Two Arrows Zen

01/23/2026

Today, January 22, we remember Thích Nhất Hạnh (1926–2022), known to many as Thầy. Among his most profound teachings is the poem Please Call Me by My True Names, a practice-text as much as a poem. In it, Thầy gives voice to his insight of interbeing—that nothing exists separately, that compassion begins when we stop dividing the world into fixed identities of “good” and “evil,” “us” and “them.” This poem does not ask us to excuse harm; it asks us to look deeply enough to understand its roots. Reading it slowly is itself a form of practice.

Please Call Me by My True Names
— Thích Nhất Hạnh

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow—
even today I am still arriving.
Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being r***d by a sea pirate.
And I am also the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his “debt of blood” to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart
could be left open,
the door of compassion.

On this anniversary of Thầy’s passing, may we read these words not as poetry alone, but as an invitation—to look deeply, to soften fixed views, and to let the door of compassion remain open in our own lives.

— Two Arrows Zen

01/22/2026

On this day (Jan 21) in 1324, a formal Buddhist debate was held in Kyoto between the long-established schools of Tendai and Shingon and the then-controversial Zen movement. Zen was represented by Daitō Kokushi, one of the most respected teachers of his generation. The debate was judged by Emperor Go-Daigo, with the retired emperor Hanazono assisting—an extraordinary sign of how seriously this encounter was taken. At stake was not merely prestige, but whether Zen itself truly belonged at the heart of Japanese Buddhism.

At the time, Tendai and Shingon represented centuries of court-supported religious authority. Their traditions emphasized scripture, doctrine, ritual, and esoteric transmission. Zen, by contrast, insisted that awakening does not depend primarily on texts or ceremonies, but on direct realization of one’s own mind. This claim unsettled the established schools, who accused Zen of being incomplete or dismissive of Buddhist learning. The debate was a public test: could Zen defend itself without betraying its core insight?

Daitō Kokushi met this challenge by grounding his responses in both deep doctrinal knowledge and lived realization. Central to his teaching was the question of the Original Face—the face we had before our parents were born. For Daitō, this was not a poetic metaphor or philosophical idea, but a direct pointer to the nature of mind itself, prior to identity, opinion, or religious form. He warned that seeking the Original Face through concepts or explanations only moves us further away. It can only be realized directly, through disciplined practice and intimate attention to one’s own experience.

In the debate, Daitō demonstrated that Zen was not rejecting Buddhist teaching, but cutting through attachment to forms in order to reveal their source. Scripture, ritual, and doctrine all have value, he argued, but only when they point back to direct realization. Without encountering one’s Original Face, even the most refined teachings remain second-hand. This clarity helped secure imperial recognition for Zen and accelerated its integration into mainstream Japanese Buddhism, particularly within the Rinzai tradition.

The deeper importance of this moment lies in its paradox. Zen often describes itself as “outside words and letters,” yet here it was required to speak clearly, publicly, and responsibly. Daitō’s success came from holding this tension—using language without mistaking language for truth, engaging institutions without becoming owned by them. His teaching on the Original Face reminds us that Zen’s authority does not come from argument or endorsement, but from direct seeing that remains alive in every circumstance.

Why does this matter today? Because the same questions persist. How do we remain faithful to direct experience while living within institutions and communities? How do we use forms without being trapped by them? How do we remember our Original Face in the midst of roles, opinions, and conflict? The 1324 debate reminds us that Zen has always lived at this edge—between silence and speech, immediacy and responsibility.

Remembering Daitō Kokushi is not about celebrating a historical victory. It’s about recalling a moment when Zen demonstrated its capacity to meet power without submission, to meet criticism without defensiveness, and to stand firmly in practice without hardening into dogma. For practitioners today, it is a reminder that realization must continually be verified in how we live—and that the Original Face is not something to attain, but something to recognize, again and again, right where we are.

— Two Arrows Zen

01/19/2026

Thich Nhat Hanh wrote this letter to his friend Raphael (Ray) Gould, the morning after receiving the news of their friend’s assassination. Ray was one of the directors of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and the International Committee of Conscience on Vietnam, of which both Dr. King and Thich Nhat Hanh were members.

4/5/1968

Dear Ray,
I did not sleep last night; I tried to contact you through Lee at the FOR but the line was not available.

