Cleveland Zazen Group

11/12/2025

Thanksgiving season brings, Jukai-Taking the Precepts, annual ceremony. Taking the Precepts Vows ceremony is "second in importance only to ordination, gives us the opportunity to further ground our practice by pledging to do our best to live up to the basic sixteen precepts of Buddhism:
The Three Treasures,
The Three General Resolutions, and the Ten Cardinal Precepts."

Rochester Zen Center hosts the ceremony, hybrid (in-person & on Zoom) November 29, 5pm.

The next few FB posts will elaborate on the Treasures, Resolution and Precepts to learn/ review to promote having full understanding of how these vows, guidelines, help Buddhists live with compassion, mindful actions, fullfilling our True Buddha Nature, harmony and peace with all sentient beings.

Info to contact Rochester Zen Center and the Jukai vows are noted in the comments.

Teisho's, Dharma talks about Buddhist vows expressing our original True Nature will be featured in this and upcoming FB posts.

The ceremony of Jukai (Taking the Precepts) is basically an initiation into the Dharma. To be a Buddhist is to commit to aligning oneself with what is

11/07/2025

"Since Buddhism arrived in the West, inevitably some people have felt, ‘Zazen is good, compassion is good, self-discipline is good, but why all this bowing and incense? To whom does one offer incense and flowers?’ To this all the Buddhists of the past and all Asian Buddhists today would answer with one voice: ‘Dear friends, a spirit of reverence is essential to successful practice. Without it Enlightenment can never be attained!’
Forms do not matter in themselves, but the attitude of mind symbolized prostrations, etc. is of stupendous importance to followers of the Way."

An attitude of Gratitude expresses Buddha Nature.

Excerpt from Zen Bow article: Bowing: An Unsolicited Contribution from One Who Cares for the Way -john blofeld
Zen Bow Faith in Dharma Vol ###VII no.4 2014-2015
https://podcast.rzc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/16123925/Faith+in+Dharma+ZBa.pdf

Editor’s note: John Blofeld (1913-1987) was a prolific writer, scholar and translator of Asian philosophy and religion, especially Buddhism and Taoism.

*photo, Roshi Philip Kapeau and Buddhist student. Photo source Louisville Zen Center FB May 14, 2025

11/03/2025

🙏🏼FOOD DONATIONS: Throughout the month of November there is a box in the front entryway to collect non-perishable food donations for the Cleveland Heights Emergency Food Bank. Please bring whatever you can when you come to sitting as this is a desperate time for many families. Grateful for your heartfelt giving🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

11/01/2025

See you on the Zendo mat, NOW...only 1hour later Fallback Sunday🙏🏼

10/31/2025

🍂Thich Nhat Hanh reflected, "One Autumn day I was in a park and I looked at a very small beautiful leaf, it's colour was almost red. It was barely hanging on the branch clearly ready to fall down"🍂

“I asked the leaf🍁 whether it was afraid to fall, since it was autumn and the other leaves were falling. The leaf told me, "No. During the whole spring and summer I was very alive. I worked hard and helped nourish the tree, and much of me is in the tree. Please do not think that I am just this form, because this leaf form is only a tiny part of me. I am the whole tree. I know that I am already inside the tree, and when I go back to the soil, I will continue to nourish the tree. That is why I do not worry. As I drop from the branch and float down to the ground, I will wave to the tree and tell her, ‘I will see you again very soon.’" 🍂🍁🍂

🍂"Suddenly I had a kind of insight very much like the insight contained in the Heart Sutra. You have to see life. You shouldn’t say, life of the leaf, but life in the leaf, and life in the tree. My life is just Life, and you can see it in me and in the tree. I saw the leaf leave the branch and float down to the soil, dancing joyfully, because as it floated it saw itself already there in the tree. It was so happy.I bowed my head, and I knew that we have a lot to learn from the leaf because it was not afraid; it knew that nothing can be born and nothing can die”🍁🍂🍁Thich Nhat Hanh💛

Excerpt from:
Thich Nhat Hanh, “The Other Shore”, Parallax 2017 / posted FB Nov 26, 2021

Also posted on Natures Wisdom-Thich Nhat Hanh on Autumn Leaves: Life, Death, Continuation.
- Nov 4, 2016 by Emma Tussio

10/28/2025

The light of mind is reflected in emptiness;
its substance is void of relative or absolute.
Golden waves all around,
Zen is constant, in action or stillness.
Thoughts arise, thoughts disappear;
don't try to shut them off. Let them flow spontaneously –
what has ever arisen and vanished?
When arising and vanishing quiet down,
there appears the great Zen master; sitting, reclining, walking
around, there's never an interruption.
When meditating, why not sit? When sitting, why not meditate?
Only when you have understood this way is it called sitting meditation (zazen).Who is it that sits?
* Foyan Qingyuan

"If you want to clarify this matter, you must arouse wonder and look into it. If you wonder deeply about this matter, transcendental knowledge will become manifest."
**Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede

*Sitting Meditation
By Zen Master Foyan, 1067-1120 excerpt from Instant Zen: Waking Up in the Present
Translate: by Thomas Cleary. Published by North Atlantic Books, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, 1994

**Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede's teisho, Sept 25, 2022 Sesshin day 1,
Quote from one of Roshi Bodhin's "favorite texts for sesshin", the book, Instant Zen Waking up in the Present, the teachings of Zen Master Foyan.

https://www.rzc.org/news/septober-2022-sesshin-day-1-zen-master-foyan-from-instant-zen-waking-up-in-the-present-trans-by-thomas-cleary/

10/22/2025

Hakuin cried out: "I am the sun and the moon and the stars and the wide, wide earth."

