Earth Dreams: Zen Buddhism and the Soul of the World

Since leaving the monastery a few years ago, I have become interested in how the ancient Zen teachers talked about the spiritual path. Language about the realizations that compose awakening are nested in the Zen chants that I would chant daily as a monastic, but we were so immersed in the continuous-ness of practice, that rarely would we stop and try to map out the territory. We were living it, who needed the borrowed words of those long dead to put a conceptual overlay onto something so fleeting as experience?My teacher Chozen was fond of saying that Zen was a practice without guardrails or measuring sticks—we stumble around in the dark. And somehow in this stumbling, in the dark terrain of life before concepts— our faith deepens and our sense of self loses its limiting bearings in exchange for an indescribable vastness that belongs to no-one. Zen teachers over the years have said of Zen that, “it is good for nothing”, or “a practice of non-attainment.”Others, including the early founders of the Soto school, described or attempted to show through poetry and image, some of the dynamics at play in this “good for nothing” journey of “non-attainment” and spiritual maturation.Two such teachers are Zen Masters Shitou and Dongshan Liangjie. Shitou’s famous work The Sandokai or The Identity of Relative and Absolute is still chanted at Soto Zen Monasteries and Temples all over the world. And Dongshan’s Precious Mirror Samadhi, which contains his teaching of the Five Ranks is similarly revered.There is a magic to language. A symbol is passed down for centuries, from spoken word, to ideogram, to letters and words in our own tongue, which become images again appearing in our imagination, references to a memory that we can almost taste.Words are sensual. We taste our words as we speak them. We feel their images and are invited into their song. Sentences are like spells. They captivate the heart. They have the power to render us transformed in this midst of their utterances. When used mindlessly words can kill the thing they are attempting to name. They can create landscapes of lies, delusive dreams that collectively capture our imaginations and send us spiraling further away from ourselves.Yet, words are also alive. Language lets us re-cast the spell on itself. A single word can be a deep medicine for the exiled heart. A point of connection—a way in.The theme of the absolute and the relative is a timeless dance of wholeness. What happens when we really venture to peer into Mind, inquire into the inner workings of our hearts, this experience we call my life?— well it's empty yet appearing, spacious yet seemingly tangible, here yet unfindable. What we call one, is also many—a relationship so intimately entwined, it can feel like a great wrong has been committed to even speak as if they were two separate and distinct experiences. And yet, we long to make meaning. To communicate the inner landscapes of the heart-mind. To celebrate the journey. We are map-makers of consciousness, knowing that as we chart the choppy, ever-changing waters of the heart, it's already shifting—there is nowhere where we truly stand besides the momentariness of standing right where we are.As I study the Sandokai and Dongshan’s Five Ranks, I have come to appreciate the play of light and shadow or relative and absolute as a generous reminder once spoken by Master Ma, and later by my own teacher Hogen Roshi—”we can’t fall out of the deep samadhi of the universe.” We are always on the path, and the path is always revealing a new face of this mystery.So let’s explore one map of the great ocean of awareness and perhaps through these words and images we will recognize some of our own footsteps.The Light within the Dark (the Relative with the Absolute)Dongshan: The third watch of the night, before moonrise—don’t be surprised if there's a meeting without recognition. One still harbors the elegance of former years.My meditation is so spacious, it reminds me of that time when…Dogen Zenji says, when the truth fills our body and mind, we realize that something is missing. As someone who spent a lot of days, months and years in zazen and retreat, a taste of spaciousness can trigger a longing for my time as a total beginner to practice, who just stumbled into this dark mystery of being and had no skin in the game, no vow, just a heart turned towards spaciousness.The Dao De Jing says, In the Dark, darken further…Have you ever meditated in the dark before moonrise? Have you ever let yourself let-go for a moment the ordinary distinctions of seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking? What kind of place is this? Does anyone remain?The Dark within the Light (The Absolute in the Relative)Dongshan: Having overslept, the elder woman encounters the ancient mirror. This is clearly meeting face-to-face, only then is it genuine. Don’t lose your head by validating shadows.I love this concept called non-linear emergence. A recognition that being human is non-linear. Healing in non-linear. Awakening surely is non-linear. Because we are never outside of the mysterious grace of our awakened nature, sometimes a moment of clarity rises up in the midst of a seemingly ordinary moment or even what we might consider a moment so outside of our concept of practice. Like those days when we sleep in, or are hungover, or ate too much cake, or feel distracted, busy, on autopilot, lost, alone in our suffering, or pain.Then suddenly, there is an encounter—a stranger smiles, we notice the yellow of a sunflower, a piece of music grabs our attention, we look up at the sky—and something happens. We find ourselves gazing into the ancient mirror. A true encounter. Face-to-face—we glimpse, we remember our shared nature, we feel an enduring love and acceptance, we taste the light of being.Yes right here in the midst of the ordinary, in the midst of the colossal ways we harm each other, in the midst of all the injustices in our crazy-making world—there is love, there is peace. The sacred rises up and kisses us on the cheek. And we keep on living. We go to work, we meet with a friend, we use the toilet when we need to, we continue to heal, we face the innumerable challenges of living a human life.As one Zen master said, awakening is an accident, practice makes us accident prone.Just the Dark (Coming from within the Absolute)Dongshan: Within nothingness there is a road out of the dusts. Just avoid speaking the forbidden name of the emperor and you will surpass the worthies of ancient times, who cut off tongues.Rinzai says: sometimes I take away the person and the environmentAll reference points lostJust don’t try to speak of itThough many people practice ZenFew have lost their MindCutting off tongues aside, let me ask— when your mind isn’t reifying anything—where do you abide?Enter the dark cave of meditation, it's OK to not-know who you are.One Zen student said when asked, what happens when you think about the one who thinks—I find that there is nothing there at all.Just the Light (Mutual Integration / From within the Relative)Dongshan: No need to dodge when blades are crossed. The skillful one is like a lotus in the fire. Surely you possess the aspiration to soar to the heavens.In the midst of our work, our relationships, our confusion, our intellectual pursuits—the dharma is here. We don’t need to look for peak experiences or make wonderment happen. Every meeting is genuine. The dharma is us. Our vow, our heart’s aspiration, the bodhisattva dwells in this very ordinary, cryptic, heart-wrenching human realm.Let yourself be a lotus in the fire.Aspire to see your life as a lotus blooming in the midst of all these flames.Light and Dark Together (Arriving at Concurrence)Dongshan: Everyone longs to leave the mundane stream, still you return to sit in the charcoal heap. Zen celebrates such a complete shedding. Is such a place possible? To no longer long for some peak experience, some validation from the universe that you are OK, that all is sacred. Faith can permeate one’s being so completely that the world of oneness and the world of diversity are so intertwined that it no longer makes sense to make distinctions. The tradition also celebrates responsiveness. Born from practice-realization we respond to the complexities of our lives. We walk freely through the other ranks, as we live our lives of practice. Most great Zen and Buddhist teachers continued to sit retreats and had a daily practice throughout their lives.Whether the charcoal heap is your zafu or this burning world of change and pain or the complete combustion of being so fully here for those you love + the work you do—you continue to sit in it, with it, with all beings.Thank you for your practice, thank you for living the life you have as genuinely as you do. As we walk the circle of the way, never falling out of the deep samadhi of the universe, we encounter these different expressions of the great heart of being. You might describe them differently, if you bother describing them at all. Perhaps you too are a mapmaker, a spell-caster, one haunted by a call to make meaning and embody love in our sometimes chilling yet beautiful world.In the dharma talk, I offer some other reflections on this topic—as it pertains to the practice of Ango. A time in the Zen Community of Oregon’s annual practice cycle that we dedicate to intensifying practice with the support of Sangha.