They killed Martin Luther King. They killed us.

I am afraid the root of violence is so deep in the heart and mind and manner of this society. They killed him. They killed my hope. I do not know what to say.

This country is able to produce King but cannot preserve King. You have him, and yet you do not have him. I am sorry for you. For me. For all of us.

I prayed for him after I learned about his assassination. And then, I said to myself: You do not have to pray for him. He does not need it. You have to pray for yourself. We have to pray for ourselves.

Ray, the last time I saw him is in Geneva, at the Pacem in Terris II conference. I was up in his room in a morning, having breakfast and discussing about the situation. We had scrambled eggs and toasts and teas. I told him: “Martin, do you know something? The peasants in Vietnam know about what you have been doing to help the poor people here and to stop the war in Vietnam. They consider you as a bodhisattva.”

A bodhisattva. An enlightened being trying to work for the emancipation of other human beings. He did not say anything but I knew he was so moved by what I said.

This morning I feel a little bit comforted because I remember that I did tell him so.

Ray, send me the picture in which you and I and he were together. I want to see again the expression of his face when he told me, in Summer 1966 when we met in Chicago “I feel compelled to do anything to help stop this war”. He made so great an impression in me. This morning I have the impression that I cannot bear the loss.

Please call me any time you find possible. And let me know what and how the FOR will react against this unbearable loss.

Fraternally,
nhat hanh

( https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/letters/letter-after-hearing-of-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-s-assassination )

01/18/2026

January 19 marks Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and it’s a powerful moment to remember the meeting of two spiritual lineages that reshaped how justice, peace, and practice are understood in the modern world: the friendship between Martin Luther King Jr. and Thích Nhất Hạnh. When they met in the mid-1960s, both were already leaders, but their dialogue sharpened and deepened each other’s work. Thích Nhất Hạnh offered King a Buddhist articulation of nonviolence grounded in mindfulness, compassion, and interbeing—what he would later call Engaged Buddhism. King, in turn, embodied for Thầy how spiritual conviction could take courageous public form without losing its moral center.

One line from King’s later writing captures the heart of this convergence: “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.” From a Zen perspective, this is not a contradiction but a statement of balance. Love without power resembles compassion that never leaves the cushion—kind in intention but unable to respond effectively to suffering. Power without love mirrors action driven by ego, fear, or certainty—forceful, but disconnected from wisdom. Zen practice points instead to a middle way: action arising from clarity, presence, and non-separation. In this view, power is simply the capacity to respond, and love is the absence of self-centeredness in that response.

This is where King and Thích Nhất Hạnh met most deeply. Their shared commitment to nonviolence was not passive or sentimental; it was disciplined, embodied, and willing to confront injustice directly without surrendering humanity. After hearing Thích Nhất Hạnh speak, King publicly opposed the Vietnam War, later nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize and naming him a true apostle of peace. Together, they helped articulate a truth that still challenges us: that inner transformation and social transformation are inseparable, and that real justice requires both a steady heart and the courage to act. Remembering their friendship today invites us to ask how our own practice holds love and power together—how mindfulness becomes movement, and how compassion learns to stand its ground in the world.

01/18/2026

Bernie Glassman (January 18, 1939–November 4, 2018) stands as one of the most creative and challenging Zen teachers of the modern era, not because he protected Zen from the world, but because he insisted it be practiced inside it. Trained in the White Plum lineage under Taizan Maezumi, Glassman received dharma transmission and then spent the rest of his life asking a single, relentless question: Does awakening function where suffering is real, complex, and systemic?

Glassman’s answer took shape through what became the Zen Peacemakers, grounded in three core practices: Not Knowing, Bearing Witness, and Taking Action. These were not philosophical ideas but disciplines meant to dismantle certainty, expose practitioners to lived suffering, and allow compassionate action to arise without agenda. His work brought Zen into refugee camps, homeless shelters, prisons, and sites of historical trauma, including bearing-witness retreats at Auschwitz. For Glassman, if Zen could not survive contact with pain, conflict, and moral ambiguity, it had not yet matured.

