by Zenju | Oct 10, 2014 | dharma-notes
Perhaps it is this focus on mindfulness or meditation, and nothing else on the Eightfold Path, that leads many to misconstrue the path as a personal journey and not a collective path of interrelating, or a collective way toward the cessation of suffering. We emphasize...
by Zenju | Aug 20, 2014 | dharma-notes
Evidently, my last post about suicide scared a lot of folks. I removed the post twice because I felt it was being misunderstood and causing fear. I often share a learning of my life and that was simply the purpose of the the posts. Perhaps the learning was not...
by Zenju | Jul 30, 2014 | dharma-notes, The World We Live In
I have been afraid to speak on the Israel and Gaza horror. But I can’t be silent on what hits me so hard that I am afraid to speak . What I have to say has nothing to do with which side is doing what to each other. All the horrors of the world turn my stomach. I...
by Zenju | Jul 27, 2014 | dharma-notes
Once a student asked a teacher at a retreat for people of color, “Can racism and other forms of oppression cease to exist?” The teacher nearly shouted, “Yes, racism will one day cease to exist.” My mouth flew open. Not at what the teacher said but at my own inner...
by Zenju | Apr 6, 2014 | dharma-notes
When I entered the path of Dharma, I came with a collective sense of suffering. I had been raised in a black church in which the members were gathered not only for religious purposes but to heal from the suffering of systemic oppression. They were there because they...
by Zenju | Feb 10, 2014 | dharma-notes
My father, who was sixty-years older than me, used to sit and stare off into space quite often. It seemed as though he would stop blinking. As a child I would ask, “Daddy, what are you thinking about?” He would drop his head, then look at me and say with...