…I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, budding Astrologer and Artist. In my Spiritual Counseling Practice, I practice at the confluence of spirituality and psychology, integrating mind, body and spirit. I am trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS), Dream Work, Hakomi (Somatic Therapy) and Mindful Eating. Below are some of my current offerings.Monday Night Meditation + DharmaEvery Monday 6P PT / 9P ETJoin me on zoom for 40 minutes of meditation and a dharma talk. We are currently exploring a text called The Eight Realizations of Great Beings, which gives us an opportunity to practice inquiry and embodying love as we discover our Awakened Nature together.This event is hosted by the Zen Community of Oregon. All are welcome to join. Drop in any time.Zoom Link for Monday NightBeyond Mindfulness: Deepening Your Meditation Practice Class SeriesStarts today! This workshop style course is designed to provide a map of the meditation path as well as:* Introduce you to the five main styles of meditation (calm-abiding, concentration, heart-based practices, inquiry and open-awareness)* Help you understand the intention of each method and how to practice it* Help you understand how the various methods and techniques fit together and support each other* Provide a fun, non-judgmental learning environment where you can try things out, ask questions and explore* Give you the opportunity to work with a teacher with an extensive background in various meditation techniquesSky + RoseWhat is it? An experiment in the impossible task of excluding nothing and loving everything. An alchemy of play, presence and wandering into the shadows, you could say.Sky & Rose is a practice container that will:* Center group parts work practices to explore the fluidity, span and dream of who we are - somebody, nobody, everybody. You will be invited to express yourself vocally and physically, engage your imagination and play outside habituation.* Do interpersonal and group meditation practices of seeing, being and awakening.* Directly explore emotional embodiment & shadow work* Include Beauty, Art & Wonderment as core practice elements Through rituals of imagination, meditation technologies and co-created fields of intentional play, we can slip out, for a time, of confining identities defined by our histories, culture and comfort.Delivered by these practices, we can begin to inhabit perspectives and modes of being that stretch our sense of the possible and refresh our sense of the everyday. You might find yourself wearing Luminosities face or inhabiting Laughter’s chest. Together we might try out Venus’s view of the very life we live or we might make space to feel Chaos's dance and shake off some rigidity.All of these are just examples of where our wondering and feeling into places of vitality and expansion may take us.We will rebel against the quotidian and respect ourselves too much to only have crumbs of the sacred!It was also be a time to work together with the challenges to living heart forward with sanity and presence within this hyper-fractured funhouse/madhouse world.Sky and Rose is a place for Jogen and i to invite you into practices and explorations of 'soul work' that are not part of the Buddhist tradition but that have nonetheless been sources of growth and joy for us. Our influences in this include Paratheatre, IFS and Voice Dialogue, Hakomi, Process Work, Butoh, Jungian dream work and more.We initiate Sky & Rose as an experiment in embracing Spirit and Soul simultaneously, together imagining and practicing interpersonal liberation, playfulness and spaciousness in this time of deep adaptation.Meets monthly on Sundays from 10:30A PT - 12:30P PT / 1:30P ET - 3:30P ETJoin us for our Opening Ritual + Practice exploringThe Ritual of LiminalitySunday October 27I currently live in Columbus, Ohio with my partner Patrick Kennyo Dunn, we facilitate an in-person meditation gathering every Wednesday from 7P - 8:30P at ILLIO in Clintonville through Mud Lotus Sangha. If you happen to be in Columbus, feel free to stop by. We have weekly meditation gatherings, and are offering a day of meditation in October. 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

I am just returning from my first in-person Zen sesshin here in Ohio. It was wonderful to practice the familiar rhythm of a silent, Zen-style meditation retreat so close to the place I currently call home. We practiced as the winds and rain from Hurricane Helene blew through South Western Ohio felling tree branches and power lines on the property of the Jesuit Spiritual Center where we were sitting our retreat. Despite a days long power outage on the property, we continued to practice and deepen into our shared vows and sense of interconnection. Our prayers and dedication of merit began to open up and include those living in areas that are affected by the winds, floods and destruction of the hurricane as well as those suffering in other ways all over our world—may they and we find relief from suffering and realize true happiness.Sesshin has this way of amplifying our aloneness and our togetherness. With nothing to do but sit, walk, eat and sleep, we have the rare opportunity to really let-go of or soften the reification of some of the ordinary functions of the mind, such as naming, conceptualizing, narrating, story-telling, etc. One is free to just be. And what is that? Something we are invited to continuously discover. So we sit on the edge of knowing and not-knowing, the precipice of becoming, the mystery of appearance inchoate. Being nothing and everything at once. Stopping for times the need to define or find a foothold in such existential territory. For me, it has been a while since I sat a full sesshin completely as a student. I felt like I had permission to rediscover what this practice is, from the embodied source—ground up. And zazen also had permission to be nothing in particular. There wasn’t something to resolve, or fix or some insight to get. In a place of such permission zazen got to be so many things. At times a warm loving embrace, other times a sharpening stone, a quiet refuge, space, a place to explore fears + tensions, to make friends with myself in all its forms and manifestations, a hub of bodhicitta, the entire universe unhinged, rain + wind, a leaf falling, love of the ancestors through our teacher + guide, an iron yoke, a lover…nothing at all.I am appreciating how the practice does practice us, and how over the decade and a half that I have been engaged in intensive practice, there are so many practices that visit me, offering momentary medicine in this process of living. I don’t need to take anything with me from moment to moment, I can trust that practice truly does continue. Though I do find myself drawn to creating the conditions to recognize the dharma in all times and places.I left sesshin feeling humbled and full. Daniel Terrango, our teacher and guide kept reminding us that the dharma is generous. Ah, yes. Can you feel it too?Right here is the heart of bodhicitta, a commitment to awaken together with all beings. Right here, all beings are awakening together in the sometimes maddening, sometimes heart-wrenchingly beautiful conditions of our current world-systems.In the teaching realm, I have been exploring a Zen poem called the Sandokai or Harmony of Difference and Sameness. In this dharma talk I zoom out and look at how we encounter difference and sameness in our dharma practice as well as our daily lives. It was rich and enlivening for me to engage in this contemplation, and I would be curious for those who listen to the talk or read the transcript—how it is for you.…I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, budding Astrologer and Artist. In my Spiritual Counseling Practice, I practice at the confluence of spirituality and psychology, integrating mind, body and spirit. I am trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS), Dream Work, Hakomi (Somatic Therapy) and Mindful Eating. Below are some of my current offerings.Monday Night Meditation + DharmaEvery Monday 6P PT / 9P ETJoin me on zoom for 40 minutes of meditation and a dharma talk. We are currently exploring the freedom, spontaneity and love of our original nature through the teachings of the Zen koan tradition. Koans invite us into the mythos of practice awakening, gifting us with the ordinary images of our lives, they help awaken us to the wonder, intimacy and compassion of life as it is!All are welcome to join. Drop in any time.Zoom Link for Monday NightBeyond Mindfulness: Deepening Your Meditation Practice Class SeriesThis workshop style course is designed to provide a map of the meditation path as well as:* Introduce you to the five main styles of meditation (calm-abiding, concentration, heart-based practices, inquiry and open-awareness)* Help you understand the intention of each method and how to practice it* Help you understand how the various methods and techniques fit together and support each other* Provide a fun, non-judgmental learning environment where you can try things out, ask questions and explore* Give you the opportunity to work with a teacher with an extensive background in various meditation techniquesI currently live in Columbus, Ohio with my partner Patrick Kennyo Dunn, we facilitate an in-person meditation gathering every Wednesday from 7P - 8:30P at ILLIO in Clintonville through Mud Lotus Sangha. If you happen to be in Columbus, feel free to stop by. We have weekly meditation gatherings, and are offering a day of meditation in October.Sky + RoseWhat is it? An experiment in the impossible task of excluding nothing and loving everything. An alchemy of play, presence and wandering into the shadows, you could say.Sky & Rose is a practice container that will:* Center group parts work practices to explore the fluidity, span and dream of who we are - somebody, nobody, everybody. You will be invited to express yourself vocally and physically, engage your imagination and play outside habituation.* Do interpersonal and group meditation practices of seeing, being and awakening.* Directly explore emotional embodiment & shadow work* Include Beauty, Art & Wonderment as core practice elements Through rituals of imagination, meditation technologies and co-created fields of intentional play, we can slip out, for a time, of confining identities defined by our histories, culture and comfort.Delivered by these practices, we can begin to inhabit perspectives and modes of being that stretch our sense of the possible and refresh our sense of the everyday. You might find yourself wearing Luminosities face or inhabiting Laughter’s chest. Together we might try out Venus’s view of the very life we live or we might make space to feel Chaos's dance and shake off some rigidity.All of these are just examples of where our wondering and feeling into places of vitality and expansion may take us.We will rebel against the quotidian and respect ourselves too much to only have crumbs of the sacred!It was also be a time to work together with the challenges to living heart forward with sanity and presence within this hyper-fractured funhouse/madhouse world.Sky and Rose is a place for Jogen and i to invite you into practices and explorations of 'soul work' that are not part of the Buddhist tradition but that have nonetheless been sources of growth and joy for us. Our influences in this include Paratheatre, IFS and Voice Dialogue, Hakomi, Process Work, Butoh, Jungian dream work and more.We initiate Sky & Rose as an experiment in embracing Spirit and Soul simultaneously, together imagining and practicing interpersonal liberation, playfulness and spaciousness in this time of deep adaptation.Meets monthly on Sundays from 10:30A PT - 12:30P PT / 1:30P ET - 3:30P ETJoin us for our Opening Ritual + Practice exploringThe Ritual of LiminalitySunday October 27 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

