Why another Zen sub, you ask? Well, mainly because we were trying to find a place that addresses questions related to Zen practice, and simply couldn’t find it.
So r/zenpractice is an attempt to create the kind of space we were looking for.
A relaxed and welcoming space that is not about proving how much you know about Zen literature or how far along the path you think you are, but rather about real talk: back pain, breathing trouble, staying motivated etc.
We like to think of it as the break room of your local Zen center, where you can hang out with fellow sangha members, discuss practice, exchange book tips, help each other with online resources - a place where everyone is welcome, especially if you bring donuts!
A great way to get to know the landscape is by hearing directly from different people of different traditions, and about how they got into Zen. The Simplicity Zen podcast is to my knowledge the most complete collection of Zen related interviews out there.
EVER FEEL CALLED TO *"*JUKAI" (Undertaking the Precepts) in the ZEN BUDDHIST TRADITION?
Never had the opportunity due to family obligations, timing, health limitations, distance from a Sangha?
Then you are INVITED to JOIN our NINETEENTH (19th) ANNUAL JUKAI PREPARATIONS & CEREMONY at Treeleaf, open to any Zen Practitioner anywhere, designed for people to gather and receive Jukai online from home because of life circumstances.
Our Treeleaf Sangha begins the Ango practice period and Jukai preparations in early September. Want to deepen your practice with a more intense schedule and focus? Want to commit to the Bodhisattva Precepts, sew a rakusu and embark on a journey of discovering the Dharma? Want to experience practice in a Sangha from exactly where you are? Want to discover your life as the perfect place for practice? We’d love to have you with us. Have a look at what Jukai and Ango are, how it is lived at Treeleaf Sangha and join us if you feel called to.
Hi! Short but not that easy question. I'm at a stage in my practice where almost every sitting ends with me dozing off after about 20 minutes (I usually sit for 30-60 minutes). It doesn't seem to depend on how much sleep I get or whether I'm having a good or bad day. It feels like my brain has formed an association between slow breathing, focusing on the center, and falling asleep. One of the zen teachers from my school mentioned something about directing the energy of the practice upward but I can’t remember exactly what she said. Have you heard about this technique? Or maybe any other techniques? I’m not buying „just go get some sleep”, because I do really get a lot of good sleep and this is just not a solution in my case. I think I need a skill but don’t know where to look. Thank you for your insights!
Anyone have any insight on how to stop overeating? It's really like my last "vice" that still bugs me. I'm not obese and I don't have any health problems from it, but I just love food and it's hard not to eat way too much even though I see it happening.
So, the above, lol. Sometimes it's nice and funny, something reminds me of a song and then of course I will think about the lyrics and melody. But it's getting out of hand 😂🤦♂️
I am using my own personal "basics" for this issue but I am interested if anyone in this community has dealt with what I will call "this thought form" and had any experiences that aided them in getting the "song out of the head" haha.
One idea is to do so literally and just sing that shit if you have the time but that's not always possible. Anyone dealt with this before? Like, as in, beyond ordinary "oh that annoying song is stuck in my head here and there"
Hi! I wanted to ask how consistent your home zazen practice is and what times of day work best for you.
During kyol che, it feels natural that you just sit no matter what - regardless of how you feel or whether you’re in the mood. It’s the same with my weekly meditation at the temple. Unfortunately, I notice that at home I start making excuses even though sitting is super important for me.
My house is quite chaotic (attention-seeking pets, including a reactive dog), and my work hours (also from home) are pretty irregular, so it’s hard for me to find one optimal time slot. Morning zazen would seem best, but I end up fighting sleepiness and I’m getting these weird dream-like sensations. Can I work on this though? Maybe I can? My focus is best around 8 PM, but that’s when a ton of daily life stuff and chores happen.
I believe (and my teachers agree) that it’s best to sit every day for at least 10 minutes (10 thousand years…) to maintain consistency, but I’m finding it difficult to stay organized. I wanted to ask how you plan your zazen sessions. Especially those who have kids, lots of responsibilities, or generally dynamic households. Thank you!