Glassman’s dharma heirs include teachers such as Joan Halifax and Eve Marko, along with others in the White Plum lineage, whose varied paths reflect both the possibilities and the responsibilities of transmission. Taken together, this lineage stands as a living example of what Glassman taught again and again: that awakening does not exempt anyone from ethical accountability, and that practice must continually be verified in relationship, conduct, and care.

Glassman was also famously irreverent, deeply human, and playful in his teaching. He often drew from popular culture when it revealed Dharma more clearly than formal language. Few examples delighted him more than The Big Lebowski. Bernie frequently quoted the Dude’s line, “That’s just, like, your opinion, man,” as a perfect pointer to Not Knowing—a reminder of how tightly we cling to views and how quickly suffering follows. “Aggression will not stand, man,” became a way of naming how violence—internal or external—only deepens delusion. And “The Dude abides” captured, in Bernie’s eyes, a surprisingly clear image of non-fixation: staying present and responsive amid chaos without clinging to identity, outcome, or control.

This was never about glorifying passivity. For Glassman, abiding meant remaining present without collapsing or hardening, even when action was required. It was the same teaching he offered in far more difficult settings: when we drop certainty and meet reality directly, wiser action becomes possible.

Remembering Bernie Glassman is a reminder that Zen is not only about insight on the cushion, but about how we show up together—in suffering, in conflict, in systems larger than ourselves. His life leaves us with a question that remains urgently alive: What does awakening look like when it is lived collectively, without knowing, in a broken world?

— Two Arrows Zen

01/17/2026

Hakuin Ekaku (January 19, 1686–January 18, 1769) is remembered as the great reviver of Rinzai Zen, not because he softened the tradition, but because he made it honest again. As a child growing up near Mount Fuji, Hakuin was unusually sensitive and earnest. He did not stumble into Zen casually. One formative moment he later described in his own writings occurred when he overheard a visiting monk deliver a vivid sermon on the Buddhist hell realms. The imagery struck him with terrifying force. Rather than dismissing the talk as superstition, young Hakuin took it seriously. Fear of death, rebirth, and wasted life seized him, and that fear became the engine of his practice. Zen, for Hakuin, began not as philosophy or self-improvement, but as an urgent question of liberation.

He entered monastic life as a teenager, expecting answers, and instead encountered disappointment. Much of Rinzai Zen at the time had grown comfortable—focused on ceremony, literary commentary, and inherited authority rather than realization. Hakuin refused to settle. He wandered, trained intensely, and eventually experienced a powerful breakthrough, a genuine awakening that confirmed what the tradition promised. Yet this was not the end of the story. Soon after, he suffered a profound physical and psychological collapse—what he later called “Zen sickness.” His body broke down, his mind destabilized, and the awakening he had realized proved unsustainable. This crisis became central to his teaching. Hakuin learned, painfully, that insight without integration is incomplete, even dangerous.

Integration, for Hakuin, meant allowing realization to pe*****te the whole person: body, breath, emotions, ethics, and daily conduct. Awakening was not something to possess or admire, but something that had to be lived, stabilized, and tested repeatedly. He sought guidance outside conventional monastic channels, learned methods for restoring balance, and emerged with a radically mature understanding of practice. From then on, he taught that realization must be verified over and over again—not in peak experiences, but in ordinary functioning. Enlightenment that cannot survive fatigue, illness, irritation, or relationship is not yet trustworthy.

Hakuin’s association with Rinzai Zen was total and transformative. He did not found a new school; he reformed an existing one from the inside. He reorganized kōan practice into a cumulative path still used in Rinzai training today, designed not to reward clever answers but to exhaust the discriminating mind until direct seeing could function freely. Kōans, for Hakuin, were not puzzles but tools—ways of cutting through self-deception again and again. Nearly all modern Rinzai kōan curricula—especially those used in Japan and by Rinzai-derived lineages in the West—descend from Hakuin’s system. When practitioners speak today about realization needing to be “verified again and again,” they are echoing Hakuin’s core insight: kōans are not about arriving, but about functioning freely without collapse.

He expressed these teachings not only through sermons but through poems, letters, paintings, and blunt encouragement. One famous line attributed to him captures his insistence on embodied practice: “Meditation in the midst of activity is worth a thousand times more than meditation in stillness.” Elsewhere he warned practitioners against mistaking quietude for freedom, writing, “Those who cling to emptiness fall into emptiness.” Again and again, he pointed back to lived verification—practice that shows itself in resilience, clarity, and compassion.