A thousand times at least I asked my Guru to give Nothingness a name. Then I gave up. What name can you give to the source from which all names have sprung? –Lal DedLanguage has a trickster quality. At one moment it limits. We find ourselves hard pressed to find the word that captures a feeling, mind state or emotion. Other times, a single word can invoke so many meanings and associations that we are left with a number of mind tangents or in a conversation with people who have very different images in their hearts.For example—the other day I was working with a colleague to come up with a name for an event that we are collaborating on. They wanted to use the word “vessel”, I said it reminded me of deep sea submarines, they said they thought of a cup or chalice, another friend said they immediately thought of blood flowing through their veins.Needless to say, we scrapped vessel.But, how often does this happen?One of my favorite books as a college student was The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (who is a Czech writer and somehow captures something I know so deeply in my bones growing up in a large close knit Catholic extended family with Czech ancestry). In the book he defines words according to the different characters, which opens up a reflection on how a single word also contains personal meaning based on our histories. We all have experience with hearing a word, and an image appears in our mind, and suddenly we are in a scene from 10 years ago—smelling the ocean, filled with longing for a lost love or time of connection—or something else.Given our wide range of life experience and associations, how is it that we are able to communicate at all?In spiritual practice, we play the trickster, using language we point beyond concepts to a truth outside of our shared vernacular— a secret language of the innermost heart.Yet, the words themselves can act as traps. We say one thing, and the other side isn’t expressed. Our words amount to an incomplete teaching, a partial truth. As practitioners on this path of freedom—we learn to liberate language. To hear beyond the words. To—at times—forget words. Deviating from conventional conceptualizations — playing in pure potentiality. If a tree wasn’t a tree, what would you call it?If love wasn’t called love, how would you name it?What is the sound you would give to oneness? How would you capture Nothingness?Don’t tell me about it, my teacher would say in sanzen, show me!…For the month of September my dharma talks/podcasts will be exploring the relationship between the oneness and the many, or sameness and difference. We will be using the Zen poem by Shitou called the Sandokai, which is translated as the Harmony of Difference and Sameness or the Identity of Relative and Absolute. This podcast introduces the poem and some other teachings from Shitou, just to give you a flavor for his teaching style. On Monday Sept 16, I plan to zoom out and explore the ways sameness + difference show up in our lives + practice, exploring how we can practice integrating the teaching of one + many in our relational lives.Another theme I have been reflecting on lately, and this very much is part the exploration of oneness and many—is the relationship between Spirit and Soul in dharma practice. Almost every retreat I have led in a Zen context, someone asks at some point, where is the joy? And while I have found great joy in simply sitting in the stripped down style of a Zen sesshin. I also know that Joy, Beauty, Art, Wonderment and Ecstasy are potent elements to the unfolding and embodiment of dharma in our lives.Jogen and I have been envisioning a practice space that is both committed to the spiritual practice of waking up, while also exploring together elements of soul work. I am excited to introduce……sky + rose: an emergent, on-line contemplative community braiding Spirit and SoulMeets monthly on Sundays from 10:30A PT - 12:30P PT / 1:30P ET - 3:30P ETJoin us for our first practice session : The Ritual of LiminalitySunday October 27Spirit (sky): indestructible stillness-openness, clarity, perfection beyond the mind’s capacity to grasp or reconcile, the felt unity of all this multiplicity, the cosmos in your cup of coffee. Unstoppable, ever-graceful flow.Soul (rose): everything alive as Beauty. Art in the everyday quirks, cares, agonies and curiosities. Tending the need to create, relate, build and destroy. Reconciling Psyche’s movement towards wholeness. Answering the call to heal the meanness and alienation that fractures our worlds. Putting on the Altar the dark places and shining light in the shadowy corners of our very human hearts. The love and meaning for the flowers popping up in the cracks.This is a place for kisei and jogen to weave in practices and explorations of Soul Work that are typically not highlighted in the Buddhist tradition but that have nonetheless been sources of vitality, expansion and joy. Here we ask together: What if we lived as if Love were the point?We will:* Create a practice ethos of radical non-duality, a commitment to see into the dream of the self. Grounding in dharma practices of stillness, inquiry and openness.* Center parts work practices to explore the fluidity, span and dream of who we are - somebody, nobody, everybody.* Do interpersonal and group meditation practices of seeing, being and awakening.* Directly explore emotional embodiment & shadow work* Include Beauty, Art & Wonderment as core practice elementsWe initiate Sky & Rose as an experiment in embracing Spirit and Soul simultaneously, together imagining and practicing collective liberation, playfulness and spaciousness in this time of deep adaptation.We will begin with monthly 2 hour online sessions on Sundays. Each month we will have a different theme. The schedule for a session can be found below. We ask each person to commit to coming for the entire session.Opening—Sacred Invocation (10 min)Meditation/Universe Somatic (45 min)Group Shadow Work / Relational Practices (1hr)Closing Dedication ….I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, budding Astrologer and Artist. In my Spiritual Counseling Practice, I practice at the confluence of spirituality and psychology, integrating mind, body and spirit. I am trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS), Dream Work, Hakomi (Somatic Therapy) and Mindful Eating.I also lead a weekly online meditation group through the Zen Community of Oregon and am leading a class series on the Zen Bodhisattva Precepts this Fall. Also if you are interested in workshopping your meditation practice join me in collaboration with Pause Meditation for a 5-week online class series called Beyond Mindfulness. More information can be found below.Monday Night Meditation + DharmaEvery Monday 6P PT / 9P ETJoin me on zoom for 40 minutes of meditation and a dharma talk. We are currently exploring the freedom, spontaneity and love of our original nature through the teachings of the Zen koan tradition. Koans invite us into the mythos of practice awakening, gifting us with the ordinary images of our lives, they help awaken us to the wonder, intimacy and compassion of life as it is!All are welcome to join. Drop in any time.Zoom Link for Monday NightLiving the Questions: 16 Bodhisattva Precepts Class SeriesBe patient with all that is unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek the answers, which can not be given to you, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. And perhaps you will then gradually…find yourself living the answer. — RilkeFar from being a set of rules or doctrine that we must follow, the Bodhisattva precepts act as koans, inquiries that we are empowered to take into our life. They ask us to consider, what does love look like in this situation? In this relationship, how do I work with my anger? Who is it who wants to gossip, or inflate one’s self? How can I show up authentically in the world?With the final five grave precepts, pure precepts and refuges as our guide we will explore the heart of what it means for each one of us to live a life of integrity and love. We will explore how each precept touches the personal, interpersonal, global and secret dimensions of our living.Beyond Mindfulness: Deepening Your Meditation Practice Class SeriesThis workshop style course is designed to provide a map of the meditation path as well as:* Introduce you to the five main styles of meditation (calm-abiding, concentration, heart-based practices, inquiry and open-awareness)* Help you understand the intention of each method and how to practice it* Help you understand how the various methods and techniques fit together and support each other* Provide a fun, non-judgmental learning environment where you can try things out, ask questions and explore* Give you the opportunity to work with a teacher with an extensive background in various meditation techniquesI currently live in Columbus, Ohio with my partner Patrick Kennyo Dunn, we facilitate an in-person meditation gathering every Wednesday from 7P - 8:30P at ILLIO in Clintonville through Mud Lotus Sangha. If you happen to be in Columbus, feel free to stop by. We have weekly meditation gatherings, and are offering a day of meditation in October.Earth Dreams is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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

