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UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

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A podcast of original teachings and music by Zenkai Taiun Michael Elliston Roshi, guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order.

Michael Elliston Ciencias Sociales Espiritualidad Filosofía
Episodios
  • 175: Connecting the Dots

    175: Connecting the Dots
    Jun 4 2025
    As I mentioned in the last installment, when thinking about content for the next Dharma Byte or UnMind podcast, I turn to my collaborators for inspiration: Hokai Jeff Harper, publisher of the newsletter, and Shinjin Larry Little, producer of the podcast. Jeff responded to a recent call for suggested topics with: • To everything there is a season• The wax and wane of householder zazen practice• What we are feeling right now IS impermanence manifesting itself In the last episode I delved into the first of these three, the seeming seasonality of everything as a universal principle. We might take a moment to remind ourselves that seasonality is also considered natural, as the waxing and waning of the four seasons. And, while somewhat arbitrary as a concept, is considered causal in terms of the natural sciences of biology, botany, and even psychology — as in "seasonal affective disorder." Arbitrary in the sense that, as Master Dogen says, "You do not call winter the beginning of spring, nor summer the end of spring." Now that we have gotten off the planet, any middle-schooler knows that the root causes of the seasons is a universal phenomenon. Unless they are being home-schooled by a flat-earther, that is. In this segment we will take up the second, the waxing and waning of householder practice, moving the discussion to the social level. Which, of course, is part and parcel of our personal sphere of activity and influence. Whether Hokai meant to point out the usual periodic waxing and waning of our personal commitment to meditation in the context of the many distractions assailing your average householder; or a more societal angle on how householder engagement has grown and diminished over time through the various Eastern countries of origin, compared to its prevalence and intensity in the West modern times, I am not sure. I think it may be more instructive to consider the alternative — monastic practice — and how it colors our perspective on our own, personal options for pursuing the dharma in the midst of life. Zen householders often harbor a misconception that because we are householders — and not monastics — that we cannot hope to penetrate to the fundamental meaning of the teachings of Buddhism. This seems to be a widely shared meme in the Western culture, perhaps particularly in America. And it is based on a fundamental misconception — namely that the social sphere of Zen trumps the personal sphere —that you can tell a book by its cover, when it comes to Zen practice. But you can't. Because we interpret the history of Zen Buddhism as primarily monastic, from its inception in India and its transmission through China, Korea, Japan and the Far East, we presume that the approach of material renunciation — leaving the householder life for that of the mendicant monk, nun, or hermit, or wandering on pilgrimage — is the most effective way, the only way, of recovering our Original Nature, or Buddha Mind. While traditional prescriptions for practice definitely include divesting ourselves of our dependency upon, and predilection for, the pleasures and problems of our times, the renunciation recommended in Zen is not limited to merely rejecting and replacing one lifestyle for another. It is more a matter of seeing through the delusional aspect of any way of living. Including monasticism. This is true spiritual poverty. Master Dogen articulated four levels of renunciation that members of his monastic community were either able or unable to embrace, which I have discussed in more detail elsewhere. They range from the ability or inability to relinquish attachment to family, home, inheritance, et cetera, to the inability or ability to relinquish our own opinions and biases regarding our own reality, regardless of outer appearances. The latter — Dogen's highest level of renunciation — would apply equally to monastic or householder. So apparently the main difference between the two lifestyle choices is that the former is relatively simpler compared to the complexities of the latter. In terms of the ability to realize the truth of Buddhism, lifestyle is just another form of pomp and circumstance. If you find your practice — by which we usually mean meditation — is waxing and waning beyond your intentions and control, you might want to take a radical departure. Stop. Quit, with all the negative connotations that may have in our goal-oriented culture and society. Admit that you have failed, once again. Or rationalize that Zen may work for others, but it does not work for you. In doing so — in "not doing Zen" — you will confirm your bias, and prove to yourself that, like everything else you have tried in life, it just didn't get the job done. Zen did not live up to your expectations. Now that you have resolved that untidy business you can get on with your life. Good luck with that. It turns out that this kind of discernment, that Zen is something we started doing, so it ...
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    15 m
  • 174: Zen in Our Time

