Mar 8 - 14

Winter, penultimate week

"There is a pitfall inherent in practice, however: if we practice well...we are are likely to feel better, to be more comfortable. We may feel more at ease with ourselves....In fact, the benefits to ourselves are incidental. The real point of practice is to serve life as fully and fruitfully as we can. And that's very hard for us to understand especially at first. 'You mean that I should take care of someone who has just been cruel to me? That's crazy!' 'You mean that I have to give up my own convenience to serve someone who doesn't event like me?'" --Joko Beck

Saturday Zen. Our next Zen service is Sat Mar 10, 10:00 - 11:45am, room 24
Community UU, 468 Rosedale Ave, White Plains, NY.
Practice to be led by Meredith.

Chants for Thu Mar 8 - Wed Mar 14:

• Lovingkindness Sutra, p. 27
• Guidepost for Silent Illumination, p. 38
• The Many and The One, p. 60
• Mind Like the Moon, p. 60

See Boundless Way Zen Sutra Book, 4th ed. and
BoWZ Westchester Chant Schedule

Reading this week: Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special: Chap. 10, "The Talk Nobody Wants to Hear," pp. 57-66.

Question. "Practice is always a battle between what what we want and what life wants" (59). How do you experience that battle?

At Boundless Way Temple, 1030 Pleasant St, Worcester, MA:

• Sat Mar 10, Sat Apr 14, and Sat May 12, 9:00-17:00. "Buddhism 101." INFO HERE.
• Thu Mar 15, 19:00 - Sun Mar 18, 12:00. Spring Sesshin. INFO HERE

Raven Tale: The Way

Oh, I drank of that duck-rabbit brew,
Watched the mind, fixed on one picture, flit between two,
Until I turned away, feigning weariness of the silly trick.
Still, a day or a year later, I and a pint of dark and bitter,
Strolling in the yard, crouched to peer
Upon the business at an ant hill.
There again the wild veering betook me:
Now many little organisms before me, now a single one --
Two pictures, and a thing-in-view that is both and neither.
These days, everywhere I look:
Nothing but duck-rabbits, flickering while constant.

Koan Post: Blue Cliff Record #11, Book of Serenity #53: Huangbo's 'Partaker's of Brewer's Grain'

Evening shadows stretch east and
I have passed Today Today.
I think probably you have too. How could we not?
Still, this feeling of having been somewhere else is a
Morning fog that doesn't lift, a delusion
The very nonsense of which encourages its recurrence.
Perhaps I'll swing by the Zen bar on the corner
To hoist a pint of dregs and be thereby intoxicated until
Tomorrow is Today.

KOAN INDEX