We are emerging from the monthly return of the moon’s dark face—where from earth’s perspective the sun and moon appear to kiss, an aspect that astrologers refer to as a conjunction. In the Zen tradition, the moon cycles served as markers for the calendar year—with the new and full moons being opportunities for ritual and ceremony around atonement and renewal of vows.In my own life and practice, I have been contemplating the mystery of being, what is often unseen or unacknowledged in the ways we normally move through space and relate to others and the world. In celebration of this New Moon and the Great Mystery, I offer a reflection on the following koan, Zhaozhou’s Deeply Secret Mind.Hidden Lamp: Zhaozhou’s Deeply Secret MindA nun asked Master Zhaozhou: What is the deeply secret mind?Zhaozhou squeezed her handThe nun responded Do you still have this?Zhaozhou replied: You are the one who has thisI was reflecting the other day about why I started practicing Zen. In my home sangha, the Zen Community of Oregon, we have been having conversations about paths of practice. So, I invite you to reflect as well. Why did you start practicing meditation? And if you practice in a particular tradition, why that tradition?In my own reflection, it seems like Zen chose me. Someone gave me a Zen book and it resonated, then the meditation group I sat with in college was Zen, then my partner in college took me with him to a Zen Temple—at that point I didn’t really think about the other meditation traditions and if one would have been a better fit. I just followed the path that was opening itself up before me.When I entered a Zen Monastery for my first retreat, I was greeted by an ambiance that felt ancient. The dark zendo, the temple bells, physical mudras that evoked stillness, gratitude and wonder as the monastery building played with the natural world in a way that the two felt indistinguishable. Though my thoughts frequently played the worries and dreams of this particular person, I had a sense that these stories weren’t the whole of who I was. The ancient timeless peace of the monastery was my heart too.It was here that I felt, perhaps for the first time in my adult life, Zhaozhou’s hand reaching out and squeezing mine—the monastery + zen forms provided the physical invitation into this open secret.Another way this koan is translated is: The nun asks, What is the inner-most heart?We say Zen is transmitted heart to heart, mind to mind. A few weeks ago I was at Great Vow for a weeklong silent meditation retreat called Grasses and Trees Sesshin. The retreat takes place completely outdoors, we practice with the grounds and forest, the trees, leaves, meadows, birds and bats. During our sharing circle on the last day, someone shared a story of sitting with a spider, and feeling the spider extend one of its legs, as the person held out a hand.Others spoke of touching the earth, a rock, a tree —palm to palm, hand to heart, eyeball to eyeball, soma to soma.When we spend a week, or a day or years or even minutes sitting with another being in silence, in openness, in presence—we know each other in a way that words can’t even begin to explain.Think of all the hands you have held over the years. The hands you have squeezed. What was being communicated? What were you sharing? What state of Mind? What quality of Heart?All the time we are holding hands with this sacred life.Tooth brush hands, tea cup hands, peach + apple hands, dirt hands, human hands, dog hands.Sometimes maybe we are saying, I love you, I’m scared, hold me, other times especially with the seeming objects of our lives, it might feel more transactional, or maybe we fail to notice this ordinary intimacy.Chozen Roshi would invite us to take up the practice of Loving Hands. A way of really attending to all the beings, all the life energy that moves through our hands in a given day. How many hand squeezes are we giving and receiving? How many moments of intimacy kiss our lips, and pass us by?Patrick and I have been doing some teaching with a local sangha called Mud Lotus Sangha here in Columbus, OH, and sometimes the question comes up—what is Zen good for?Or another way a similar sentiment arises for folks who have been practicing for a while is, I know what Zen is good for. It helps me feel calm, or less anxious, or more connected.We have the habit of relating to this practice as another thing that we can measure—whether it is working for me, or not. Whether I am getting what I want from this, or not.This koan is reminding us that Zen or our spiritual lives don’t work that way. Even sitting meditation doesn’t work that way.When we try to measure our spiritual practice, we overlook the mystery—we violate the deeply secret transmissions, we forget about our inner-most heart.Many of you have heard me use the teaching tool of inner, outer and secret. Let’s go into that a little bit more in relationship to the practice of Zen, or spiritual practice more generally.So, we have the physical things that we do, maybe that is meditating daily, or once a week, maybe that is doing bowing practice, or chanting or walking meditation, precepts study or some other practice. This is the outer form of the practice. It is important in that it gives us a form, a temenos, a sacred vessel and structure to our practice. This form is helpful. It reminds us that we are practicing. It gives our bodies and minds something to do, to settle into, to trust. This allows practice to deepen and open.Then we have what we are doing with our minds / attention. I call this the inner dimension. This starts with intention, and then the method—how we are actually meeting the changing experiences on an inner level. This could include practicing acceptance, loving kindness or compassion for ourselves, or learning to relate to thoughts as another sense happening. Or beginning to look into the nature of our experience (we call this inquiry). What is the source of thoughts, what are emotions made of? How long does any experience last? All these practices compose the inner dimension—what we are doing with our attention moment to moment.The secret dimension is all that can not be said, what we don’t have names for. The physicist David Bohm said that if we used the analogy of the ocean to describe what we know and don’t know about the universe, what we know would be comparable to the foam that rests on the surface of the ocean. What we don’t know—is the rest of the ocean.The opening lines to the Dao De Jing say it this way:The dao that can be named is not the eternal dao.And so Zhaozhou gives our hands a squeeze. And it’s not about the hand or the squeeze per se, but the intimacy. The connection. Not the words intimacy or connection, but the direct, living intimacy. The dissolving of self and other. Releasing the world from our concepts about it. It’s the heart at home with itself. The great mystery of being and non-being—simultaneously. I think you know what I am trying to say. There are times in our practice, in our life as practice where we hear the words behind the words. We hear the secret language of a chant, dharma talk, gesture, sound and part of us understands. Chozen Roshi would invite us to listen to the birds so closely, that we could almost understand what they were saying. I think a similar kind of listening emerges in Zen, we hear and learn to speak the language behind the words and forms, the secret language of true intimacy.So we practice Zen in all its forms, we set intentions and put into practice the teachings that help us cultivate mental stability, equanimity, ease, loving kindness, compassion, gratitude, joy.And at times we are touched by the mystery. The great love of being. We sense our shared nature, and the wisdom, openness and clarity of the heart as our own nature. And then, without us even noticing it secret language emerges from our own lips.…. This dharma talk was shared live during the Monday Night Dharma event through the Zen Community of Oregon.I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, budding Astrologer and Artist. In my Spiritual Counseling Practice, I practice at the confluence of spirituality and psychology, integrating mind, body and spirit. I am trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS), Dream Work, Hakomi (Somatic Therapy) and Mindful Eating.I have a few new client openings this Fall if you are interested in exploring Spiritual Counseling with me. Spiritual Counseling can help you:* Companion Grief + Loss* Clarify Life Purpose* Healing Relational Conflict + Inner Conflict* Work with Shadow Material* Heal your relationship with Eating, Food or Body Image* Spiritual Emergence* Integrate Psychedelic or Mystical Experiences* Move Through Creative Blocks, Career Impasses and BurnoutI also lead a weekly online meditation group through the Zen Community of Oregon and am leading a class series on the Zen Bodhisattva Precepts this Fall. Also if you are interested in workshopping your meditation practice join me in collaboration with Pause Meditation for a 5-week online class series called Beyond Mindfulness. More information can be found below.Monday Night Meditation + DharmaEvery Monday 6P PT / 9P ETJoin me on zoom for 40 minutes of meditation and a dharma talk. We are currently exploring the freedom, spontaneity and love of our original nature through the teachings of the Zen koan tradition. Koans invite us into the mythos of practice awakening, gifting us with the ordinary images of our lives, they help awaken us to the wonder, intimacy and compassion of life as it is!All are welcome to join. Drop in any time.Zoom Link for Monday NightLiving the Questions: 16 Bodhisattva Precepts Class SeriesBe patient with all that is unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek the answers, which can not be given to you, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. And perhaps you will then gradually…find yourself living the answer. — RilkeFar from being a set of rules or doctrine that we must follow, the Bodhisattva precepts act as koans, inquiries that we are empowered to take into our life. They ask us to consider, what does love look like in this situation? In this relationship, how do I work with my anger? Who is it who wants to gossip, or inflate one’s self? How can I show up authentically in the world?With the final five grave precepts, pure precepts and refuges as our guide we will explore the heart of what it means for each one of us to live a life of integrity and love. We will explore how each precept touches the personal, interpersonal, global and secret dimensions of our living.Beyond Mindfulness: Deepening Your Meditation Practice Class SeriesThis workshop style course is designed to provide a map of the meditation path as well as:* Introduce you to the five main styles of meditation (calm-abiding, concentration, heart-based practices, inquiry and open-awareness)* Help you understand the intention of each method and how to practice it* Help you understand how the various methods and techniques fit together and support each other* Provide a fun, non-judgmental learning environment where you can try things out, ask questions and explore* Give you the opportunity to work with a teacher with an extensive background in various meditation techniquesI currently live in Columbus, Ohio with my partner Patrick Kennyo Dunn, we facilitate an in-person meditation gathering every Wednesday from 7P - 8:30P at ILLIO in Clintonville through Mud Lotus Sangha. If you happen to be in Columbus, feel free to stop by. We have weekly meditation gatherings, and are offering a day of meditation in October. 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

