemisphere it is the longest day of the year, one of two days of the year where the sun appears to stand still on the horizon. I feel interested in that teaching, here in what sometimes feels like the most active or busiest of seasons—what is stillness? where is stillness?What does it look like to let your inner sun rest, or to recognize that it’s already still, shining brightly—no matter what.This week’s koan from the Hidden Lamp is about big and small enlightenments. I’ll let you listen to the podcast for the case and reflection this time. In celebration of the solstice, I would like to share a passage from Dogen Zenji’s Genjo Koan, sometimes translated as “the way of everyday life.” The Mud Lotus Sangha has been exploring this teaching over the course of the last month. Sitting with the different images and passages. Gaining enlightenment is like the moon reflecting in the water. The moon does not get wet nor is the water disturbed. Although its light is extensive and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch across. The whole moon and the whole sky are reflected in a dewdrop in the grass, in one drop of water. Enlightenment does not disturb the person just as the moon does not disturb the water. A person does not hinder enlightenment just as a dewdrop does not hinder the moon in the sky. The depth of the drop is the height of the moon.I invite you to spend sometime today in stillness. Take a moment to open your awareness to the entire moon, the entire sky. Remember that you are one dew drop among many, reflecting vastness. You can not hinder awakening, it is your nature.As one teacher said, “so get used to it!”As always, I would love to hear your reflections!Weekly Online Meditation EventMonday Night Dharma — 6P PT / 9P ET Join weekly for drop-in meditation and dharma talk. We are currently exploring the Hidden Lamp: Teaching from the Buddhist Women AncestorsFeel free to join anytime. Event lasts about 1.5 hours. ZOOM LINKIn-Person in OregonGrasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin— August 10 - 16 at Great Vow Zen MonasteryIn-Person in Columbus, Ohio through Mud Lotus SanghaWeekly Meditations on Tuesday, Wednesday and ThursdayRetreats, Meditation instruction and other events can be found on our website.Upcoming Sesshins at Saranam Retreat Center in West VirginiaInterdependence Sesshin June 29 - July 5 (Registration is now open!)I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, Astrologer and Artist. I offer 1:1 Spiritual Counseling sessions using IFS and Hakomi (somatic mindfulness). I also offer astrology readings. Check out my website to learn more. I currently live in Columbus, OH and am a supporting teacher for the Mud Lotus Sangha. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amykisei.substack.com/subscribe
- Jun 14, 202631 min
Let the soft animal of your body, love what it loves
Greetings Friends,Happy New Moon! This past week we explored the Hidden Lamp Case 21: Linji Meets the Old Woman Driving the Ox.Linji Meets the Old Woman Driving the OxChina, ninth centuryMaster Linji Yixuan went to see Master Bingdian An. On the way he met an old woman driving an ox in a field. Linji asked her, “Which way is the road to Bingdian?”The woman hit the ox with her stick and said, “This animal! It walks all over the place without even recognizing the road.”Linji repeated, “I asked you, which way is the road to Bingdian?”The woman said, “This beast! It’s five years old and still can’t be put to use.”Linji said to himself, “If you want to learn something from the person in front of you, first observe what the person does.” And he had the feeling that his sticking-point had been removed.Then, when he reached Master An, An asked him, “Have you seen my sister-in-law?”Linji said, “Yes, I’ve already been taken in tow.”I’m curious when you read this exchange is there a line or phrase that interests you, or that you have some sort of reaction to?Feel free to share. What touches you, what are you curious about? What feels aversive? What questions come up for you? How is this exchange relevant for your life and practice?These koans are teaching stories. And often what stirs in us is our way into them. If you are interested in hearing a little more about Master Linji and his origin story, as well as my comments on the koan, including being useless—listen to the audio recording. The Soft Animal of the BodyI am always curious when animals show up in koans. In reflecting on this koan, I got interested in the Ox. The Ox is a symbol for our true nature in the Zen tradition. There are a series of images called the Ox-herding pictures that portray important elements on this path of practice-awakening. They depict the movement from searching for our nature, to having a glimpse, to training ourselves to recognize and abide here, to eventually seeing through ideas of self/true nature, and living fully as we are in service to all beings.This week though, as I sat with the koan—a line from Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese came to heart, “let the soft animal of your body, love what it loves.” This is such a deep invitation into presence. To feel our lives. To feel our bodies. To recognize the pleasure, the bliss of embodiment—right here, right now.I can notice how my mind wants to come in and fantasize about the things my body might want or long for, but part of what I am interested in is how the body can only love what is. Our bodies are always in the present moment.Our bodies speak the language of sensation, feeling, movement, texture, touch. Our bodies love through experiencing. Notice right now— what does your body love, in this moment?To ask, we need to sink into to our embodied life. To feel the changes in air temperature, the movement of breath, the touch of clothing, the pulsing and flickering of sensation. To hear and see, to smell and taste—to open the senses. For this sense world is our embodied life.When we let ourselves abide fully in our sense experience, we naturally open to the truth of interconnection. We feel ourselves as part of this great earth and in community with all, truly our lives are interpermeated—our bodies are the body of the entire world.So this week, today, right now—sit like an ox, here in your own body—loving what you love. Be the animal walking all over the place, the beast that can’t be put to use!Weekly Online Meditation EventMonday Night Dharma — 6P PT / 9P ET Join weekly for drop-in meditation and dharma talk. We are currently exploring the Hidden Lamp: Teaching from the Buddhist Women AncestorsFeel free to join anytime. Event lasts about 1.5 hours. ZOOM LINKIn-Person in OregonGrasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin— August 10 - 16 at Great Vow Zen MonasteryIn-Person in Columbus, Ohio through Mud Lotus SanghaWeekly Meditations on Tuesday, Wednesday and ThursdayRetreats, Meditation instruction and other events can be found on our website.Upcoming Sesshins at Saranam Retreat Center in West Virginia<a target="_blank" href="https://www.mudlotussangha.org/events-classes/interb
- Jun 7, 202639 min
Shadeless Trees
Greetings Friends,We are moving through this wonderful collection of encounters with Buddhist Women found in the book The Hidden Lamp for our Summer Read. This week we met Keizan Zenji and Mokufu Sonin engaged in the dialogue below:Hidden Lamp Case 20: Sonin’s Shadeless TreeMaster Keizan Jokin asked the nun Mokufu Sonin, “The winter is coming to an end and the springtime is arriving. There is an order to this. What is your understanding?” Sonin replied, “In the braches of a tree without shade, how could there be any seasons?”These two people are very important figures in the history of Zen Buddhism. They are direct Ancestors in our Soto Zen lineage tree. So, they are our Ancestors. What is an Ancestor? One way we understand Ancestor in Buddhism is someone who aligns their heart and mind with the aspiration to awaken and liberate all beings from suffering. So, someone who wants to help us wake up! But one Zen teacher says in actuality —all beings are your ancestor.What would it be like to truly see the world this way?Are all beings trying to awaken us?Is everyone we meet helping us on this path of liberation from suffering?Are they, through their words, thoughts and actions aiding us in opening our own hearts and minds to the love, compassion and wisdom of this universe?It may not always feel that way. But we can aspire to practice as if it were true, this is taking the view of bodhicitta— the great compassion unfolding this life.Connecting to the Zen Ancestors can remind us that humans have been walking this path of awakening for a long time. They were shaped by the path and they also shaped or opened new dimensions of the path through their embodied walking. I find that hearing the ancestor’s stories is a lot like pulling a tarot card, or reading a myth or fairytale. Their life stories usually contain dharma teachings, universal themes about the path, but also personal dimensions that may resonate with our own struggles, questions, doubts, curiosities or lived experience.Keizan’s PathKeizan Zenji is a great example of this. Considered the “mother of Soto Zen”, he was born in the early years of Soto Zen in Japan, just eleven years after Dogen Zenji (the founder) died. His mother and his grandmother were both Zen practitioners, but also embodied and practiced a more ancient form of spirituality that was common amongst women at the time—a form of spirituality we might call “folk” or “shamanistic” or “animist”. (In her recent books, Bringing Zen Home and The Little Book of Zen Healing Paula Arai explores how the blend of Zen and shamanism is still alive in how many lay women engage in dharma practice).Below is an excerpt from Sallie Tisdale’s book Women of the Way, here she shares the story of Keizan’s birth. This short selection introduces us to some of the people and practices that influenced Keizan throughout his life.Many years later, when