Eon Zen Dharma Holder Geoff Shōun O'Keeffe shares about the Three Tenets of Zen Peacemakers: not-knowing, bearing witness, and taking action that arises from not-knowing and bearing witness. He offers Roshi Eve Marko's recent reflections on the violence and fear in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine as a profound practice of the three tenets.

The antidote for the poison of ignorance of delusion is wisdom, or clear seeing into our true nature. But this wisdom is not something you can attain — and there is no shortcut. It arises as embodied experience through the practice of not-knowing or not-abiding in anything. Including not abiding in not-abiding. No one to abide. No one to not-abide. Not getting stuck anywhere.

In the Shobogenzo, Dogen encourages us to “simply release and forget both your body and mind and throw yourself into the House of Buddha.” Releasing our ideas about the ways things are, our preferences, opinions, and truths, and our desire for clarity, "then there can be no obstacle in anyone’s mind.” This spirit of practice is essential.

Ignorance is one of the three poisons that the Buddha taught which create all suffering, and it’s also the root of all three. To counteract ignorance, we have to choose to live with what is, including our confusion — to radically accept everything, including ignorance itself. This is the spirit of the Holy Fool, the grace of foolishness. Can you live like this, and also not attach to ignorance either?

The first collection of koans in our lineage is called the Mumonkan, or Gateless Gate. Mumon himself says “Zen has no gates”? And yet we chant “Omnipresent Dharma Gates I Vow to Experience.” How can something be both a gate and no gate at all? How do we experience a gateless gate?

As lay practitioners, we are called to explore our relationships with self, with others, and with our work in the world. How do we tell the difference between the egoic voice and our deeper voice — the voice of our true self — in these relationships?

In Zen retreats, we practice walking meditation. We carry the same focus and awareness of our sitting meditation into movement. Thich Naht Hahn said to “walk as if your feet are kissing the Earth.” What did he mean by this? How can we connect with our lives in the deepest way possible?

When we turn the light inward and become a lamp unto ourself, we find our true power, our agency. In our delusion, we often give this power away. What type of wisdom and power unfolds when we make the decision to practice? How does agency differ from willfulness? How do we take responsibility for our actions, for our life?

The Buddha taught “Be a lamp unto your self.” To study the self, to become fully intimate with our life, we practice not resisting or grasping at anything we experience. Through this practice, we fundamentally shift our relationship with ourself, and find our true power — our agency — in our life, in our relationships and in our work in the world. This is the path of Zen.

Often we react to a situation by elevating ourselves or blaming others arises when we feel fearful and vulnerable. Making ourself bigger or more important is a self-preservation mechanism. With our Zen practice, we can see this tendency and how it comes from a feeling of separateness. What is happening when we blame others? Can we accept that we don’t have to defend anything?

What is delusion? Zen Master Dogen said "To carry youself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is enlightenment." Do you experience yourself as experiencing things? Or is life just happening?

It’s a common human tendency to overthink, to have and hold onto opinions, to seek meaning, to categorize and analyze. Our brains do what brains do. And ideas and concepts are very enticing. They can also be useful, at times. Our practice is to hold them lightly — to not identify with our thoughts or to get too caught up with them. We have all we need to practice being who we are.

Our Zen practice is actually quite simple: be fully alive. When we experience our life fully with -- as Shishin Roshi encourages -- awareness, courage, and tenderness, we wake up to our true nature and find liberation. This is the essence of the Bardo teachings.

Reflecting on her life as an artist and her experiences working with people displaced by the fires on the island of Maui, Eon Zen Practice Leader Lisa Gakyo Schaewe invites us to look deeply into the bardo of our own lives.

GYODO SENSEI | Impermanence is a primary seal of Buddhism -- it is the reality of life. Everything is always changing. We’re always in transition from one state to another. Our habit patterns of our mind are not very oriented to appreciating this constant transformation. Bardo practice help us to experience this at the most intimate level.

Faith, Doubt and Determination are the Three Pillars of our Zen Practice. Together, these qualities can serve as a firm foundation for our practice and as a useful guide to see where we may be out of balance.

Our karma is perpetually giving life to our life, and surrendering parts of our life into death. This is how we live-and-die. Eon Zen Senior Student and Practice Leader Lisa Gakyo offers words reflecting on this from Pat Enkyo O’Hara Roshi, Pico Iyer, and Taizan Maezumi Roshi.

Zen is the practice of living in reality, being present in your life as it is, not as we wish it to be, or in denial or resistance to what is. What is happening right now? When we enter the silence, the silence becomes you, and you become it. Return to your being. Enter the flow. Bravely.

In our life, we make and cling to distinctions, alive and dead, dreaming or awake, enlightenment or delusion — but it’s not like that. Everything seems to have a real existence, but when we look deeply and see reality as it is, we realize the line from the Lotus Sutra: "this fleeting world is like a phantom, like a dream.”

Be still. Look and don’t turn away. Listen to what your heart tells you to do. The Three Tenets are a core Zen practice. It is about waking up to the reality of the oneness and interconnectedness of all life, and then doing everything we can to relieve suffering in a suffering world.

Tibetan Teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche wrote about the experience of the Bardo as being both confused and awake at the same time, of the possibility of experiencing both absolute sanity and complete madness simultaneously. Both/And. This bothness is the quality of awakeness, of Zen -- to have all of our experience present at the same time.

Our Head Trainee for Fall 2023 Ango shares the Taoist story of the Farmer who goes through a series of events that might be judged as fortunate or unfortunate to explore the experience of the Bardo.

Physical and Mental Postures are the essence of our Zen practice. By committing to and bringing our attention to postures of stillness, non-reactivity, non-thinking and non-interference in both our body and our mind, a transformation happens.