    174: Zen in Our Time
    May 7 2025
    "Zen in Our Time" and "Connecting the Dots" are themes that I have hit upon for 2025, forming the thread running through (one meaning of "sutra") all of my DharmaByte newsletter columns and online UnMind podcasts this year. Contextualizing the teachings and legacy of Zen in modern times — without throwing the baby out with the bathwater — is key to transmitting Zen's legacy. Connecting the dots in the vast matrix of Dharma — while bridging the gap between 500 BC to 2025 CE in terms of the cultures, causes and conditions — is necessary to foster the evolution of Shakyamuni's Great Vow, from the closing verse of the Lotus Sutra's Lifespan Chapter: I am always thinking: by what means can I cause sentient beings to be able to enter the highest path and quickly attain the Dharma? As in so many aspects of our overloaded society, when contemplating the next column or podcast, the question always arises, "Where do I begin?" I turn to my collaborators — Hokai Jeff Harper, publisher of the newsletter, and Shinjin Larry Little, producer of the podcast — for clarity and inspiration. Jeff responded to my call for suggested topics with an intriguing trio: • To everything there is a season• The wax and wane of householder zazen practice• What we are feeling right now IS impermanence manifesting itself Instead of choosing one over the others, it occurred to me that all three are important. And they are interrelated, in a kind of fish-trap narrowing of focus, from the universal span of spacetime as a causal nexus for humankind; then homing in on the social level, considering the modern householder's vacillation in attempting to pursue what began long ago as a monastic lifestyle; and finally zeroing in on the personal: the intimacy of realization within the immediate flow of reality. I will attempt to treat them in succession over the next three installments, in the context of transmission of Zen's Original Mind. TO EVERYTHING THERE IS A SEASONIf you find the 1960s Pete Seeger song popularized by the Byrds running through your brain, you are not alone. If you recollect the poem from Ecclesiastes — which I studied in a unique, small-town high school literature course — you may be hearing echoes of: To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. Or from Tozan Ryokai: Within causes and conditions, time and season, IT is serene and illuminating And finally, from Dogen Zenji: Firewood becomes ash and it does not become firewood again.Yet do not suppose that the ash is future and the firewood past. You should understand that firewood abides in the phenomenal expression of firewood, which fully includes past and future, and is independent of past and future. Ash abides in the phenomenal expression of ash, which fully includes future and past.
 Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash, you do not return to birth after death... Birth is an expression complete this moment; death is an expression complete this moment. They are like winter and spring; you do not call winter the "beginning" of spring, nor summer the "end" of spring. There are many more such incisive and insightful references to time in the literature of Zen, as well as Western thinking, of course, most notably Master Dogen's fascicle titled "Uji," which translates as something like "Being-time," "Existence-time," or "Living time," as Uchiyama-roshi renders it. This 13th Century writing is said to have anticipated the theory of Relativity, Einsteins' prodigious accomplishment, perhaps the most important scientific breakthrough of the 20th Century. But these few recollections from the rich legacy of Zen's written record will suffice for our purposes of connecting some of the dots in Indra's Net, or the modern components of the "Matrix of the Thus-Come One" as described in the Surangama Sutra. Scanning the Biblical poem, it is striking to see so many various activities and reactions to the obligations and behaviors of daily human life listed in equally dispassionate terms, not implying false equivalencies, but for example to blithely assert that there is "a time to kill" and "a time to heal"; "a time of war" and "a time of peace" — in the same breath — is in itself breathtaking, considering the admonition against killing, or murder, found in the Ten Commandments as well ...
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    14 m
  • 173: Connecting the Dots