Ekan Daishi was thirty-seven years old, she had a dream. She swallowed the morning light, warm and as soft as silk, and it filled her entire body. A few days later she realized she was pregnant. Then she prayed, as she had often prayed, to the beloved statue of Kannon: “May this child be a spiritual leader, a benefit to all, and please, may the delivery be easy.” For the next seven months, she bowed 1,333 times each day and recited the Kannon Sutra. The baby was born on the property of the Kannon Temple in the province of Echizen, without pain. A short while later Daishi took vows as a nun, and the baby’s grandmother, Myōchi, helped raise him.So Keizan was raised with a deep connection to both his mother and grandmother and to the Bodhisattva Kannon (who is the bodhisattva of compassion). He was brought up in an enchanted world, where kami (spirits) filled the natural world, where Buddha’s and Bodhisattva’s appeared in dreams, where even the mundane aspects of life were part of the art, the ritual of living in an interconnected world of mutual reciprocity. A world emerging from the great compassion of Kannon. Keizan also listened to the wisdom of his dreams, practiced Buddhist astrology and geomancy. He was instrumental in creating and recording the ceremonies we have throughout the Buddhist liturgical year. His love for the ancestors, led him to gather the stories of the Zen Buddhist lineage dating back to Shakyamuni Buddha. Creating a mythological retelling of their lives, and giving teachings inspired by their stories. This collection of his dharma talks on the ancestors, is called the Denkuroku, the Transmission of the Light.Here’s another selection f
- May 31, 202627 min
Actualizing Care, Recognizing Beauty
Greetings and Happy Early Summer!We are continuing our Summer Read of the Hidden Lamp again this year. Every week we will explore a different koan story from the collection. If you would like to follow along, check out the calendar page for up to date information on the koan selections. On Monday night during the live online meditation event, I will give a dharma talk themed around the reading for the week and then we will have time for discussion. I will post the talk here too.This past Monday we started the Summer Read with Case 19 from the Hidden Lamp: The Flower Hall on the Buddha’s Birthday.The nuns of Tokeiji were famous for their beautiful and elaborate flower decorations on the Buddha’s birthday. Master Yodo, the abbess of Tokeiji wrote a verse for this occasion:Decorate the heart of the beholder, for the Buddha of the flower hallis no where else.The Buddha’s birthday, also called Hanna Matsuri or the flower festival, usually takes place when the flowers of Spring are in full bloom. In the ceremony we decorate a flower bower with fresh flowers (in Oregon we would do this on Mother’s Day and the rhododendron’s were often a main feature). The baby buddha is placed in the center of the flower bower, in a bowl of sweet tea. During the ceremony each participant is invited up to the altar to bathe the baby buddha, while we chant a simple mantra together.To me this ceremony feels ancient. I imagine it is an evolution of a much older ceremony celebrating mid-spring, the abundance of new life, flowers and perhaps the Great Mother. For the story of the Buddha’s birth starts with Maha Maya, the Buddha’s mother. It starts with Maha Maya’s great dream, reminding us that this very life, this very moment is sourced from the great mystery and is dream-like in its nature.As many of you know, I could dwell on this theme of dream and the Great Mother for a long time. But today, I want to highlight another aspect of this koan—the quality of care.We meet Yodo and the nuns of Tokeiji decorating the buddha hall. Taking great care to make a beautiful and elaborate offering of flowers. Flowers which will start to whither and die as the ceremony ends. Flowers that speak the language of beauty and innocence, of desire and abundance, of the purity of our buddha-nature.The activity that the nuns are engaged in is the activity of their life.We often wonder how to bring our meditation practice off of the cushion into our daily lives.Here the nuns demonstrate this—with care—they say through their actions.Care is how love is expressed.Care involves attending, meeting the moment. Care awakens appreciation.Through our care, our life becomes an offering, a gift. And we are the recipients as well as the ones making the offering.In monastic life we have ceremonies and activities that give form to the expression of care. From the way we place our shoes on the shoe rack, to choosing the serving dishes for a meal to making flower arrangements for the altars, we have these opportunities to express love through our actions.I was never formally trained in the art of Ikebana, flower arranging. But I did learn some basics over the years, two of which stick with me and can be applied to so many areas of life in exploring care and beauty.The first is