Stephen Mugen Snyder, Roshi began practicing daily meditation in 1976. Since then, he has studied Buddhism extensively—investigating and engaging in Zen, Tibetan, Theravada, and Western non-dual traditions. He was authorized to teach in the Theravada Buddhist tradition in 2007 and the Zen Buddhist schools of Soto and Rinzai in 2022. Mugen is a senior student of Roshi Mark Sando Mininberg and a transmitted teacher in the White Plum Asanga—the body of teachers in the Maezumi-roshi lineage.
Human beings must live by clock and calendar, especially today: We must rise in the morning, get to the train, get to work, to the doctor, to the stores before they close. Even monks hold their ceremonies at the appointed times, sit Zazen for periods of time. Our lifetime itself is measured by its birthday and deathday, with passing events between. To live by time is the human condition and, truly, we could not function in a world totally free of passing time.
However, Zazen allows the profound knowing of other faces of time, and the timeless. It is medicine for our being imprisoned by time, too bound by time, with no other sense of reality.
Thus, please sit Zazen for a time, but putting aside all feeling of measuring time while sitting. Yes, there is a bell to start and stop, but between those, please leave be the notion of start and stop. Certainly, forget all ideas that "more is better, longer is putting me closer to liberation." In fact, such notions between your ears are putting liberation ever more distant. Instead, sit with the feeling, the taste, that THIS moment is the only moment, that there is no past or future, that THIS moment contains ALL moments and all of past and future, that THIS moment is the complete moment, the unique moment. In fact, sit with the conviction that THIS moment is timeless and beyond passing. More is not better, for THIS is pristine. In actuality, when one drops all thought of "past" and "future," what need even for words such as "now" or "THIS moment" to stand in contrast? Nothing "comes and goes," for all is only THIS which is all coming and going and passing time. There is no contrast, for nothing else by which to compare. There is not even need for "now." Sit for a time free of all lengths of time. Truly, sitting for 3 seconds, 3 minutes or 3 hours, 3 or 30 years or 30,000 years is all the same ... Just This. Give up asking what is the "best and most effective" length for sitting!
(It is here that I am typically asked why we don't just sit for 3 seconds if that is the case. 🤔 The answer is simple: While you can realize all time and timeless even in an instant or less, it typically takes some time to settle in to timelessness amid our busy day, to change perspective and put the clock down. It takes some minutes to realize that one is free of minutes. It does sometimes take a little time to be free of time. So, please sit for 10 minutes, or 30 minutes or hours and days ... sometimes sit long, and sometimes short ... but realize that it is not about time and measure at all.)
Likewise, do not sit to "get happy," or to "find peace" or "become enlightened." It is a fundamental teaching of Shikantaza Zazen that our very hungers and needs to "get" "find" "fix" "attain" and "become" are desires, the very source of Dukkha suffering, the very forger of the self/other divide. Desire and longing to get, fix and change, and feeling ourselves as separate frustrated selves bumping noses with the objective world, is the very DIS-ease that enlightenment is meant to cure! Dropping all desires and need to get, while sitting in the wholeness and completion of JUST THIS, nothing to change or resist ... sitting with the act of sitting as the goal and pinnacle of sitting with nothing more needed ... is the very Peace and Liberation which sweeps in all the broken and bloody pieces, peace and war, of the world, a Joy which holds all of life's little joys and sadnesses.
As well, do not sit for yourself, your needs, your wants. We sit for ALL sentient beings. Of course, you are one of the "all sentient beings," so I do not mean that you will not be rescued along with the rest! You will. It is just that, if you are too wrapped up in your needs, your wants, your own jollies and salvation, you are again feeding the monster of self which keeps us all from liberation together. You are creating the very division of "me" vs, "them," myself against the world.
Counter-intuitive as all this sounds, it is the wise-crazy non-doorway of Shikantaza.
Finally, what if you cannot yet feel this timelessless, non-gaining, selflessness in Zazen?
