Earth Dreams: Zen Buddhism and the Soul of the World

Greetings Friends,
I am returning from the Grasses, Trees and Great Earth Sesshin at Great Vow Zen Monastery. An outdoor sesshin I have had the deep pleasure of co-leading for the past six years. During the sesshin we practiced various ways of listening to the dharma of the natural world, including:
* Hearing with the eyes, heart, whole body.
* Letting ourselves be seen by the sky, ferns, rocks and queen ann’s lace.
* Becoming tree, black-berry, forest, ground.
The great earth and sky speak the dharma through their constancy, reminding us that we too belong to this world, that our presence is medicine, that we aren’t separate or alone.
Have you ever…(a poem)

Have you ever, sat down with a tree and said hello, as if greeting a friend?
And then listened to her story?
Have you ever gazed into the face of a flower,
with wonder and delight
and asked
how are you today?
Have you ever laid down on the earth, and kissed her dry grasses, or soggy soils
and let her touch you in 10k different ways?
Have you ever held open your heart to the sky, in astonishment
of their vastness
and let them fill you with their roaring absence?

Have you ever quieted your mind, and listened to the bird’s song
how it accompanies the wind
--as the grasses, leaves, flowers and trees
all add their music?

The natural world speaks
in a voice before human words
it is our native tongue
Listen
And you can almost remember
how to hear it

Another dharma theme that we explored during the sesshin was recognizing the contentment, pleasure and joy of meditation. This is a teaching that transformed the Buddha’s own path to liberation, and is such an important resource in our own practice. To know the satisfaction of not seeking satisfaction elsewhere.
Are you afraid of this happiness?
Lastly, I want to share the story of Senjo and her soul are separated, which is what we explore in this dharma talk. It is a Chinese folk-tale turned koan, that speaks to the sense of living a divided life and remembering home. The koan and it’s poem can be found below.
Once, in a village by a river, a girl and a boy, second cousins, grew up together as inseparable companions. They were so close that the girl’s father once joked that they seemed married already. Eventually, they did fall in love. However, the girl’s father announced that she was to marry a different man.
The girl, Senjo, and her sweetheart, Ochu, were devastated, and Ochu was so upset that he decided to take his boat and leave the village. Just as he began to sail down the river, he saw a shadowy figure standing on the riverbank. Senjo stepped into the boat and they escaped down river together.
Five years passed. They had two children and were very happy, except that from time to time Senjo would burst into tears because she missed her family. They decided to return, and when they arrived home, Ochu went up to Senjo’s house to ask forgiveness for leaving with her. Her father seemed surprised, and said, “What? From the day you left, Senjo has been upstairs lying on her bed, looking so sad, and she’s never said a word.”
Just then, Senjo from the boat arrived at the door, and suddenly the Senjo from upstairs appeared, smiling. The two Senjos looked at one another, smiled, and walked right into one another. Instantly, they became one.
So the question is: “Senjo and her soul are separated. Which is the true one?”
Mumon's Poem

The moon above the clouds is ever the same
mountains and valleys are separate from each other
all is blessed, all is blessed
are they one, or two?
Have you ever felt like you were living two lives? What has helped you resolve this tension? What helps you return home?
Weekly Online Meditation Event
Monday Night Dharma — 6P PT / 9P ET Join weekly for drop-in meditation and dharma talk. We are currently exploring the Identity of Relative and Absolute.
Feel free to join anytime. Event lasts about 1.5 hours. ZOOM LINK
In-Person in Columbus, Ohio through Mud Lotus Sangha
Weekly Meditations on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
I’m back in Columbus for a while, and we have a lot happening. Check out our website for retreats, weekly meditations and other events.
I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, Astrologer and Artist. I offer 1:1 Spiritual Counseling sessions using IFS and Hakomi (somatic mindfulness). I also offer astrology readings. Check out my website to learn more. I currently live in Columbus, OH and am a supporting teacher for the Mud Lotus Sangha.


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Greetings!
It’s Leo season (how is it the over 50% of people I know are Leos?) I have had the joy of some travel over the past month—Mud Lotus Sangha did our first weeklong sesshin at Saranam Retreat Center in WV, I saw Bob Dylan in concert in Cincinnati and spent a few days on the Atlantic shore immersed in Ocean Mudra Samadhi.
I’m back in Ohio for a couple of weeks and then I will be heading to Great Vow Zen Monastery for a jukai ceremony and our Grasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin followed by a week of residency.
Today though I want to share a koan that has been a companion for these last few weeks. It’s Case 36 in the Hidden Lamp: The Old Woman, Joshu and the Tiger.
One day wehn Master Joshu was outside the monastery, he saw an old woman hoeing a field. He asked her, “What would you do if you suddenly met a fierce tiger?”
She replied, “Nothing in this world frightens me,” and turned back to her hoeing.
Joshu roared like a tiger. She roared back at him.
Joshu said, “There’s still this.”

