Cleveland Zazen Group

12/28/2025

New Years Eve grounded in zazen! Ringing in 2026🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

1. CZG December 31, 2-4p join us for two rounds of sitting and then tea and sweets to "sit out" the old year.

2. RZC Dec 31, 8-12 pm and ending just after midnight.New Years Eve.

* A meaningful and inspiring way to begin the New Year.
* see comments for schedule & zoom contact.


Does 2025 come to a dead stop then 2026 begins?
Dogen's reflections on
are we beings in time or are we being-time?
Dogen describes Being Time, "Uji", as Being-Time-Ness, "Gyoji", Continuous Practice.
"Included in each moment is the entire world and the individual being–time-ness of each being making the world. Continuous practice is the practice-realization of the Buddhist ancestors, including the Continuous-Practice of all other beings: trees, rocks, insects, etc. It is the whole-hearted effort and total presencing of each being in the ten directions... we are being–time.
Excerpt from Dogen's Gyoji, “Continuous Practice”
Excerpted from:
From Being-Time: A Practitioner’s Guide to Dogen’s Shobogenzo Uji, by Shinshu Roberts (Wisdom 2018)

12/26/2025

New Years Eve Zazen
December 31 2:00 pm - to 4:00 pm, join us for two rounds of sitting, then tea and sweets to "sit out" the old year. Then join us to begin the new year on Tuesday, January 6, when we resume our regular sitting schedule.🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

12/24/2025

The best present that anyone can give to one's self/no-self and others is the knowledge that our True Nature is within, here & now, the Great Way of Buddha🙏🏼

*Roshi Sunya Kjolhede is a Dharma heir of Roshi Philip Kapleau and the sister of Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede. She is founder & Spiritual Director with her husband, Roshi Lawson Sachter of Windhorse Zen Community in Alexander, North Carolina.

12/19/2025

During this season of giving and sharing, Buddhists can appreciate/practice Ðana: Giving, the 1st of the Paramitas (virtues).
Dana, giving with generosity. Giving includes Grace in receiving, being thankful.
Roshi Amala wrote
"Grace flows from gratitude.Grace is related to the word for ‘thank you’ —a meaning that lingers in our use of the word 'Grace', to mean a prayer of thanks for a meal."
So during these days of social gatherings, breaking bread together, we can heartily, humbly practice Dana...giving thanks.
Roshi Amala:
"In our grace we chant, ‘This meal is the labor of countless beings, let us remember their toil!’ We eat, and the toil of the sun, earthworms, farmers, truckers, road maintenance crews, oil companies, and supermarket check-out workers … of cooks, cabbages, and tax collectors, becomes our very cells. Thich Nhat Hahn describes this as the way in which the so-called self is made up entirely of ‘non-self elements.’ And so we continue our chant, ‘Our meal (that is, ourselves) is offered to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. With teachers and family, with nations and all life let us equally share. To beings throughout the six worlds we offer this meal.’ "
Excerpt from:
Grace by
Roshi (Sensei) Amala Wrightson
Current printing:
Zen Bow: Faith in Dharma vol ###vii
no 4 · 2014–15
*Zen Bow Editor’s note: Sensei Amala Wrightson (formerly
Charlotte Wrightson) was given permission to
teach by Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede in 2004 and sanctioned as a Dharma heir in 2012. She teaches at the Auckland Zen Center, which she founded with her husband Richard von Sturmer in 2004.

*drawing by Giei Satō from the book, Unsui: a Diary of Zen Monastic Life by Eshin Nishamura

12/14/2025

May our daily Zazen, mindful prayer, ceremonial relgious practices bring compassionate wisdom heartful peace to all sentient beings ❤️🌎❤️
🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

12/13/2025

"The essential way flows everywhere...
The essential teaching is fully available...
Nothing is separate from this very place...

Observe the example of Shakyamuni Buddha at the Jeta Grove, who practiced upright sitting for six years even though he was gifted with intrinsic wisdom. Still celebrated is Master Bodhidharma of Shaolin Temple, who sat facing the wall for nine years, although he had already received the mind seal.
Ancient sages were like this; WHO NOW-A-DAYS DOES NOT NEED TO PRACTICE AS THEY DID?
-turn the light inward. Your body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will appear. If you want to attain just this immediately practice just this." Zazen!!! Now!!!