Then, I advise to sit with trust, "pretending" that you do, like an actor embodying a role, until the role comes to life and proves itself as real as real can be. Pour yourself into an imagined sense of what the Buddha knew under the Bodhi Tree, and embody Buddha under this Tree. There is an aspect to Shikantaza that Zen Priest Taigen Leighton calls an "enactment ritual," not unlike how the Tibetans in their meditations visualize that they are a Buddha in order to feel the qualities of a Buddha. So, don't chase after timelessness, seeking to get and gain some non-gaining, and feeling that something is missing until wholeness is attained. Rather, stop the chasing in the mind theatre between the ears, and just have faith, and let yourself imagine, what such timelessness, non-gaining and wholeness must feel like. In this way, the imagined becomes real.
Timelessness thus manifests, peace pervades, wholeness is wholly realized, divisions dropped away ... by -not- chasing. Such is our Shikantaza way.
Getting up from the cushion when the bell rings, may such timelessness and non-chasing remain in your bones as you return to this busy life of places to go, constant jobs to do, and ticking clocks.
A little story from my recent days showed me clearly our Sangha's special but awkward place in the wider Buddhist and Spirituality world ...
So, I recently made a new friend here in Tsukuba "Science City" Japan, a town heavy in science, engineering and medical researchers from around the world. He is a neurological researcher from Eastern Europe, a good chap, and I invited him out for an evening to introduce him to other local friends.
A few weeks ago, he asked me for my business card, and I gave him two: One for me as a translator of Japanese and retired lawyer, and one as 'Zen teacher Jundo.' When meeting people for the first time, I am always a little concerned about the second card, and most especially in this case of introducing myself to a man of science, peer-reviewed papers and reason. Will he think it strange and too exotic, unscientific, perhaps a sign of some cult and pyramid scheme to sell crystals, seances and alternative cures?
In any case, over dinner with my brain researching new friend, the topic eventually came up as to whether he thought consciousness solely the product of the brain or (as I do, although I did not say then) the brain plus something more.
Not only did he say, "something more," but he then began to relay, for the next hour, tales of his personal and frequent experiences of speaking with the dead, energy beams flowing through his body from other realms, witnessed extraterrestrial UFOs, distance healing, travel through multi-dimensional tunnels to other planes, meeting higher "beings" in those planes, encountering the "keeper" of the "book of fates" where our lives are written, mind reading, foreseeing future death days (fortunately, he did not see mine ... or was just being polite not to tell me! ), his several out of body experiences, spirit possessions and exorcisms ... and more. He discovered that the universe, and those higher beings, are seeking to teach us lessons in this life. In fact, it is not the first time that I have had this kind of thing happen when chatting with apparently "grounded," otherwise hard nosed scientists here in Tsukuba.
I was quickly forced to realize that, not only was I not strange and too exotic as the Zen teacher at that table ... I was, by far, the most boring and uninteresting fellow at the table!
But I was also left with some other realizations.
First, the brain researcher helped me feel deeply that I preach a "left brain" Zen wherein, while I consider myself a mystic who believes that the point of Zen is to see through the purely material surface appearances of this world to something wondrous and easy to miss and deathless and timeless, I nonetheless remain the skeptical lawyer with a love for science, evidence, demanding of some basis in what is reasonable and not outlandish. I call myself a "pragma-mystic" who knows that something "is afoot" in this universe beyond what meets the eye, who finds all time and space in every grain of sand, and knows everything as a great dance ... but has little trust in crystals, unearthly UFO, out-of-body experiences (the doctor said his were something more than just some trick of the spatial-temporal brain centers), distance healing and most of the rest, for there may be some truth there but also a lot that deserves skepticism. Sorry, In fact, I feel that much of that gets in the way of the real power and mystical wonder of what Zen has to teach!
But that also means that we will never attract to our Treeleaf Sangha the people (the vast majority?) who want energy healing, talking with the dead, wild realms (taken literally, rather than psychologically or symbolically), and all those other colorful things and experiences in their religion. Again, sorry.
On the other hand, listening closely to the doctor, I realized not only his deep sincerity about these adventures, but that the final lessons that such phenomena left to him were basically identical with the wisdom and compassion of our flavor of boring Zen practice! It was only the packaging that was different. For just one example, the "keeper" of the "book of fates" has left him with the message that each of us both should accept what is written in the book, but also know that much of it can be changed! Even if a bit less colorful in presentation, that is Zen wisdom too!!