One thing I love about koans like this is that they speak the language of awakening, right in the everyday activities of life.
Imagine weeding in your garden, and someone came up to you and said. What would you do if you suddenly met a fierce tiger?
What would you do?
So Joshu is a seasoned Zen teacher, and this old woman is seasoned in the wisdom of life and may also be a Zen master.
What is Joshu doing? Who is this tiger?
Is he talking about her? About himself? Another teacher with insight? Tigers can refer to a zen adapt/teacher who is wise, fierce—dangerous for the ego.
He also could be testing her. How do you stand with yourself? How do you stand with this fierce wilderness we call life/the world/spiritual path?
He is also talking to us. How do you stand with the wild unknown?
Nothing in this world frightens me. She says. She may also be saying, you don’t frighten me. I don’t frighten me.
Here is someone seasoned in the wisdom of life, loss, change. She has lived through the death of loved ones, famines, wars, times of abundance. She has been child, maiden, mother, sister, friend, elder.
And yet, she says, nothing in the world frightens me. That’s a powerful statement for anyone.
Feel into that for a moment. Try it on. Say the words. Nothing in the world frightens me.
Could that be true for you? Where do the words come from when you say them? What happens?
Is there a place in you that is fearless? That doesn’t suppress fear, but also isn’t afraid of it? Or does the statement invoke fear, call forward the things that are unsettled in your heart?
This koan invites us to study the dharma gate of fear. To truly study fear means we also study liberation, compassion, the refuge of the dharma, and everything else that is connected to fear.
In my experience some fears are hidden, they arise in the moment—a living tiger comes (ever have an encounter with a wild animal?) or it comes in the form of diagnosis, job loss, stomach sickness. When fear arises we get to see its shape, and what else arises in its wake. Some fears arise in relationship to other emotions, some fears wake us up and connect us to what matters most, some leave us deeply present, some send us worrying or bring the body into a panic state.
Other fears are more front and center. They are in response to the life we are living now. Do you have fears that you are navigating in your life now? How does fear arise? Do they come as images? Well acquainted worries? Memories? Parts of yourself?
What happens in your body? What does fear feel like? Are other emotions present as well? How does the mind react to fear?
Rilke says it this way in letters to a young poet, “Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
Dharma practice offers us supports in meeting fear. All the practices we have can be supports: mantra, breath, grounding in the senses, opening to spaciousness, feeling fear directly in the body.
Often when we stay with fear and try to get to know it we see that it too is made of sensations, thoughts, memories, feelings—that arise and pass. Sometimes compassion arises or we have insights about the nature of fear and what is it connected to. As we practice with fear, confidence develops that we can feel fear. That we don’t have to be afraid of it.
Tremendous inner power can come from this. Throughout spiritual traditions we see depictions of sages, buddhas, bodhisattvas, shamans, gods who have relationships with fierce animals, with tigers, lions, snakes, elephants.
When we are no longer afraid of our fear.
We can roar.
Nothing in the world can frighten you.
What is your experience practicing with fear? What practices support you in meeting the fears in your life?
I had the opportunity to talk to Father John Gribowich (a friend/mentor from my high school days at Central Catholic, before either of us were priests) and David Plisky about my spiritual path, Zen Buddhist practice and its intersections with Catholicism in a episode entitled: Finding God in the Zendo , as part of their Religion to Reality podcast that is themed around listening and interfaith dialogue.
Weekly Online Meditation Event
Monday Night Dharma — 6P PT / 9P ET Join weekly for drop-in meditation and dharma talk. We are currently exploring the Hidden Lamp: Teaching from the Buddhist Women Ancestors
Feel free to join anytime. Event lasts about 1.5 hours. ZOOM LINK
In-Person in Oregon
Grasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin— August 10 - 16 at Great Vow Zen Monastery
In-Person in Columbus, Ohio through Mud Lotus Sangha
Weekly Meditations on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
Retreats, Meditation instruction and other events can be found on our website.
I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, Astrologer and Artist. I offer 1:1 Spiritual Counseling sessions using IFS and Hakomi (somatic mindfulness). I also offer astrology readings. Check out my website to learn more. I currently live in Columbus, OH and am a supporting teacher for the Mud Lotus Sangha.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amykisei.substack.com/subscribe