Roshi Bodhin Kjohlede wrote,"When we take up a Zen concentration practice, such as the breath or a koan, we enter a relationship. It is a relationship like no other because no ‘other’ is involved. Yet daily meditation will clarify and enrich all our ‘other’ relationships—with spouses, partners of every kind, friends, co-workers, family members, neighbors,and teachers and students. It has this alchemical power because in meditation we are engaging the basic issues at the root of all self/other dynamics. It’s not surprising that the rewards we realize in meditation will be reflected in our other relationships.

Zen practice is the practice of intimacy itself. Over time we discover that to experience the world unmediated by thoughts is to experience our indissoluble Oneness with it. And it all begins with our work with breath, with Mu, or with any koan...[Zazen]
Long before finding Zen, we are in the market for intimacy. To be human is to long for connection, This reaching for connection is our True Nature seeking to know itself, turning away from the illusion of separateness."

Excerpts from article:
Zen Practice as Relationship Work, by Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede
Zen Bow Vol ###VI Number 4 2013-2014

Roshi Bodhin ellaborates on Zazen/Mu as a relationship of ferver, intimacy committment... Zazen relationship revealing our True Nature. His indepth teaching:
Zen Bow publication
Rochester Zen Center

https://www.rzc.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Relationships-ZB-web.pdf?x18131

10/18/2025

Zen, rooted in Buddhist Mahayana tradition, the Bodhisattva Way, teaches:

"Nonviolent action, born of the awareness of suffering and nurtured by love, is the most effective way to confront adversity.”
-Thich Nhat Hanh

HH Dalai Lama the 14th says that in conducting ones'self as a Buddhist-peacemaker:
"...cultivate a sense of universal responsibility and an appreciation that only on the basis of kindheartedness will we lead a meaningful life and make our societies more compassionate and just. Let us be compassionate, not just to our friends and family, but to everyone."

*calligraphy print
-Thich Nhat Hanh

10/13/2025

Bodhidharma Day and Autumn celebration:
🍂🙏🏼🍂
Sunday 10/19. It will be followed by our monthly brunch. Hope to see everyone there....

"One leaf fluttering, tells of Autumn all over the country" -Zen saying

Zazen/Dharma talk 9-11a, brunch follows.

* photo & saying contributed by Susan Rakow-CZG director

10/10/2025

We are honoring our great ancestor, Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen,
Will be rescheduled due to unexpected events. Our regular Sunday October 12, sitting time, 9-11 a.m. is still planned🙏🏼

“Once you stop clinging and let things be, you’ll be free, even of birth and death. You’ll transform everything. You’ll possess spiritual powers that can’t be obstructed. And you’ll be at peace wherever you are.” Zen Master Bodhidharma

10/06/2025

Gratitude to the surley, burley monk, Bodhidharma🙏🏼

The Indian sage Bodhidharma, (5th or 6th CE), the 28th Buddhist Patriarch of India came to China at a time when Buddhism was beginning to flourish and became the 1st Patriarch of Chan (pronounced Zen in Japan) Buddhism in China. Bodhidharma became known as the "wall-gazer Brahman" spending nine years in a cave on Song Shan Mountain facing the wall in meditative concentration. His teachings, focusing directly at the awakening that Buddha
Shakyamuni experienced. He emphasized we are born free from delusion, that our true nature is already perfect, unsullied by delusion/ego. That we are born with Buddha Nature. "Similarly, when a cloud covers the sun, the sky’s
spaciousness is not affected by the cloud, nor by whether the sun is visible or not." We should not get bogged down by the clouds, delusions, ego. "...but instead we should see the big picture—the sky. This is essentially the message of Bodhidharma."- Guo Go*

Bodhidharma, the "Wall-gazer's" practice focuses on meditation and the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra.

*Excerpts from the introduction of The Essence of Chan, a Guide to Life and Practice according to the Teachings of Bodhidharma, translated by Guo Go
Shambhala Publications, Inc.
4720 Walnut Street
Boulder, Colorado 80301
© 2012 by Guo Gu
this ed. pub. 2020

Bodhidharma image by Japanese Woodblock Artist Yosh*toshi, 1887. Source: Wikimedia.

10/03/2025

If your mind is not clouded with unnecessary things, no season is too much for you.
—Mumonkan verse, Case 19

In this Dharma, Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede recalls a story about his own father, that actually informed Roshi about being in the Now, going with the flow, change being no-change...

"Most changes are beyond our control, and so we have to cultivate the ability to roll with change—to become the change itself.
For my father’s sixtieth birthday, my mother gave him a certificate for a ride in a hot-air balloon, which he’d long wanted to try.
After he’d gone on his ride, I eagerly asked him, ‘How was it, Dad?’ ‘An unforgettable experience,’ he replied, ‘but not as exciting as I’d expected.’ When he’d stuck his arm out, he’d
felt no sense of speed—no air movement. The balloon in effect was the wind! When we don’t resist changing circumstances or conditions, we remain at rest." 🙏🏼
Abiding in Buddha Nature, becoming the Wind

"Becoming the Wind" by Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede
Rochester Zen Center
Zen Bow: Adapting to Change
volume ###viii · numbers 1 & 2
https://podcast.rzc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/ZB+Adapting+to+Change.pdf

Balloon Festival Thailand royalty-free images/shutterstock