*excerpts: Fukanzazengi,
Recommending Zazen to all people by Eihei Dōgen, trans. Kazuaki Tanahashi (1999)

Eihei Dōgen (Dōgen Zenji)
January 1200-1253 Japanese Zen Buddhist monk, poet, writer and founder of the Zen Sōto school.

12/08/2025

"What jewel is lustrous • from the beginning;
what person is superior from the outset?
You must always keep polishing and always keep training.
Do not deprecate yourselves and relax in your study of the Way. Do not deprecate yourselves and relax in your study of the Way."
--Zen Master Dogen

We have been honoring a season of Gratitude, making ceremonial commitments to Buddhist way of living & Zazen practice with Jukai: taking of Precepts. We have had good fortune to give reverence gratitude to Buddha's own enlightenment during Rohatsu. So now, as Dogen encouraged, do not relax in your study of the Way.
Don't let up!!!🙏🏼

12/03/2025

You can still register for all or part of Bodhi Day retreat🙏🏼

2 day retreat: Rohatsu -Bodhi Day will be celebrated with CZG and Crooked River Zen Center collaborating with a 2 day retreat Dec 5 & 6.
Please Call or text to Susan: 216-630-3583
if you would like more info and to register.

This Bodhi day retreat may be attended in part or full. A solemn opportunity to meaningfully contemplate ones life, discovering and exemplyfying our own True Nature as Buddha learned then taught for the rest of his Earthly life and whose teaching have endured through Buddhists to this day.

Rohatsu -Bodhi Day, commemorating the day Prince Siddhartha Gautama, meditating under a Bodhi tree came to enlightenment becoming the Buddha, understanding the cycle of karma, death and rebirth, showing the Way to freedom from suffering, Buddha revealing for all beings our original Enlightened Nature.

12/02/2025

🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

Roshi [Hakuun Yasutani said]: The following is vital for you, so listen carefully. Your mind, like a mirror, reflects everything: this table, this mat – whatever you see. If you don’t perceive anything the mirror reflects itself. Now everybody’s mind is different. How my mind reflects objects differs from the way yours does. Whatever is in your mind is the reflection of your mind, therefore it is you. So when you perceive this mat or this table you are perceiving yourself. Again, when your mind is devoid of all conceptions – opinions, ideas, points of view, values, notions, assumptions – your mind is reflecting itself. This is the condition of undifferentiation, of Mu.
- Roshi Philip Kapleau, “The Three Pillars of Zen”

Join us. https://www.louisvillezen.org/sittings.html

11/25/2025

2 day retreat: Rohatsu -Bodhi Day will be celebrated with CZG and Crooked River Zen Center collaborating with a 2 day retreat Dec 5 & 6.
Please Call or text to Susan: 216-630-3583
if you would like more info and to register.

This Bodhi day retreat may be attended in part or full. A solemn opportunity to meaningfully contemplate ones life, discovering and exemplyfying our own True Nature as Buddha learned then taught for the rest of his Earthly life and whose teaching have endured through Buddhists to this day.

Rohatsu -Bodhi Day, commemorating the day Prince Siddhartha Gautama, meditating under a Bodhi tree came to enlightenment becoming the Buddha, understanding the cycle of karma, death and rebirth, showing the Way to freedom from suffering, Buddha revealing for all beings our original Enlightened Nature.

11/24/2025

Jukai: Taking the Precepts🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼
With Rochester Zen Center Saturday Nov 29, 5 - 6 pm [hybrid: zoom & in-person]

Posted in comments:
*zoom request info
*Precepts listed
*RZC contact info

photo: Buddha Hall
- Jukai:Taking the Precepts Rochester Zen Center

11/20/2025

Annual Ceremony of Gratitude
🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼 Sun, Nov 23, 9am. Followed by monthly brunch.
"A gratitude a day keeps the blues away."❤️

Also a reminder, there is a box in the front entryway for non-perishable food donations.
"Countless good deeds and the Way of right living all come from zazen"- quote from Master Hakuin's Chant in Praise of Zazen 🙏🏼