David Weinstein recently recorded this talk kicking off our discussion of the 16 precepts at the heart of Buddhism.
We will continue this series for several months. The precepts interact differently with each person and the point of the talks is to stimulate discussion. Please use the comments to let us know what comes up for you.
6 Comments
12/5/2011 03:35:40 pm
Taking refuge as a recognition of something that has already happened rings true for me. I've been meditating pretty much daily for years, and now I'm part of at least one sangha...I feel that it's about time in my life for me, if not to preach what I practice, at least to be able to describe it accurately to others. I'm a religious person, a meditation practitioner, a Zen Buddhist: it feels like I'm coming out of the closet.
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David Weinstein
12/6/2011 03:29:27 am
I think the process of exploring the precepts helps us to better understand what the practice means to us, a process of discovry, which results in our being able to better desribe it to ourselves and then, quite naturally to others. It's an ogoing process that lasts a lifetime, isn't that great?
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Taking refuge for me feels like a home coming.
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David Weinstein
12/6/2011 07:57:09 pm
Thanks Jenny, I'm reminded of the saying, 'When you notice you've gone, you're already home.' The precepts help us notice we've gone.
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Marika
12/20/2011 02:44:11 am
Jenny, thank you so much for that. I share the same sense of homelessness that stems from my childhood, and I still struggle with feeling like I'm home. It gives me hope that a feeling of home has started to come to you in meditation. I feel a real sense of family with the sangha, but on a deeper level the feeling of rootlessness remains.
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David Weinstein
12/20/2011 04:37:14 am
I think we find that sense of home in the midst of the 'rootlessness' that Marika mentioned. I remember when I was travelling in India, mostly by train, there was a time that I spread out my blanket on the plank that was my second class sleeper's bed and got this palpable sense of 'Ah,home.' As we become more at home in the midst of our thoughts, as we pay attention to them in our meditation, becoming familiar with them, intimate with them, we find our home.
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Author(s)“A Course on Koans” is the delusion-riddled work of Chris Kufu (“Wind in the Void”) Wilson, who began practicing Zen in 1967. He regards Taizan Maezumi, Robert Aitken, and David Weinstein as his root teachers. Each of them pecked at his shell until he “completed” the never-ending koan curriculum of the Harada-Yasutani lineage. Get posts as they are published:
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