Greetings Friends,
I have been reflecting on the art of living a life of attention and intention. This is an art form I have dedicated much of my life to, and one that continues to bear fruit as I continue to practice it.
What is the art of living?
How is attention an art?
Last night I was walking home with my partner from meditation, it was dusk. The fire flies had just started to flutter about, offering their pulsating flashes of illumination. The air was warm, a gentle breeze. We took the “longer” route, through residential roads where cone flowers, milk weed, bee balm, lilies and zinnia are brimming and blooming in hell strips and front yards. My body felt satisfied. My heart was full. Appreciation stirred in my cells. As the world darkened and the moon beamed brighter.
The art of attention opens us to the magic and mystery of this world we live in, this life that we inhabit. Without thinking about it, we experience a life-world-self that is interconnected, emergent, alive. The art of attention also allows us to actually experience our lives, to let things flow, change. To feel the processes that move through us, to notice when we are hooked into a limiting belief or narrative about ourselves and the world. To notice when we are shutting down a particular feeling or emotion.
the art of feeling our lives
This past Monday during our live online meditation group we read from the Hidden Lamp Case 23: Jiao-an’s Sand in the Eye. In it Jiao-an is told by her teacher Yuanwu, that she must, “erase all views” and then she “will finally be free.”
Jiao-an responds to this in a verse:
the pillar pulls out a bone sideways;
the void shows its claws and fangs;
even if one profoundly understands,
there is still sand in the eye.
In her commentary to the koan, Zenki Mary Mocine Roshi writes:
When I began practice I struggled with what I took to be the instruction to suppress emotions. I heard that I would find equanimity by not having views, or emotions, and it seemed to me that I was being asked to give up my humanity and my personality. There may have been some such flavor to the teachings I heard, but I think I exaggerated it out of my own fear of the teaching of “no-self” and my own need to do it “right.”
I have found that my life works when I do not try to suppress emotions or deny that I have views. When I deny them, they just sneak up on me later and cause problems.

She goes on to share a memory about her early years of training at Tassajara where she did practice suppressing an emotion. She reflects:
Had I allowed myself to feel the pain, to really physically experience it, I would have been able to let it go rather quickly. This is the emptiness of emotions. They arise, abide and pass away, but only if we allow them to arise in the first place.
It is human to have emotions. However, it is our practice to not let them have us. In the years since that experience at Tassajara, I have learned to pay attention to my breath and my body. Then I’m suppressing something, my body feels heavy and my belly feels tense. Then I know to stop, breathe, and ask myself, “What is this?”