Blue Cliff Record Case 39: The Golden Haired LionA student asked Yunmen, “What is the pure and everlasting body of reality?”Yunmen said, “A fence of flowers and healing herbs.”The student asked, “What’s it like when I reach there?”Yunmen said, “A golden-haired lion!”I am landing back in Ohio after about two weeks visiting my old homes in Oregon, Great Vow Zen Monastery and Portland. I was at Great Vow for a weeklong sesshin that we call Grasses, Trees and the Great Earth—a unique retreat where we move the zendo outside, and sit in a circle together in ceremony with the Earth, Sky, Trees, Grasses and beings of the forest, meadow creek and pond. I initially gave this series of talks in the heart of the summer, when flowers, healing herbs, tomatoes and blueberries are fruiting on the fences, in the gardens and windowsill pots of our lives. A time of year that tropical astrologers assign to the constellation Leo, the lion—a fixed fire sign, ruled by the Sun. As Leo season ends, and we find ourselves in late summer, returning back to our own inner light, and the work that needs to be done. I offer these talks and reflections on the Golden Haired Lion, Koan Work and the Changing of the Seasons.The ancient greek astrologers saw the sun as the heart of the cosmic animal as well as the heart of the human being. To know one’s heart was to connect to the wild, mysterious heart of the cosmos.Lion-imagery crosses cultures. Lions have spoken to the human heart throughout antiquity we see remnants of this relationship today on the lion panel of the Chauvet Cave in France painted 30K years ago, in the image of the lion-headed dakini in Tibet, Sekhmet the Egyptian warrior-healer goddess with a lion head and in the strength card in the tarot. The RWS version of the strength card in the tarot is quite evocative of the imagery from this koan. A woman wearing flowers in her hair and on her dress, pets a seemingly tamed lion—framed by a bright yellow background invoking the summer sun. Who or what are these part lion-part human beings?Animals and nature frequent koans. I always feel like their appearance reminds us that our spiritual lives unfold within these animal bodies, within the place that we live, within our passions and desires. The appearance of a wild animal connects to our instincts. The lion to our sovereignty as well as our magical child.So here we are again. Conversing with a Zen teacher about the body of reality. And again, the teacher points to the flowers. This time blooming together with medicinal herbs on a fence.While the image was probably something in the immediate environment of the questioner. There are always levels of meaning and exploration within a single interaction. The questioner is asking—what is it? What is always present? Is there something that you can say to express the freedom and love of our original nature, how is it—what is it—right, here–right now?Yunmen shares a bit of his mind by naming— the flowering fence, the medicinal herbs.Images of beauty as well as nourishment—medicine. Alive right here in the present. Is beauty medicine? What nourishes your heart? This koan is very much a koan with heart.Earth Dreams is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Have you ever meditated on a flower? Or attended to a flower blooming over the course of days or weeks. Budding, the opening which is a process of contraction and expansion, then the full expression of its open-ness and followed by the falling petals that slowly turn to soil.Flowers reveal nature's beauty in full display. Their sweet smells and arresting appearance attract humans as well as pollinators. Long associated with the heart, they show us something about the tender process of moving towards openness. As well as reflecting to us the nature of cycles and deep interconnection. Flowers are in-bedded in a place, they are relational.In the Buddhist tradition the nature of mind, the pure body of reality, awareness is likened to a flower that is eternally blooming—always present. While simultaneously human life, the life of the world is —seasonal, is changing, is subject to the whims of nature, the turning of the earth, night and day and all the other beings that we share this cosmos with.What’s it like when we realize the pure body of reality for ourselves? A golden haired lion.Together we share the great heart of the cosmos, like the lemniscate above the woman in the strength card—we recognize our continual inter-connection, our shared being with animal, earth, flower, night sky. We find and lose and find ourselves in the heart of our being.In Hua-Yen Buddhism, the golden-haired lion is a symbol of inter-being, inter-penetration. Like a great hologram, it was said that each of the lion’s hairs contained the whole lion. So the lion itself was an embodiment of Indra's net. It was a symbol for the living body of reality, where everything is contained within everything else.Majushri, the bodhisattva of Wisdom, is said to ride on this lion. Living this insight.So the appearance of this lion in this koan is an invitation to walk through the world as such. Seeing everyone you meet, every interaction as a reflection of the whole cosmos. Similar to the gnostic belief that the divine is contained within each of us. We are of one substance, and we are utterly unique in our expressions. Our heart is both the heart of the cosmos, and our personal heart (soul/psyche) which will flower in its own way, based on the causes and conditions of our precious life.The lion’s gaze is another teaching in the buddhist tradition. The analogy goes that if you throw a ball to a dog, the dog will run after the ball. If you throw a ball to a lion, the lion will look back at the source. As practitioner’s we train in the lion’s gaze. Instead of following every thought form that flashes through our mind, we trace the thoughts back to our embodied experience, back to awareness itself—back to the source.We learn to gaze into the spacious source of our nature.The images of a koan are like the images of a dream, or even a fairy tale. Where each image is us. We are questioner, we are teacher, we are flowers opening alongside medicinal herbs, we are fence, we are lion, we are the bodhisattva of wisdom.Koans invite us to carry these images into our meditation practice and into our day. Where, like dreams, our associations carry insights into the more personal as well as archetypal dimensions of the koan. Perhaps we will find ourselves practicing our roars, or walking with confidence, embodying courage, letting ourselves shine or take up space. Maybe we will learn more about the mythological lions from fairy tales.Koans invite participation. Embodiment. Creativity.What is it like to sit as a lion? To walk down the street as your lion self? To show-up at a meeting with lion-like courage or confidence, optimism? How familiar are you with your inner strength? What would it be like to practice the lion’s gaze when someone criticizes you, or when you criticize yourself? What is it like to let yourself be accompanied by such a lion? This is something I love about koans, they offer support. Companionship. As we get acquainted with the lion of our true nature, we can imagine having them around. Perhaps like in the strength card.Another dimension of this koan is the flower and the medicinal herbs. And so one tangible practice is to simply spend some time meditating with flowers or looking at flowers—really seeing them. Or maybe making yourself some medicinal herbal tea.I have a few friends who as a practice always have a bouquet of flowers on their altar or table, as a way of connecting to beauty and remembering self-appreciation (one friend realized that it was a way of giving herself a gift everyday, the other said it was a small way of connecting to joy).Last year Kennyo and I watched the early season of Twin Peaks, and there was this scene where Agent Cooper is getting pie at the dinner and he says to the sheriff Harry S Truman, “I give myself a gift everyday”.This koan is also about that. How do you nourish your heart? How can you be generous with yourself? Can you do something generous for yourself everyday?We might also try on some of the paradoxes these images hold. How can we be eternally blooming, and also allow all things to have their seasons? Can we sense our oneness, and allow each being to express themselves as they are? As you can see, each koan contains a lot of teachings even within a few images. This layered aspect of koans is what makes them potent teaching tools. So notice, was there any part of the koan, any one of the images or the teachings that the image invokes that you are curious about or do you have an area of life that you feel concerned about, that you aren’t sure how to practice with—could the koan accompany you there….that might be the way to bring this teaching into your week.