floatingzendo.org Blog

Please join Floating Zendo in our annual sesshin/Zen retreat, from August 20-27, 2010, at Jikoji, in the Santa Cruz mountains (Bay Area of California). You are welcome to participate for the week, staying at Jikoji, or through day-only opportunities as you are able. Join us from near or far… The retreat page has sign-up details. Please see that page for more information, as we near this year’s retreat.

As is traditional, Floating Zendo is holding an Ango (longer practice period) leading up to sesshin, to deepen practice. Details on this year’s Ango as likewise on the retreat page.

As of June 2010, Floating Zendo in San Jose, CA is studying the Uji (”Time-Being”) chapter of Dogen’s Shobogenzo. We are using the English translation in Enlightenment Unfolds (ed. Kaz Tanahashi). A popular, similar, but not identical, earlier translation by Kaz is available online. Our teacher’s talks on Uji are given as part of our weekly meetings, where Angie welcomes people’s questions on the text. We hope you can join us, or listen in from near or far.

Starting Tuesday, January 12, we will be studying Hsin-hsin Ming: Verses on the Faith-Mind by Seng-ts’an, Third Patriarch. The book that Angie will use as her reference in the upcoming talks is Trust in Mind: The Rebellion of Chinese Zen
by Mu Soeng & Jan Chozen Bays. This book includes the ancient poem and commentary; it is not required or needed for our Tuesday evenings. There are about 20 or so verses to this poem and it is in many anthologies, as well as on-line.

The translation by Richard B. Clarke can be found at this link: http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/zen/fm/fm.htm.

Beginning in early October 2009, Floating Zendo has begun to study the Heart Sutra. We have studied the Sutra before, and we come back to this essential periodically. “The” Sutra is chanted at each of Floating Zendo’s zazen sessions as a core element of the service. The Sutra’s emphasis on emptiness and prajna paramita are core to our Soto and Mahayana practice.

We encourage you to join the study by attending Tuesday evenings in San Jose, CA, or by listening to the audio recordings of Angie’s talks.

[Practice period for 2009 is now over. We leave this posting available for your use, as it refers to useful documents relevant for ongoing practice.]
In preparation for Floating Zendo’s sesshin in August 2009, we began a practice period in early July, that will end with the start of sesshin. “Ango” is often a time of more intense (zazen) practice, a greater role in the zendo, studying a sutra/Buddhist material, etc. To guide the greater sanga in joining in practice period, please see document 1 and document 2 for some background and suggestions for this practice opportunity.

As of early June 2009, we are studying the Buddhist Precepts. Angie gives a talk on them each Tuesday evening after zazen, followed by comments and questions/answers with the sangha.

Here are the materials.

And here are the talks.

Begining July 8, 2008, Floating Zendo in San Jose, CA will study Dogen Zenji’s Zuimonki on Tuesday evenings.

Zuimonki is a collection of dharma talks to lay and monk practitioners given by Dogen Zenji, recorded by his disciple Ejo.

We will use a few translations:

• Online: from Sotoshu (Soto Zen in Japan, likely translated by Shohaku Okumura in 1988 variously indicating Kyoto Soto Zen or Sotoshu).
• Book: Thomas Cleary’s Record of Things Heard, available from Amazon, and possibly from local book sellers.

If you can not attend our Tuesday evening zazen/study, we hope you will listen to recordings of these meetings.

Wikipedia now has an entry for our teacher Angie!

Take a look… you may learn something that you didn’t know about our teacher!

(P.S. There is also a permanent link to the Wikipedia entry on the Blog Roll.)

As of late November 2007, we have begun our study of Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.

We hope you will join us for regular zazen and our study of this wonderful book, led by our teacher Angie.

We have begun the study of Kobun Chino roshi’s Aspects of Sitting. We began this study in mid-August 2007, and will review a chapter each Tuesday evening after zazen in San Jose.

The text addresses guidelines for zazen, which are especially relevant, as we are about to hold our annual sesshin. Kobun was Angie’s teacher.

Angie handed out paper copies of Aspects for local use in San Jose.

There is an almost identical online copy available at Jikoji, if you’d like to study along with us (remotely).  Angie’s Tuesday evening talks on Aspects will be available as well.