by Renee Seiyo “I see one on the branch. He sees me. He’ll come.” I said in a whisper with arms outstretched, palms up, and holding several sunflower seeds for the chickadees. That is the scene on the chickadee path. Everyone who walks this path knows this is the posture we take to have a chickadee land…
Category: buddhism
Buddhist Lessons from Screwtape
by William Seiyo Many people have read C.S Lewis’ “Lion, Witch and The Wardrobe.” But, how many have read his other works. You may know that Lewis was once an Atheist who became a Christian and wrote many books on that topic. My favorite book he wrote on the topic is“The Screwtape Letters.” This week…
Common Purple Lilacs
That one spring day when I smelled the sweet fragrance of the common purple lilac,* I became aware of myself in the world and the environment. Before that moment, I have only fuzzy fragments of memories—nursery class at the internment camp at Rohwer, Arkansas; Obon dance music; shaved ice; early morning breakfast in the mess…
Into the Dharma
by Toyo Teru Sensei Into the Dharma, we shall journey, like astronauts or a team of interdependent explorers that make their way through an abyss of un-explored continents, with uncharted rivers, and great divides of lands never traveled before. To me and many new members of the Dharma, we find ourselves delving into this unknown abyss of…
You Don’t Know Shit
by Richard Doyo “You don’t know shit”, stated the Afro-American woman sitting across from a novice therapist. The therapist had said he knew how she felt. He had been well- trained, which meant, in his day, he had been in long-term psychodynamic therapy for years, to make his unconscious conscious. To be an astute clinician…
The Purple Barn
by CJ Daiyo Sensei Once when I was ten years old, Dad took us out West and we drove across Kansas. It was as flat and uneventful as you might suspect, a vast sea of wheat as far as the eye could see. As the hours passed it seemed as though we were uncertain if…
This is a worthy moment
by Marilyn Chiyo This is a worthy moment. I have rested with this mantra now for much of the past year. Its sound, spoken silently in my head, is so commonplace that the phrase is a companion of sorts. In the midst of those glorious moments, like last night listening to my daughter’s clear,…
Lessons from a Micorwave Oven
by Patty Kayo My Dharma glimpse came to me at about 2 a.m. the other day, when I got up to microwave heat a rice-filled thingy I use for neck pain, something I do just about every night. Like ten thousand times before, it was just me and the microwave in the middle of the…
Peaceful Heart
by Richard Doyo The Peaceful heart…what is so hard about this? Daily, moment to moment we go about killing one another with words, apathy, bullets, of course, hurtful thoughts, and the list could on and on. If something, is so good, why is it so difficult to reach? As Buddhist, we must set the example…
Deep Listening as Practice
“listening is a very important understanding in Buddhism. To hear connotes the “I” hears, it is the ego subjective way of hearing but to listen is to be aware, to attend and has no tinge of ego in it.” Rev. Gyomay Kubose
A Bright Dawn 