…Koan Practice and the Three Bodies of the BuddhaIn this next talk, I take a deeper dive into how to work with a koan using Blue Cliff Record Case 39: The Golden Haired Lion. I provide a framework for koan practice from the teachings of the Three Bodies of Buddha—three aspects of our embodied awakened life, which are:* Dharmakaya/Essence/Secret—koans point to our awakened nature, the ground of being, our shared light* Sambhogakaya/Inner/Dream Body—working with koan images and energies can help us meet and work with the stuff of our own hearts and minds and empower us to cultivate the awakened qualities that the koan points to. Koan images can also act as dharma protectors, beings we can turn towards to help us meet the inner demons, distractions and deeply conditioned patterns of mind that cause suffering to others and ourselves* Nirmanakaya/Outer/Form/Compassion Body—bringing the koan into our relationships, work we do, expression, embodiment, how we live…Seasons of Practice: Exploring Emptiness + FullnessThis final talk is a reflection + celebration of the end of summer and the practice opportunities that come with late Summer, a time symbolically represented by the Hermit. …I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, budding Astrologer and Artist. In my Spiritual Counseling Practice, I practice at the confluence of spirituality and psychology, integrating mind, body and spirit. I am trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS), Dream Work, Hakomi (Somatic Therapy) and Mindful Eating.I also lead a weekly online meditation group through the Zen Community of Oregon and am leading a class series on the Zen Bodhisattva Precepts this Fall. Also if you are interested in workshopping your meditation practice join me in collaboration with Pause Meditation for a 5-week online class series called Beyond Mindfulness. More information can be found below.Monday Night Meditation + DharmaEvery Monday 6P PT / 9P ETJoin me on zoom for 40 minutes of meditation and a dharma talk. We are currently exploring the freedom, spontaneity and love of our original nature through the teachings of the Zen koan tradition. Koans invite us into the mythos of practice awakening, gifting us with the ordinary images of our lives, they help awaken us to the wonder, intimacy and compassion of life as it is!All are welcome to join. Drop in any time.Zoom Link for Monday NightLiving the Questions: 16 Bodhisattva Precepts Class SeriesBe patient with all that is unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek the answers, which can not be given to you, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. And perhaps you will then gradually…find yourself living the answer. — RilkeFar from being a set of rules or doctrine that we must follow, the Bodhisattva precepts act as koans, inquiries that we are empowered to take into our life. They ask us to consider, what does love look like in this situation? In this relationship, how do I work with my anger? Who is it who wants to gossip, or inflate one’s self? How can I show up authentically in the world?With the final five grave precepts, pure precepts and refuges as our guide we will explore the heart of what it means for each one of us to live a life of integrity and love. We will explore how each precept touches the personal, interpersonal, global and secret dimensions of our living.Beyond Mindfulness: Deepening Your Meditation Practice Class SeriesThis workshop style course is designed to provide a map of the meditation path as well as:* Introduce you to the five main styles of meditation (calm-abiding, concentration, heart-based practices, inquiry and open-awareness)* Help you understand the intention of each method and how to practice it* Help you understand how the various methods and techniques fit together and support each other* Provide a fun, non-judgmental learning environment where you can try things out, ask questions and explore* Give you the opportunity to work with a teacher with an extensive background in various meditation techniquesI currently live in Columbus, Ohio with my partner Patrick Kennyo Dunn, we facilitate an in-person meditation gathering every Wednesday from 7P - 8:30P at ILLIO in Clintonville through Mud Lotus Sangha. If you happen to be in Columbus, feel free to stop by. We have weekly meditation gatherings, and are offering a day of meditation in October. 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

For whom do you bathe and make yourself beautiful?The cry of the cuckoo is calling you home;hundreds of flowers fall, yet her voice isn’t stilled;even deep in jumbled mountains, it’s calling clearly.      —DongshanOne way of appreciating this experience we call life is to see it through the eyes of devotion. Whether we are conscious of it or not our lives are woven together through simple, ordinary acts of devotion. We are moved by our love, our sense of duty, our responsibilities and our passions. In spiritual practice we are invited to make our devotedness conscious. To ask —what am I devoted to? What do I devote my time and energy towards? How do I use my attention?As the poem echoes—For whom do you bathe and make yourself beautiful?What wakes you up in the morning? How do you greet your day?Why do you make breakfast, exercise, listen to music, work?And what if this was a living inquiry? Not another reason to shame yourself into being different, or think about how you should be waking up, or what you should be devoted to…But instead, perhaps allowing devotion a place at the table of your life. How are you already devoted to your living and loving? How does this devotion show up in your life? What is the shape of your love? What does it feel like to appreciate the commitments that you have? How are you already an accomplice to beauty?Sometimes we move on auto-pilot. We forget that in the midst of this giant machine of our society, we have agency. And are using it all the time in creative and kind ways. We create beauty. We nourish the ones we love. We turn towards love and compassion countless times throughout the day. We practice seeing more clearly.We are always in cahoots with the great mystery. The cuckoo calls to us. The cicadas sing. The tea pot whistles in a cadence with the mid-summer breeze. A child laughs, another cries—as our hearts and bodies respond.Our longing for healing + wholeness, our desire for connection, the passion with which we wish to share our gifts, talents and heart with others and the world—these are the ingredients for living a spiritual life. These are the seeds that open the world of wonder and interconnection.Underneath every action we take there is a thread of our devotion, a thread that can be traced back to the heart of who we are.For whom do you bathe and make yourself beautiful?The cry of the cuckoo is calling you home;hundreds of flowers fall, yet her voice isn’t stilled;even deep in jumbled mountains, it’s calling clearly.May we continue to hear its vital call.This podcast episode is an exploration of a Zen story from the koan collection The Hidden Lamp. It explores the themes of devotion and listening on the spiritual path. Asan’s RoosterAsan was a laywoman who studied Zen with Master Tetsumon and was unremitting in her devotion to practice. One day during her morning sitting she heard the crow of the rooster and her mind suddenly opened. She spoke a verse in response:The fields, the mountains, the flowers and my body too are the voice of the bird—what is left that can be said to hear?Master Tetsumon recognized her enlightenment.…I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, Meditation Coach, budding Astrologer and Artist. In my Spiritual Counseling Practice, I practice at the confluence of spirituality and psychology, integrating mind, body and spirit. I am trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS), Dream Work, Hakomi (Somatic Therapy) and Mindful Eating.I also lead a weekly online meditation group through the Zen Community of Oregon and am leading a class series on the Zen Bodhisattva Precepts this Fall. Also if you are interested in workshopping your meditation practice join me in collaboration with Pause Meditation for a 5-week online class series called Beyond Mindfulness. More information can be found below.Monday Night Meditation + DharmaEvery Monday 6P PT / 9P ETJoin me on zoom for 40 minutes of meditation and a dharma talk. We are currently exploring the freedom, spontaneity and love of our original nature through the teachings of the Zen koan tradition. Koans invite us into the mythos of practice awakening, gifting us with the ordinary images of our lives, they help awaken us to the wonder, intimacy and compassion of life as it is! All are welcome to join. Drop in any time.Zoom Link for Monday NightLiving the Questions: 16 Bodhisattva Precepts Class SeriesBe patient with all that is unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek the answers, which can not be given to you, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. And perhaps you will then gradually…find yourself living the answer. — RilkeFar from being a set of rules or doctrine that we must follow, the Bodhisattva precepts act as koans, inquiries that we are empowered to take into our life. They ask us to consider, what does love look like in this situation? In this relationship, how do I work with my anger? Who is it who wants to gossip, or inflate one’s self? How can I show up authentically in the world?With the final five grave precepts, pure precepts and refuges as our guide we will explore the heart of what it means for each one of us to live a life of integrity and love. We will explore how each precept touches the personal, interpersonal, global and secret dimensions of our living.Beyond Mindfulness: Deepening Your Meditation Practice Class SeriesThis workshop style course is designed to provide a map of the meditation path as well as:* Introduce you to the five main styles of meditation (calm-abiding, concentration, heart-based practices, inquiry and open-awareness)* Help you understand the intention of each method and how to practice it* Help you understand how the various methods and techniques fit together and support each other* Provide a fun, non-judgmental learning environment where you can try things out, ask questions and explore* Give you the opportunity to work with a teacher with an extensive background in various meditation techniquesI currently live in Columbus, Ohio with my partner Patrick Kennyo Dunn , we facilitate an in-person meditation gathering every Wednesday from 7P - 8:30P at ILLIO in Clintonville through Mud Lotus Sangha. If you happen to be in Columbus, feel free to stop by!Earth Dreams is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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

