A Dharma sister passed away a week ago
She was a great practitioner, someone who devoted her life to help others.
ZenBuddhism
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A new training period started at the Zen Buddhist Temple
How does it start? We do 1,000 prostrations together and then read some texts to remind ourselves why we are doing what we are doing, once more.
Since I'm not at any of the temples, I joined the ZOOM call and made prostrations alone/with them, in real time, but thousands of kilometres away.
This time, doing prostrations had a cathartic effect on me. It was quite unexpected, but not an unknown experience, it has happened before many times.
The experience was so intense that I can't write long, so this post ends here.
My theory about happiness
#Personal #Hapiness #ZenBuddhism
More precisely, some unordered and incomprehensible personal notes somehow glued up rather than a full-fledge theory.
Do not expect succinctness in this post. It is going to expand, wildly, and then, somehow, converge to the initial topic.
Most likely you won't find any life-changing ideas here, so, keep your expectations in check—or simply skip the whole thing.
Change
Change is a beautiful bitch.
Can't be neither stopped nor manipulated at will. “Free will”, some days I doubt that's real.
Sunim's 49 days mourning period concluded yesterday
A ceremony celebrating Sunim's legacy took place yesterday. It was beautiful. People shared stories, there were no shortage of them.
Sunim flew from Japan to NYC in the late 60s. He left Korea to avoid serving in the military. An unknown US army official in Japan paid for the one-flight ticket, saying: “Americans need to learn about Zen, do you want to teach there?”. Sunim was 27 years old when he arrived to the US.
Where did Sunim go?
Last Saturday, my Zen teacher passed away. The night is thick with sadness.
Calling Sunim my teacher is, perhaps, imprecise. I never spent long periods under his guidance, as I've done with my training teacher. Sunim was more like a grandfather I visited once a year. A wise elder and great storyteller that I met when his strong character had already softened. Within the Sangha, however, Sunim was everyone's teacher, directly or indirectly, to our fortune and/or disgrace, intentionally or otherwise.