    173: Connecting the Dots
    Apr 2 2025
    ZEN IN OUR TIME“Connecting the Dots”Some of you A few may have undergone formal training, in Zen or other meditative traditions, or you may be a relative newcomer to Zen. The objective of this essay is Whatever your experience level, this course should help you sort the wheat from the chaff, to clarify for yourself which teachings of Buddhism are relevant to you, to provide some background on Zen Buddhism, how to integrate Zen practice into your daily life, and the importance of Zen’s unique style of meditation, and finally some approaches to integrating Zen practice into your daily life.. My approach to Zen may seem a bit different from others you may be familiar with. The reason for this is NOTE: Applying my professional training in design thinking, which influences how I see the world. To augment more traditional text-based presentations of Zen and buddha-dharma, my training in graphic design, I have charted the basic teachings as 3D structures flattened into 2D charts, available upon request. This illustrates their interrelatedness, providing visual aids and mnemonics to help you visualize and remember them. The graphic models allow further analysis of overlapping and interconnected implications of what otherwise typically appear as linear constructs and literary outlines in the verbal formword. We are literally going to connect the dots to the degree possible.Basics of BuddhismZen NOTE: Applying my training in graphic design, I have charted the basic teachings of Zen as semantic models, 3D structures flattened into 2D charts, for the sake of illustrating their interrelatedness, as well as providing visual aids and mnemonics for you to visualize and remember them. These will also allow you to do further analysis of the overlapping and interconnected implications of what otherwise appear as linear constructs in the written word. Buddhism is both very simple and complex at the same time. As we say in design circles, "simple in concept; difficult in execution." The amount of material available on Buddhism appears virtually endless. I am not a scholar, nor a historian, but it may be helpful to provide some background from the perspective of Zen practice, on the subject as I understand itThe Four Noble TruthsBuddha re-discovered these truths in his meditation and articulatedmeditation them in his "First Sermon.” He unfolds a model of "Four Noble Truths." This quartet constitutes a kind of take-it-or-leave-it description of reality, the causes and conditions of sentient existence, including the Eightfold Path, a thoroughgoing prescription for practice, covering the eight dimensions of leading a Zen life based on meditation. All of the teachings may be seen as corrective descriptions of enlightened realty and prescriptions for taking action based on the enlightened worldview. Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths are traditionally translated as the existence of suffering, its origin in craving, the potential of cessation, and the path to follow in daily life, leading to cessation. This begs the question — WhatWhat, exactly, makes them so noble, after all? They can beare ennobling, but only if we embrace them. If we do, : they can enable us to live a life of compassion in the context of inexorable change, or "suffering." The Noble Truths do not change with circumstance. They do not interact with, nor react to, changes in circumstance. The first of the four truths is that this existence — indeed any physical existence — is of the nature of suffering (Skt. dukkha). There is no existence without change, the universal dynamic. Galaxies colliding, the Big Bang — all is dukkha. As human beings, we are caught up in this change, and we tend to take it personally. We suffer not only physically, but also emotionally, mentally, and even socially. The second truth is that most of our suffering is finds its origin in our own attachment and aversion,, craving, or thirst: clinging to the pleasant, and avoiding the unpleasant. Suffering is both natural —, as in aging, sickness and death —, and unnatural or intentional —, as in self-inflicted and mutually-inflicted suffering between human beings, and imposed upon other beings, sentient and insentient. On a personal level, Buddhism embraces suffering, rather than trying to avoid it. The third of the truths offers hopeis that suffering can cease, but only through our embrace of it. The natural processes of aging, sickness and death cannot be avoided no matter how hard we try. They are built into existence itself. UnnecessaryIntentional and unintended suffering can come to an end, however, through relinquishing cessation, or at least lowering,the extent ofof our craving, modifying our craven behavior.The Noble Eightfold PathThe fourth of the quartet posits that there is a way of living daily life as a path to cessation. Theusual interpretation of its eight points begins with ...
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    16 m
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