Our attention is a precious resource. We use it all the time, and so, might forget what a resource it is. Contemplative traditions throughout the ages recognized the preciousness of attention. And also recognized that if we don’t put in the effort to train our attention, our attention may get hijacked, scattered, frittered away by the thieves of time or thoughts of worry, disappointment, greed and hatred.With the election news blaring right now. It might feel easier then ever for attention to get hijacked in doom-scrolling, anxieties about the future, worries and fear. It is an on-going practice to notice where our attention is being pulled, and to remember that we have choice about what we are attending to. To remember that attending to joy, compassion, equanimity and loving kindness awaken these qualities in our own hearts and in the world.The intellect can only get us so far, as individuals and as a species. We have other resources and capacities that are under-valued in our capitalist society, but are life-affirming and necessary for our wellbeing. Qualities like spaciousness, presence, clear-seeing, compassion for others, curiosity and play allow us to connect beyond our differences in views and even across species-lines. These qualities potentiate other ways of showing up for ourselves, others and the world—ways of being that empower us to companion uncertainty and awaken to our inter-connectedness.About a thousand years ago, a Zen teacher named Yunmen said to their community: Within heaven and earth, through space and time, there is a jewel, hidden inside the mountain of form. Pick up a lamp and go into the Buddha Hall, take the triple gate and bring it on the lamp.In Zen, we call statements like this koans. Words or phrases that can’t be understood with our intellects alone but require a different kind of attention and inquiry. Koans like this, invite us in to ways of seeing that are as multifaceted as this jewel. They invite us into their world, a world of possibility—a world that is right here, inside this one that we are already living. So if you can for a moment, slip below the apparent linearity of time—into the present—and conjure for a moment—MOUNTAIN.Maybe you live by a mountain. Maybe you have only seen pictures of them. Maybe at some point in your life you backpacked or camped or hiked on a mountain. Mountains have presence. To view a mountain, even an image of one can often invoke a sense of inner stillness, a sense of awe or even majesty.In the summer at great vow we would often study the Mountains and Rivers Sutra by Dogen Zenji. In it Dogen says:Mountains possess complete virtue with nothing lacking. They are always safely rooted yet constantly moving. You should study the meaning of always moving. You should study the green mountains. Just because the movement of mountains is not like the movement of human beings, do not doubt that it exists.We would practice sitting like a mountain. My teacher Chozen Roshi said, “If you sit like a mountain everyday for a month, it will change you.” What is it like to sit as a mountain. To sit in your completeness, to sit as though nothing were lacking. To be both safely rooted, connected to the earth, woven into the landscape, deeply connected to yourself as ecotone, as ecology, as a network of being—in constant movement, yet so Here.Mountain practice reminds us that we too are emplaced. Whether you live by mountains, or in the valley, or on the prairie, plains, forest, desert, coast—we are always emplaced. In a network of relations. In this city of sirens and heavy exhaust—a cardinal sings, a bright yellow finch bathes in the neighbors gutter, edible mushrooms grow in the metro park, walnut trees dine with paw-paws creating a ceaseless canopy near the rushing river, where a doe cleans her new born babe, whose fur is covered in white spots, legs still wobbly.Where-ever you find yourself right now, you are emplaced, connected to a geography, a living landscape of relationships. In part it is the quality of our attention that awakens a belonging to this earth community, to the breath of the wind and the space of the sky—Even though in parts of the human mind there appears to be so much division, contempt and fear. Interconnectedness is also true. We are also Mountain, landscape, a web of relatedness—we are also movement, breeze, sky, song. And within this mountain of form—there is a jewel.Within this mountain of form, within this life we find ourselves in, our particular karma—body pain, unanswered emails, childhood traumas, societal divides, violence, fear, disappointment, hope. There is a jewel.Within this body/mind with its beliefs about being unworthy, too much, not-good-enough. There is a jewel.In dharma practice, we are invited to awaken to the jewel of our true nature. To recognize it. To refamiliarize ourselves with it. And to remember that this precious jewel doesn’t exist outside of the actual emplacement of our living. The actual events, fears, disappointments, pains.We don’t have to go somewhere else to find it. We don’t have to transcend this earthly existence. Right here in this mountain of form. This mountain of being. We are spacious clarity, love is our heart’s nature—this is the great mystery. For what we are at the core is radiantly present, and vastly undefinable.The buddhist path recognizes that human life throws a lot of shade on this jewel, that we get sucked into believing things about ourselves, others and the world that appears to cover over our radiant jewel. We forget that the mountain is alive, that it is, we are— part of a great re-cycling of energy—that the re-circulating of earth, winds, waters, hope, love + bone is how the mountain continues.In our forgetting, we attempt to make sense of life and death, violence, lack of care—and develop strategies, beliefs are reinforced from caregivers or religious systems, stories are told that aren’t true but helped to keep us safe when it seemed like nothing else would.Beliefs like, I alone am responsible for the injustice in the world. I alone should be able to fix this. If only I tried harder, read more, woke up earlier…was more enlightened. Or I’m not good enough. I am a failure. This shouldn’t be happening….What we call practice is a path of reckoning with what is true. Coming back to the ground, to the earth, to the body, this mountain of form. Right here—there is aliveness. Right here—mysterious grace. Pure possibility.Then we have the second part of the koan. Use this mountain of form with its precious jewel—pick up a lamp and go to the buddha hall, take the triple gate and bring it on the lamp.It’s not enough to recognize the jewel. Now let it shine, share it.It’s a ridiculous image. I picture this giant toreii gate smashing through the buddha hall—bringing the temple entrance right here, right next to the buddha, right into our meditation space. Or bringing the buddha hall out through the temple gate. Out into the world.Dharma practice invites us to ask—what is your dream for the world?Sometimes we forget that we get to have one. We are so busy just trying to survive, to manage, to get enough of what we want. Spiritual practice really continues to ask us some version of this—why? What for? So what is your dream for yourself, others—the world? I want to allow what we usually call VOW to be a dream today. Vow can get us stuck in perfection or overly involved in commitmentDream invites imagination, process, experimentation…mystery…It invites us to smash into the buddha hall with all our fears and hopes about the world—to bring everything we’ve got to our spiritual practice.Dreaming also appreciates that there is uncertainty, much we don’t know, that we can’t be responsible for everything—but can be responsive.Part of what Yunmen is showing is a kind of radical faith. Yes, this world seems so fixed, but maybe much of what is fixed is your way of thinking about it. Maybe you are taking a limited human view.Or yes our political situation, institutions, society— appear so corrupt, and you don’t have to let it corrupt you. Stay connected to this jewel, the spaciousness, clarity, love of your heart’s nature. There is possibility, mystery is always right here—even though this may appear to be a mountain of form, it doesn’t mean the only thing you can do is summit it, or run away. Maybe there are other options besides conquering or being defeated. Maybe you can walk around, maybe you can meet people at the base, maybe you can meander, sit with a tree, listen to the concerns of the river, get to know the landscape.Maybe we can apply this to our response to the election news or an interpersonal challenge or with our own inner life. Maybe I can hang out with this part of me that gets afraid, maybe I can make space for my grief, maybe I can call a friend and cry together/laugh together/make plans to see each other, maybe I can do something generous for a loved one, maybe I can recommit to showing up for what I care about in a really local way—feeding the neighborhood cat, attending a town hall meeting, volunteering at the library, making a donation to a shelter, getting to know people who work at the local grocery, getting to know my more-than-human community.Part of what I carry on this lamp is a dream for an awakened society. I carry it into and out of the buddha hall, I carry it—even as I meet the very real violence, bigotry, hatred and greed that is part of the manifestation of our world right now, part of my own conditioning. How does the jewel of awakened nature meet the manifestations of greed, violence, fear, loneliness? This is a living question. Something to live into and carry into the world.The koan also gives us practical medicine/instruction. Here are simple things you can do to train/reclaim your attention:Sit as a mountain, connect with the heart center. When we sit as a mountain, we connect to the earth and sky. We are invited to connect with our place, whether we live here or not, we can connect to place where ever we are. We can let ourselves feel emplaced. We can get to know the trees, birds, animals, flowers, rivers, rocks, fossils, breezes, stars and sky that we share this place with.Sit as a jewel—a jewel has many facets, many ways of seeing and responding, a jewel allows there to be complexity and empowers us to live our awakened life. In a very practical way, sitting as a jewel is a practice of appreciating your life. This embodied life. You! Only you can actualize the radiance of your inner light. Recording what you appreciate about yourself each day is a concrete way to nourish the jewelPractice seeing the jewel of each being. Not always easy to do, but such an important aspiration. Instead of judging others (including politicians) can you let yourself appreciate something about them. Or to see beyond their views, to see them as another human being who suffers and is capable of love. Carry your lamp, your dream for the world. Carry it into and out of the buddha hall, your workplace, your bedroom, your car, the establishments you frequent, your relationships. Get to know what helps nourish its light, and make a practice of doing one thing a day to nourish your dream for the world.