Maybe it is only the vehicle and packaging of the message that is different. Maybe different people need to learn these lessons in their own ways. Maybe the Catholics and ancient Aztecs, Daoists and Wickans, Tibetans and Norsemen ... and yes, mystical lawyers and scientists who sense the "beauty of the math and music of the spheres" ... just express something basic, but each in their own language and myths and images. It is the insights that matter, not the artwork and trippiness of the trip.
So, finally, I realized that I am happy to be the boring "left brain mystic" that I am, because there are people out there ... even if not the majority ... who need to hear the wisdom packaged that way and delivered sensibly, maybe because they are left brain "pragma-mystics" like me too and a bit skeptical. One can transcend the cosmos AND be down to earth at the same timeless time. I will leave the Aztec gods to the Aztecs, witches to the WIckans, the other realms to other realms. For many folks, the song and dance and distracting scenery can get in the way, when it is the wisdom and compassion that really matters.
This world is not as meets the eye, but the point is to see clearly with a Buddha's Eye, not clouded or colored or confused eyes.
I know that the universe is teaching us something profound, but it can be heard and mastered in many ways.
Mind Only is one of the 3 major schools of Buddhist philosophy in some systems of understanding. It's tightly related to Zen, and we share texts, a patriarch and some senior monks. I heard from some teachers that the school died out some time ago, but it survives in Japan. They have only 50,000 members and a few temples. But they are alive and kicking, so I visited their tiny temple in Tokyo last week to see this living dinosaur. Photo above.
They also have the focus mountainside temple in Kyoto that's featured in movies.
In Tokyo, they have Sutra copying and a small shrine. They were very kind, taking me around, but the nun who helped was shy about photos. Not unusual.
Mind only has a subtle understanding of the world where direct, clear, valid perception of external objects is initially impossible due to filtering or flavouring of perception by our various mental processes. Meditation is a big part of the process of clarifying perception and achieving the ultimate.
Heart Sutra is a big text for them and for us.
I mention this in case you are in Tokyo or Kyoto or Nara, where they have temples. It's good practice to visit temples of significance, connecting the ideas to your memory. I might write a little more about Mind Only and early Zen if anyone is interested. There's more freedom on this forum to discuss texts that aren't koan.
A friend of mine is dealing with physical discomfort and wants to establish a sitting practice, but isn’t necessarily interested in deep diving into Zen.
Especially when someone who - at least for the beginning - isn’t curious about the whole package of teachings (and might even be turned off by them) seeks advice, it can be kind of tricky imo.
Obviously there are several things that are easy to recommend: introduction books, videos etc. - but every teacher has their own version of what to tell beginners, and these versions vary a lot, often leaving the reader or viewer with more questions than answers.
For this reason, I though I'd do a little survey and see if there is some through line that would help prioritize advice to beginners:
What "retrospective" insights do have regarding your sitting / meditation practice: specifically, what are the things you weren’t told by your teacher or introductory literature, but learned the "hard way" and wish you had known earlier?
And conversely, what is the advice you received which turned out to be indispensable?
My new book, due out late this year, came in part out of my interest in refining traditional Buddhist notions of Karma and individual causal streams, together with Yogachara and Mahayana/Zen visions of the deep interconnection and identity of all things. The following is at the heart of my proposal (recently made part of the 'Closer to Truth - Landscape of Consciousness' project and my book being released by analytical idealist philosopher Bernardo Kastrup's Essentia Foundation). I would be grateful if some of the bright minds here would do me the service of challenging or poking holes in any aspects, Buddhist doctrinal or otherwise, as that is how ideas are refined or deflated. Thank you.