that space is just as important as the physical elements of the flower arrangement. So as you choose your vessel, and begin to arrange the flowers you also consider the space between the flowers, leaves and branches. In flower arranging the space is alive.The second principle is that you appreciate how the different elements grow in nature and accentuate them. You recognize that you are also an active participant in creation, so you listen to how the elements are in relationship to each other and respond.I find these two principles invite care, attention, love, appreciation and open me up to seeing the beauty in life itself. What if we moved through our days with an awareness of the space that surrounds us, with an appreciation that we are in relationship with everything we encounter. That it is our life.Listen to the dharma talk for more explorations of this koan in relationship to care, nurturing the heart and seeing our buddha nature. And as always you are invited to take this story and practice into your life. This week notice beauty, practice appreciating your life, see your life as an offering, a gift. What happens when you do?Awakening happens in relationship. Hope to see you in-person or on zoom sometime soon. Starting this coming Monday, we will return to studying the teaching stories of the women ancestors found in The Hidden Lamp.</p
- May 22, 202627 min
Not-knowing is Love
Greetings Friends,I am returning from the Light of the Ancestors Sesshin at Great Vow Zen Monastery and feeling deep gratitude for this path of practice and all the people who have walked this path— discovering freedom and love in their own lives.Over the past few months the Monday night online Sangha through ZCO has been exploring The Mountains and Rivers Sutra by Dogen Zenji. In wrapping up our study of the sutra, we explored the last two stanzas from the version of the sutra that is often chanted in ZCO.Mountains have been the abode of great sages from the limitless past to the limitless present. Wise people and sages all have mountains in their inner chamber, as their body and mind. You may think that in mountains many wise people and great sages are assembled, but after entering the mountains, not a single person meets another. There is just the activity of mountains. There is no trace of anyone having entered the mountains.Although mountains belong to the nation, mountains belong to people who love them. You should know that mountains are fond of wise people and sages.From ancient times people and sages have often lived near water. When they live near water they catch fish, catch human beings, and catch the Way. Therefore, thoroughly investigate mountains, thoroughly investigate water. When you investigate thoroughly, it is the work of mountains and water. Then mountains and waters of themselves become wise persons and sages.When Dogen Zenji refers to mountains, he is inviting us to observe and contemplate actual mountains, to recognize and reflect on the constancy, stillness, presence and teachings of the mountains in the natural world and he is also inviting us to observe and contemplate our true nature. You can try reading the above paragraph substituting the words “true nature”, “the Way”, “awakening/enlightenment” or “practice-realization” for mountains. What opens up as you reflect on these different readings of the teaching of this sutra?How does the Way or practice-realization belong to those who love it?What is your experience of your life being the great activity of awakening?During the Light of the Ancestors sesshin, my co-teacher Bansho, Sensei referenced a koan from the Zen school, where a person is taking leave of the monastery and is asked by the teacher, “Where are you going?” The student replies, “around on pilgrimage.” The teacher then asks, “what is the purpose of pilgrimage?” The student replies, “I don’t know.” The teacher responds, “Not-knowing is nearness.”We might also say, “not-knowing is love.”In a world where we are taught to fear the unknown, to always have a plan or purpose—what would it be like, instead, to see not-knowing as an invitation to love? To meet the unknown with curiosity? To be intimate with the mystery?Can not-knowing invite us in to the embrace of this life?Can the practice of not-knowing create space for love to arise?Is not-knowing an expression of love?On this path of practice-awakening we are constantly being invited to love. To recognize that we are loved, to recognize that we belong to this life.Another time a student asked, “what is the essence of the path?”A teacher replied, “whatever arises, love that.”Not-knowing makes us fetch-able, the way rises up and meets us, catches us in the openness of our curiosity. We become mountain, we become river just as mountains and rivers become us.Listen to the Dharma Talk for a more in-depth exploration of these last paragraphs from the Mountains and Rivers Sutra, and for reflections on coming home to ourselves, not-knowing, love and belonging on the path.Awakening happens in relationship. Hope to see you in-person or on zoom sometime soon. Starting this coming Monday, we will return to studying the teaching stories of the women ancestors found in The Hidden Lamp.Weekly Online Meditation EventMonday Night Dharma — 6P PT / 9P ET Join weekly for drop-in meditation and dharma talk. We are currently exploring the Hidden Lamp: Teaching from the Buddhist Women AncestorsFeel free to join anytime. Event lasts about 1.5 hours. ZOOM LINKIn-Person in OregonGrasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin— August 10 - 16 at Great Vow Zen Mona