Hakuin’s teaching also took visual form. He was a prolific painter and calligrapher, using rough brushwork, humor, and exaggerated figures to transmit Zen insight beyond words. His paintings were not meant for aesthetic refinement, but for awakening—direct, unsettling, and often funny. In them, fierce Bodhisattvas glare, old monks grin, and demons appear not as enemies but as teachers. Like his kōans, these images were meant to meet people directly, bypassing explanation and pointing back to lived experience.

Hakuin taught monks and laypeople alike, using humor, fierce language, and vivid imagery to prevent Zen from becoming either a polite philosophy or a private escape. His legacy endures because the problems he confronted are still with us: spiritual ambition, burnout, shallow realization, and the temptation to confuse insight with integration. Remembering Hakuin is a reminder that Zen is not about having an experience once, but about letting realization reshape a life—again and again, moment by moment, until it can meet the world without collapsing or hardening.

— Two Arrows Zen

01/16/2026

January 14th marked the anniversary of the Human Be-In, which took place in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in 1967. Fifty-nine years later, it stands as a vivid snapshot of a culture in transition, shaped by a sincere and urgent desire for world peace at a time of war, political upheaval, and moral exhaustion. Many who gathered sensed that violence and domination were symptoms of a deeper illness in the human mind, and that lasting peace could not come from protest or policy alone without addressing fear, greed, and separation at their roots. The presence of Richard Alpert—who would soon become Ram Dass—on the event poster captures this turning point with particular clarity. Still known then as a Harvard psychologist and psychedelic researcher, Alpert’s imminent transformation into Ram Dass mirrored a broader American shift: a willingness to learn from Eastern traditions that emphasized awareness, compassion, service, and inner responsibility. Alongside voices like Alan Watts, he helped translate Buddhist and Hindu insights into a language that suggested peace in the world is inseparable from peace in the mind, and that nonviolence must be practiced not only politically, but psychologically and ethically as well. The Human Be-In did not transmit Zen or Buddhism itself, but it helped prepare the cultural ground in which contemplative practice could take root in American life. Remembering it today is not nostalgia; it is a reminder that the longing for world peace has always been bound up with the question of how we transform ourselves, and how we choose to meet conflict with clarity, courage, and care.

01/13/2026

Join Diane Musho Hamilton Roshi for a half-day meditation retreat at Two Arrows Zen.

Sunday Sitting is designed for both beginners and experienced meditators. Those new to Zen practice will receive clear, supportive instruction in posture and breath. Those with an established practice will have time to slow down, settle, and deepen attention in a shared container.

The morning includes sitting and walking meditation, practical instruction, and a Dharma talk with Musho Roshi. The emphasis is not on achieving a particular state, but on learning how to stay present with what’s here—and how that presence naturally supports steadiness, clarity, and care.

All are welcome. Chairs are available, and no prior meditation experience is required.

Registration and details:
https://twoarrowszen.org/events/sunday-sitting-jan2026/

This is an opportunity to practice simply, together, at the start of the year.

01/13/2026

Imakita Kōsen was born on January 16, 1816, in late Edo–period Japan, and died on January 16, 1892, seventy-six years later on the same calendar day. His life unfolded at one of the most vulnerable moments in Zen history, when centuries-old Buddhist institutions faced collapse under political, cultural, and social transformation. Kōsen would become one of the quiet figures who ensured that Zen remained a living discipline rather than a cultural relic.

Kōsen’s early education followed a path common to educated men of his time. Before formal Zen training, he studied Confucian classics, poetry, and Chinese literature, disciplines that emphasized ethical cultivation, intellectual rigor, and social responsibility. This background shaped his later teaching style. Zen, for Kōsen, was never anti-intellectual or anti-ethical; it demanded clarity of mind and character, but went further than moral refinement. Where Confucian learning shaped conduct, Zen demanded direct verification of mind itself.

Drawn to this deeper inquiry, Kōsen ordained in the Rinzai Zen tradition, entering a lineage already centuries old but increasingly weakened by institutional complacency. By the mid-nineteenth century, many Zen temples functioned as hereditary establishments with declining emphasis on rigorous practice. Kōsen’s response was not innovation for novelty’s sake, but restoration. He committed himself to kōan practice, strict monastic discipline, and personal responsibility for realization, insisting that Zen must be lived and verified, not merely inherited.

