When we have made the decision to pick up Mu, calling out Mu and listening to Mu, there’s no use getting entangled in questions “about” Mu.

A new member reflects on his harrowing cancer treatments and the possibility of imminent death

If there had been some kind of answer that Kyosei could give the monk to truly settle his mind, he might have offered it up. We grow into understanding, purifying ourselves all along the way.

This is where Buddhism can have an effect on the West: because Buddhism changes culture, and culture changes Buddhism. The metaphors and philosophical traditions in Buddhism offer another way to talk about these questions of physics.

With the help of a months-long training program, a senior member dedicates himself to volunteer with people struggling with sickness, old, age, and death.

What is the enlightenment experience? It is the experience where one transcends the duality of self and other.

So, what happens when the backward step is taken on the mat or through the looking glass of the mind and we turn the instrument of our being back onto being itself?

We complicate things. We complicate things unnecessarily through our thinking, or more correctly, our clinging to our thoughts.

We have, perhaps, a little veto power over what feelings impel us to do, but the idea of some rational decision maker who’s in charge seems to be a fiction of the mind.

A vintage koan commentary by the Center’s founder, the late Roshi Philip Kapleau. Mumonkan number 14: Nansen kills the cat The Case Once the monks of the Western and Eastern Halls were arguing about a cat. Nansen, holding up the cat, said, “You monks! If you can say a word of Zen, I will spare…