- May 3, 202632 min
In Praise of Poetry
Greetings Friends,I’m a lover of poetry. A sometimes writer of poems. A sometimes reader. Poetry for me is more of a way of being, a willingness to be carried across by metaphor, to be turned inside out by image, to sit in the silence, to not know and to be transformed through the art of attention.The best poetry is wordless attention.And, also. Some poems really act as an arrow, straight to the heart of it and allow what is often inexpressible—a moment of shared recognition. April was national poetry month, and one of the ways I celebrated was to reflect on poetry in the buddhist and zen tradition. I looked at the different kinds of poetry and its function. In doing so, I recognized four functions of poetry: enlightenment poems, death poems, capping phrases and poems of intimacy with what is.Listen to the talk for more exploration of these four functions, with examples from some of my favorite poems from the tradition. Below are a few favorites for your reading pleasure.Dongshan’s Enlightenment Poem Long seeking it from others, I was far from reaching it. Now I go by myself, and I find it everywhere. It is just I myself, but I am not itself. Understanding in this way, I can be as I am.Ikkyu’s Death Poem I won’t die. I won’t go anywhere. I’ll be here. But don’t ask me anything. I won’t answer.Mitta’s Enlightenment Poem (From the translation/interpretation the first free women) Full of trust you left home, and soon learned to walk the Path— making yourself a friend to everyone and making everyone a friend. When the whole world is your friend, fear will find no place to call home. And when you make the mind your friend, you’ll know what trust really means. Listen. I have followed this Path of friendship to its end. And I can say with absolute certainty— it will lead you home.On this spiritual path, poetry has been an inspiration for me. Not just the poetry of the ancestors, but so many other poems have graced me with their invitations to wonder and open to a world that is alive, and inviting. Do you have a poem that has inspired or transformed you? Do you have a poem you keep coming back to? Feel free to share it here. Weekly Online Meditation EventMonday Night Dharma — 6P PT / 9P ET Join weekly for drop-in meditation and dharma talk. We are currently exploring the Mountains and Waters Sutra by Dogen Zenji.Feel free to join anytime. Event lasts about 1.5 hours. ZOOM LINKIn-Person in OregonLight of the Ancestors Sesshin—May 11 - 17 at Great Vow Zen MonasteryGrasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin— August 10 - 16 at Great Vow Zen MonasteryIn-Person in Columbus, Ohio through Mud Lotus SanghaWeekly Meditations on Tuesday, Wednesday and ThursdayRetreats, Meditation instruction and other events can be found on our website.Upcoming Sesshins at Saranam Retreat Center in West VirginiaInterdependence Sesshin June 29 - July 5 (Registration is now open!)I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, Astrologer and Artist. I offer 1:1 Spiritual Counseling sessions using IFS and Hakomi (somatic mindfulness). I also offer astrology readings. Check out my website to learn more. I currently live in Columbus, OH and am a supporting teacher for the Mud Lotus Sangha. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amykisei.substack.com/subscribe
About Earth Dreams: Zen Buddhism and the Soul of the World
Zen Buddhist teachings point to a profound view of reality--one of deep interconnection and non-separation. Awakening is a word used to describe the freedom, creativity and love of our original nature. This podcast explores the profound liberating teachings of Zen Buddhism at the intersection of dreamwork and the soul. The intention is to offer a view of awakening that explores our deep interconnection with the living world and the cosmos as well as to invite a re-imagining of what human life and culture could be if we lived our awakened nature. Amy Kisei is a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Somatic IFS Spiritual Counselor, Astrologer and Artist. She practices and teaches at the confluence of spirituality, psychology and somatics--affirming a wholistic path of awakening. You can learn more about Amy Kisei's upcoming retreats and/or 1:1 work on her website: https://www.amykisei.org/ amykisei.substack.com
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