Sunday, November 20, 2011

reading list: Appreciate Your Life: The Essence of Zen Practice

Appreciate Your Life: The Essence of Zen Practice by Taizan Maezumi Roshi (Shambhala Classics)

Here is the first major collection of the teachings of Taizan Maezumi Roshi (1931-1995), one of the first Japanese Zen masters to bring Zen to the West and founding abbot of the Zen Center of Los Angeles and Zen Mountain Center in Idyllwild, California. These short, inspiring readings illuminate Zen practice in simple, eloquent language. Topics include zazen and Zen koans, how to appreciate your life as the life of the Buddha, and the essential matter of life and death.

Appreciate Your Life conveys Maezumi Roshi’s unique spirit and teaching style, as well as his timeless insights into the practice of Zen. Never satisfied with merely conveying ideas, his teisho, the Zen talks he gave weekly and during retreats, evoked personal questions from his students. Maezumi Roshi insisted that his students address these questions in their own lives. As he often said, “Be intimate with your life.”


Taizan Maezumi Roshi c. 1994; Peter Cunn photo
This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons

The readings are not teachings or instructions in the traditional sense. They are transcriptions of the master’s teisho, living presentations of his direct experience of Zen realization. These teisho are crystalline offerings of Zen insight intended to reach beyond the student’s intellect to her or his deepest essence. - Maezumi, Hakuyū Taizan - Sweeping Zen – The Zen Buddhism Database


Taizan Maezumi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Hakuyū Taizan Maezumi (前角 博雄, February 24, 1931—May 15, 1995) was a Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher and rōshi, and lineage holder in the Sōtō, Rinzai and Harada-Yasutani traditions of Zen. He combined the Rinzai use of koans and the Sōtō emphasis on shikantaza in his teachings, influenced by his years studying under Hakuun Yasutani in the Harada-Yasutani school. He founded or co-founded several institutions and practice centers, including the Zen Center of Los Angeles, White Plum Asanga, Yokoji Zen Mountain Center and the Zen Mountain Monastery.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

WHAT NEXT - new blog


i recently launched a NEW BLOG - a mash up of whats up, what it is, whats more, GlobaLove Think Tank, stuff from my inbox & more - what next RC'S NEWS & RANDOM blog


whats up is now called "nuclear blog" - i started whats up in March of 2011 for miscellaneous news and random postings which don't fall under the photo or art & studies themes of my other two blogs ... includes a number of newsfeeds and a videos page. launched on the day of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

After the first few posts it became basically a news blog about the ongoing Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe with related nuclear news and commentary - not so random anymore, and it became progressively more activist...

what next is now where the miscellaneous news and random postings will land, and whats up will remain dedicated to nuclear news