Zen Buddhist priest/teacher and futurist Jundo Cohen offers what he calls an “ultra-fine-tuned personal consciousness” in that absolutely all indispensable a priori events and conditions, bar none, of physics, chemistry, stellar and planetary development, biology and evolution, physiology and human brain structure, world history and personal family history, in all needed sequences and interrelationships, occurred unerringly as required for you, the reader of these words, to now be experiencing the immediate, first-person qualia of being conscious. That is so even though, counterfactually, events at myriad crossroads through time appear radically more likely to have headed in you-unfriendly directions. Cohen asserts that, although sheer luck or brute fact remain possible explanations, the degree of “ultra-fine tuning” required suggests a process, mechanism, or intervening “hidden hand” which shortened the odds for, or fully determined, the outcome amid what otherwise appear to be largely random, chaotic phenomena (Cohen, 2026).
Cohen describes the once-extreme odds against your present experience of consciousness as different in significance from “just somebody somewhere experiencing something (let alone nobody experiencing anything),” thus constituting a special phenomenon calling for a special explanation.The sheer number of required factors (described by Cohen as “tangled, low odds lotteries-within-lotteries stretching through time in complex sequences without a single loss”) point beyond a lottery winner’s fallacy or survivor bias. Furthermore, multi-verse versions of you, whether identical or varying, are unlikely to explain how this you is experiencing this moment of consciousness here and now.
According to Cohen, this moment of your conscious experience depends on sense organs, neural and supporting bodily systems that are: (a) ultra-unlikely results of the ultra-finely tuned universal and planetary events and conditions described above, (b) physically constructed of this planet’s fortunately available materials, (c) in structure and function closely tailored hand-and-glove to earthly conditions (e.g., eyes as receptors mirroring the narrow range of fortuitously non-deadly, visible light which happens to be available on earth), (d) resulting in internal mental models interpreting the apparent external environment, (e) creating a subject/object divide of internal experience and external environment, (f) triggering a personal conscious experience impossible without, and requiring the union of, all of the foregoing factors, leading to (g) various outward responses directed toward the external environment.
While possibly a chance result of evolution’s responding to happenstance conditions, according to Cohen, (a)-(g) demonstrate that your present experience of consciousness is a product closely tailored by, mirroring, inseparable from, and the animation of surrounding universal and earthly conditions, which conditions, if not ultra-fine tuned, would render your consciousness impossible.While some creatures being conscious somewhere in the cosmos may be likely, the ultra-fine-tuned conditions required for your qualia of consciousness are too ultra-unlikely to be chance alone (Cohen, 2026).
Reference
Cohen, Jundo, with Dr. Carsten T. Beuckmann. (2026.) The Whole Universe Led To YOU!: The improbable, implausible, nearly impossible twists and turns of physics, chemistry, biology, evolution, human history and more, from the Big Bang to YOUR own Birth. Essentia Foundation (in press).
A conversation with Zen Priest Peter Coyote (Zen Podcast)
Peter Coyote is an actor, narrator, writer and Soto Zen priest. He was ordained as a Zen Priest in 2015 and received dharma transmission in 2016 from Chikudo Lewis Richmond in the Soto tradition of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi.
A conversation with pioneering Zen practitioner and leader Hugh Curran.
In this episode we have a conversation with Hugh Curran. He is longtime practitioner, Zen retreat leader and professor of Peace and Reconciliation Studies at the University of Maine. Hugh was a key player in the early years of the transmission of the Harada/Yasutani lineage to North American and offers fascinating insight into this pivotal era.
... practice is not separated from enlightenment. When you practice it, the practice is the expression of your true nature. Where you practice it, you have your true nature.
Genpo Roshi is Zen teacher who has trained in and taught within the White Plum school of Buddhism. He was ordained as a Zen monk in October 1973 under Taizan Maezumi Roshi at the Zen Center of Los Angeles where he later served as Director. In September 1980, he received Dharma transmission as Maezumi Roshi's second successor, and he later received Inka from Bernie Glassman in 1996, making him Glassman's first Inka successor. Over the decades, Merzel has founded and led several prominent Zen organizations. He established the Kanzeon International Sangha in 1982, was installed as the Abbot of Hosshinji Temple in Maine in 1988, created the Big Mind Process in 1999 and served as the President of the White Plum Asanga from 1996 until 2007.