These commitments came fully into focus when Kōsen became abbot of Engaku-ji in Kamakura. His abbacy coincided with the Meiji Restoration, a period when Buddhism in Japan was actively suppressed in favor of state-sponsored Shinto and Western modernity. Temples were closed, monks were defrocked, and Buddhist institutions lost centuries of social support. Zen could no longer survive by tradition alone. It had to justify itself as a living practice.

Kōsen held a careful line. He refused to dilute Zen into philosophy or nationalism, yet he also refused to retreat into monastic isolation. He opened rigorous Rinzai training to educated lay practitioners and intellectuals, believing that Zen could engage modern thought without surrendering its depth. This decision proved decisive. Zen remained disciplined, experiential, and demanding, while also becoming intelligible beyond monastery walls.

Among those who practiced at Engaku-ji during this period was D. T. Suzuki, who encountered Zen not as abstract doctrine but as embodied training. After Kōsen’s death, Suzuki continued his practice under Kōsen’s foremost disciple and successor, Soyen Shaku. Although Suzuki did not become a Zen priest or receive formal dharma transmission, this early grounding in Rinzai practice shaped the orientation of his later work. Suzuki’s role as an interpreter of Zen for Western audiences cannot be separated from the disciplined environment Kōsen preserved.

Kōsen’s central teaching was not expressed through popular writings or dramatic gestures, but through conditions maintained. Zen, for him, had to remain something that could be tested, practiced, and embodied. He emphasized direct realization over doctrinal mastery, rigorous training over comfort, and engagement with the modern world without surrendering to it. His influence is therefore indirect but profound. Through Soyen Shaku, and later through Suzuki’s writings and lectures, Zen crossed cultural and geographic boundaries while retaining its experiential core.

Imakita Kōsen died on January 16, 1892, in Kamakura, closing a life devoted to holding Zen steady at a historical crossroads. His legacy is found not in fame, but in continuity. Where Zen survived the pressures of modernization with its spine intact, Kōsen’s work stands quietly in the background. Remembering him today is a reminder that transmission often happens without spectacle—through teachers formed, standards upheld, and practices preserved when compromise would have been easier.

Zen did not arrive in the modern world by accident. It was carried there, carefully, by figures like Imakita Kōsen.

— Two Arrows Zen

01/10/2026

“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”

This line, one of the most famous—and most misunderstood—in Zen, comes from Linji Yixuan, the Tang-dynasty Chan master whose teaching became the foundation of what later came to be known as the Rinzai (Linji) school of Zen. Today ( January 10 ), Zen communities traditionally remember Linji on the anniversary of his death in 866.

Linji’s statement is not a rejection of Buddhism, nor an invitation to shock for its own sake. It is a precise teaching aimed at a subtle but persistent obstacle in practice: the tendency to turn awakening into an idea, an image, or an authority outside ourselves. The “Buddha” Linji tells us to kill is the conceptualized Buddha—the idealized figure, doctrine, or spiritual certainty we cling to instead of meeting experience directly.

Linji taught during a mature period of Chan, when elaborate explanations and institutional forms were already well established. His response was radical simplicity. Again and again in The Record of Linji, he warns students not to rely on words, teachers, rituals, or even the teachings themselves as substitutes for realization. “Kill the Buddha” means: do not let anything stand between you and this moment—not even Buddhism.

This uncompromising stance shaped the character of the Linji lineage. The Rinzai tradition that developed from his teaching emphasizes direct encounter, sharp questioning, and kōan practice precisely to interrupt conceptual thinking and expose where we are still relying on borrowed understanding. The intensity associated with Rinzai training is not aggression, but precision—cutting through attachment at its root.

Linji also spoke of what he called the “true person of no rank,” pointing to awakened functioning that precedes identity, role, or attainment. Practice, for Linji, is not about acquiring something new, but about ceasing to obscure what is already operating.

We remember Linji today not to repeat his words as slogans, but to let their edge still work on us. His teaching asks a living question:
What are you leaning on right now—and what happens if you let it fall away?

— Two Arrows Zen

01/09/2026