…I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, Meditation Coach, Astrologer and Artist. In my Spiritual Counseling Practice, I practice at the confluence of spirituality and psychology, integrating mind, body and spirit. Spiritual Counseling can help you:* Companion Grief + Loss* Clarify Life Purpose* Healing Relational Conflict + Inner Conflict* Work with Shadow Material* Heal your relationship with Eating, Food or Body Image* Spiritual Emergence* Integrate Psychedelic or Mystical Experiences* Move Through Creative Blocks, Career Impasses and BurnoutI am trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS), Dream Work, Hakomi (Somatic Therapy) and Mindful Eating.I also lead a weekly online meditation group, you can read more about below.Monday Night Meditation + Dharma6P PT / 9P ETJoin me on zoom for 40 minutes of meditation and a dharma talk. We are currently exploring embodiment, compassion and the principles of engaged buddhism. All are welcome to join.Zoom Link for Monday NightI currently live in Columbus, Ohio with my partner, we facilitate an in-person meditation gathering every Wednesday from 7P - 8:30P at ILLIO in Clintonville through Mud Lotus Sangha. If you happen to be in Columbus, feel free to stop by!Earth Dreams is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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

With this and that I tried to keep the bucket together, and then the bottom fell out.Where the water does not collect, the moon does not dwell.—ChiyonoThis is the awakening poem of Chiyono, a Japanese Zen practitioner in the early 17th Century. The poem comes after a much longer story about this person’s path of practice. In the story, Chiyono has a sincere aspiration to practice the dharma, but isn’t able to spend a lot of time in formal meditation practice because of her work responsibilities.She seeks out an elder nun at the local convent—and though she is full of self-doubt, she expresses to the nun her aspiration to practice the dharma, as well as her situation and self-doubt. The nun meets her with reassurance, she affirms Chiyono’s aspiration and tells her that there is a path of practice that she can do—even if she doesn’t have time for a lot of formal practice.The nun gives Chiyono these instructions:* Affirm your sincere aspiration to awaken* Cultivate compassion for all beings* Recollect that you are complete as you are* Recognize delusive thoughts, and look into their sourceThis dharma talk/podcast episode was recorded on during the weekly Monday Night Meditation & Dharma event (learn more below). In this dharma talk I explore practices for looking into the source of thoughts. This is a vital practice that has the ability to completely change our relationship to thoughts and the power that they can have over us.What are thoughts made of?What happens when you take thoughts as the object of attention?Or trace thoughts back and feel the sensations/emotions in your body?To look into our thoughts is a courageous practice, to feel our feelings directly unmeditated by thought is also a courageous practice. Doing it can help us recognize the spaciousness and clarity of Mind’s nature. Doing it can awaken the heart of compassion.How much energy do we spend using thoughts to patch together this bucket of self?How much energy do we use trying to prove that we are unworthy, unloveable, undeserving?What if instead of believing these lies about ourselves, we looked into the nature of these thoughts? What if we began to truly trust that we and all beings are complete as we are?While sitting meditation can be a great support for looking into the source of our thoughts, this is a practice we can do throughout the day—try it, its empowering!….I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, Meditation Coach, Astrologer and Artist. In my Spiritual Counseling Practice, I practice at the confluence of spirituality and psychology, integrating mind, body and spirit. Spiritual Counseling can help you:* Companion Grief + Loss* Clarify Life Purpose* Healing Relational Conflict + Inner Conflict* Work with Shadow Material* Heal your relationship with Eating, Food or Body Image* Spiritual Emergence* Integrate Psychedelic or Mystical Experiences* Move Through Creative Blocks, Career Impasses and BurnoutI am trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS), Dream Work, Hakomi (Somatic Therapy) and Mindful Eating.I also lead a weekly online meditation group, you can read more about below.Monday Night Meditation + Dharma6P PT / 9P ETJoin me on zoom for 40 minutes of meditation and a dharma talk. We are currently exploring embodiment, compassion and the principles of engaged buddhism. All are welcome to join.Zoom Link for Monday NightI currently live in Columbus, Ohio with my partner, we facilitate an in-person meditation gathering every Wednesday from 7P - 8:30P at ILLIO in Clintonville through Mud Lotus Sangha. If you happen to be in Columbus, feel free to stop by!Earth Dreams is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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

Between aspiration, practice, enlightenment and nirvana there is not a moment’s gap. Continuous Practice is the Circle of the Way. —Dogen ZenjiIn Dharma practice we are invited to reflect on our view—the beliefs that rest at the root of our hearts and influence how we perceive, make sense of and respond to our lives.For what we think and believe has a deep effect on what we see and perceive. Our thoughts have power. As anyone who has observed or studied conflict may know—so much of the violence in the world stems from a difference in opinion, belief or view.In Dharma practice—we are invited to ask the radical question.What am I believing?What is my mind thinking right now?And is it true? Is it really true?When we take thoughts or beliefs as ultimate truth—divisiveness, conflict or isolation often follow suit. Our thoughts are powerful. And we can actually use this insight to try on other ways of viewing our lives or reality.What happens when we take up a view of unconditional acceptance? Love unbounded? Freedom for all beings?This is the heart of what we call—the Bodhisattva Vow. And it is often articulated as a vow to work towards liberation for all beings.This podcast episode is a recording of a Dharma Talk given on Monday June 17th during my online Zen Meditation gathering. During it I explore the power of Bodhisattva Vision. So often we engage our own dharma practice or meditation practice from a view of “what can I get out of this” and then judge the practice for “not giving us what we want.”Bodhisattva vision is grounded in the insight that we are interconnected with all beings and this living earth. What happens when we ground our practice and our living in compassion for all beings (including ourselves)? When our view of liberation is a view of liberation for everyone? When we recognize or even imagine that all being is shared being?….I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, Meditation Coach, Astrologer and Artist. In my Spiritual Counseling Practice, I practice at the confluence of spirituality and psychology, integrating mind, body and spirit. Spiritual Counseling can help you:* Companion Grief + Loss* Clarify Life Purpose* Healing Relational Conflict + Inner Conflict* Work with Shadow Material* Heal your relationship with Eating, Food or Body Image* Spiritual Emergence* Integrate Psychedelic or Mystical Experiences* Move Through Creative Blocks, Career Impasses and BurnoutI am trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS), Dream Work, Hakomi (Somatic Therapy) and Mindful Eating.I also lead a weekly online meditation group, you can read more about below.Monday Night Meditation + Dharma6P PT / 9P ETJoin me on zoom for 40 minutes of meditation and a dharma talk. We are currently exploring embodiment, compassion and the principles of engaged buddhism. All are welcome to join.Zoom Link for Monday NightI currently live in Columbus, Ohio with my partner, we facilitate an in-person meditation gathering every Wednesday from 7P - 8:30P at ILLIO in Clintonville through Mud Lotus Sangha. If you happen to be in Columbus, feel free to stop by! 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

This talk is part of a series of talks exploring the Engaged Buddhist Precepts of Thich Nhat Hanh and the Order of Interbeing. In this talk we explore how to practice with the suffering we encounter in ourselves, others and the world—recognizing that our suffering isn’t separate from the world’s suffering.The concept of the World Wound comes from Joan Halifax Roshi’s book A Fruitful Darkness, quoted below.As the environmental aspects of our alienation from the ground of life become increasingly apparent, the social, physical, mental, and spiritual correlates rise into view. We all suffer in one way or another. Consciously or unconsciously, we wish to be liberated from this suffering. Some of us will attempt to transcend suffering. Some of us will be overwhelmed and imprisoned by it. Some of us in our attempts to rid ourselves of suffering will create more pain. In the way of shamans and Buddhists, we are encouraged to face fully whatever form our suffering takes, to confirm it, and, finally, to let it ignite our compassion and wisdom. We ask, How can we work with this suffering, this “World Wound”? How can our experience of this wound connect us to the web of creation? And how can this wound be a door to compassion and compassionate action?The talk ends with a guided version of Tonglen practice, where we pay particular attention to how we feel and experience suffering, spaciousness/interconnection and compassion on a somatic level. 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