I really appreciate how Zenki describes the emptiness of emotion, the tendency to suppress and how a certain hearing of the teachings/or experiences of emptiness or equanimity may lead us down the road to suppression.
Part of the art of attention is the art of recognizing and then familiarizing ourselves with the empty yet apparent nature of experience.
Sensations, thoughts, feelings, emotions, physical discomforts arise through the various causes and conditions that make-up our human life. We, as practitioners, as artists of the Way—can notice the composition of these sensations, feelings, thoughts and emotions.
This is the courageous act of feeling our embodied experience, allowing emotions to arise and experiencing our lives. While this may seem simple in written word form—truly it is an embodied art. For we, as humans have developed habits for managing our experience. We have learned that certain feeling states are “bad” or “wrong” or “dangerous”. And have developed skill in ignoring, suppressing or pushing certain emotions away.
On the other side there are feeling states, emotions, sensations, thoughts that we have deep habitual tendencies towards entertaining, getting identified with, and believing.
The practice of emptiness is the art of experiencing life as it is. To allow what is happening to happen. To trust that we can feel our lives.
I always love the analogy of experience being like weather, in that it is always moving through. Some feelings are stormy, some are bright, some emotions feel like layers of gray clouds, others like a light mist. Just like the sky allows the weather to pass through it—the sky of awareness allows the weather of emotion and feeling to move through us.
The sky’s spaciousness is unobstructed by the weather, the clarity and openness of awareness is unobstructed by the panic, grief, fear, pain that passes through us.
the many faces of suppression
Sometimes on the road to realizing emptiness, we practice suppression. This could be because we want to do it right or good. Because we think we shouldn’t be feeling certain things or because certain feelings are uncomfortable. Also, because we are trying not to indulge or get hooked by the story and we haven’t quite learned or don’t quite trust that we can feel it and it will liberate itself. Or maybe we have experience of parts of us doing or saying really painful unskillful things, and at present the tool we have for working with them is to suppress or push them down.
The art of attention is the art of noticing. As Zenki says in her commentary, we can begin to notice the tendency to suppress, the beliefs that surround this tendency and from there we can start to get curious about actually feeling the feeling itself.
Practice is a practice of self-study, of awareness. There is not a set method for feeling our lives. Sometimes the path to feeling is through self-compassion and loving kindness, sometimes through including them in the breath, sometimes opening to the space around them, sometimes as we courageously open to our direct experience the way opens up—something unexpected arises to meet us.
My experience is there are feelings I am not used to feeling and when they arise my mind can get really active about trying to figure out, fix or solve them.
Sadness came up a few weeks ago when a client’s story touched something personal that was similar enough to something happening in the collective. After I finished my sessions for the evening, I watched my mind bounce into anger, blame, and then search and search for a story, a reason I was feeling the way I was feeling. But as I let myself feel the feelings themselves—tears came, then compassion and peace.
Another more common way I experience this is I can get frustrated with certain people, and stay in the story of what they did or didn’t do. When I notice that I am doing this and let myself feel the feeling underneath I often discover that the feeling is really different then the story I am telling myself. I also find that through feeling the feelings, often clarity arises about how to respond in the relationship.
Do you have experiences of turning towards a feeling or emotion that you did’t want to feel? What happened?
What does suppression feel like, sound like or look like for you?
What practices support you in feeling difficult emotions or sensations?
Weekly Online Meditation Event
Monday Night Dharma — 6P PT / 9P ET Join weekly for drop-in meditation and dharma talk. We are currently exploring the Hidden Lamp: Teaching from the Buddhist Women Ancestors
Feel free to join anytime. Event lasts about 1.5 hours. ZOOM LINK
In-Person in Oregon
Grasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin— August 10 - 16 at Great Vow Zen Monastery
In-Person in Columbus, Ohio through Mud Lotus Sangha
Weekly Meditations on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
Retreats, Meditation instruction and other events can be found on our website.
I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, Astrologer and Artist. I offer 1:1 Spiritual Counseling sessions using IFS and Hakomi (somatic mindfulness). I also offer astrology readings. Check out my website to learn more. I currently live in Columbus, OH and am a supporting teacher for the Mud Lotus Sangha.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amykisei.substack.com/subscribe

Greetings Friends,
Happy Solstice! Here in the northern hemisphere it is the longest day of the year, one of two days of the year where the sun appears to stand still on the horizon. I feel interested in that teaching, here in what sometimes feels like the most active or busiest of seasons—what is stillness? where is stillness?
What does it look like to let your inner sun rest, or to recognize that it’s already still, shining brightly—no matter what.
This week’s koan from the Hidden Lamp is about big and small enlightenments. I’ll let you listen to the podcast for the case and reflection this time.
In celebration of the solstice, I would like to share a passage from Dogen Zenji’s Genjo Koan, sometimes translated as “the way of everyday life.” The Mud Lotus Sangha has been exploring this teaching over the course of the last month. Sitting with the different images and passages.
Gaining enlightenment is like the moon reflecting in the water. The moon does not get wet nor is the water disturbed.
Although its light is extensive and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch across. The whole moon and the whole sky are reflected in a dewdrop in the grass, in one drop of water.
Enlightenment does not disturb the person just as the moon does not disturb the water. A person does not hinder enlightenment just as a dewdrop does not hinder the moon in the sky.
The depth of the drop is the height of the moon.

I invite you to spend sometime today in stillness. Take a moment to open your awareness to the entire moon, the entire sky. Remember that you are one dew drop among many, reflecting vastness. You can not hinder awakening, it is your nature.
As one teacher said, “so get used to it!”
As always, I would love to hear your reflections!
Weekly Online Meditation Event
Monday Night Dharma — 6P PT / 9P ET Join weekly for drop-in meditation and dharma talk. We are currently exploring the Hidden Lamp: Teaching from the Buddhist Women Ancestors
Feel free to join anytime. Event lasts about 1.5 hours. ZOOM LINK
In-Person in Oregon
Grasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin— August 10 - 16 at Great Vow Zen Monastery
In-Person in Columbus, Ohio through Mud Lotus Sangha
Weekly Meditations on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
Retreats, Meditation instruction and other events can be found on our website.
Upcoming Sesshins at Saranam Retreat Center in West Virginia
Interdependence Sesshin June 29 - July 5 (Registration is now open!)
I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, Astrologer and Artist. I offer 1:1 Spiritual Counseling sessions using IFS and Hakomi (somatic mindfulness). I also offer astrology readings. Check out my website to learn more. I currently live in Columbus, OH and am a supporting teacher for the Mud Lotus Sangha.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amykisei.substack.com/subscribe

Greetings Friends,
Happy New Moon! This past week we explored the Hidden Lamp Case 21: Linji Meets the Old Woman Driving the Ox.
Linji Meets the Old Woman Driving the Ox
China, ninth century
Master Linji Yixuan went to see Master Bingdian An. On the way he met an old woman driving an ox in a field. Linji asked her, “Which way is the road to Bingdian?”
The woman hit the ox with her stick and said, “This animal! It walks all over the place without even recognizing the road.”
Linji repeated, “I asked you, which way is the road to Bingdian?”
The woman said, “This beast! It’s five years old and still can’t be put to use.”
Linji said to himself, “If you want to learn something from the person in front of you, first observe what the person does.” And he had the feeling that his sticking-point had been removed.
Then, when he reached Master An, An asked him, “Have you seen my sister-in-law?”
Linji said, “Yes, I’ve already been taken in tow.”

I’m curious when you read this exchange is there a line or phrase that interests you, or that you have some sort of reaction to?
Feel free to share. What touches you, what are you curious about? What feels aversive? What questions come up for you? How is this exchange relevant for your life and practice?
These koans are teaching stories. And often what stirs in us is our way into them.
If you are interested in hearing a little more about Master Linji and his origin story, as well as my comments on the koan, including being useless—listen to the audio recording.
The Soft Animal of the Body
I am always curious when animals show up in koans. In reflecting on this koan, I got interested in the Ox. The Ox is a symbol for our true nature in the Zen tradition. There are a series of images called the Ox-herding pictures that portray important elements on this path of practice-awakening. They depict the movement from searching for our nature, to having a glimpse, to training ourselves to recognize and abide here, to eventually seeing through ideas of self/true nature, and living fully as we are in service to all beings.
This week though, as I sat with the koan—a line from Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese came to heart, “let the soft animal of your body, love what it loves.”
This is such a deep invitation into presence. To feel our lives. To feel our bodies. To recognize the pleasure, the bliss of embodiment—right here, right now.
I can notice how my mind wants to come in and fantasize about the things my body might want or long for, but part of what I am interested in is how the body can only love what is. Our bodies are always in the present moment.
Our bodies speak the language of sensation, feeling, movement, texture, touch. Our bodies love through experiencing. Notice right now— what does your body love, in this moment?
To ask, we need to sink into to our embodied life. To feel the changes in air temperature, the movement of breath, the touch of clothing, the pulsing and flickering of sensation. To hear and see, to smell and taste—to open the senses. For this sense world is our embodied life.
When we let ourselves abide fully in our sense experience, we naturally open to the truth of interconnection. We feel ourselves as part of this great earth and in community with all, truly our lives are interpermeated—our bodies are the body of the entire world.
So this week, today, right now—sit like an ox, here in your own body—loving what you love. Be the animal walking all over the place, the beast that can’t be put to use!
Weekly Online Meditation Event
Monday Night Dharma — 6P PT / 9P ET Join weekly for drop-in meditation and dharma talk. We are currently exploring the Hidden Lamp: Teaching from the Buddhist Women Ancestors
Feel free to join anytime. Event lasts about 1.5 hours. ZOOM LINK
In-Person in Oregon
Grasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin— August 10 - 16 at Great Vow Zen Monastery
In-Person in Columbus, Ohio through Mud Lotus Sangha
Weekly Meditations on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
Retreats, Meditation instruction and other events can be found on our website.
Upcoming Sesshins at Saranam Retreat Center in West Virginia
Interdependence Sesshin June 29 - July 5 (Registration is now open!)
I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, Astrologer and Artist. I offer 1:1 Spiritual Counseling sessions using IFS and Hakomi (somatic mindfulness). I also offer astrology readings. Check out my website to learn more. I currently live in Columbus, OH and am a supporting teacher for the Mud Lotus Sangha.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amykisei.substack.com/subscribe