Is Lay Zen Practice Deep Enough? 

Easy to be a Saint on the mountain and difficult at the market. Jack Kornfield spent lots of years in monasteries, yet when he returned to lay people he found out that he wasn’t as tranquil and “developed” as he thought.

Chan master Sheng Yen would say: "if you want for 100% to become a monk, do it. If you want it for 99%, don't".

Honestly, I always thought living everyday life and going through all the shit that comes with it is much much harder than taking refuge in a monastery.

I read your book letter to a dead friend about zen. Now I just sit, that's enough for me.

Vimalakirti was a lay Buddhist meditator who attained a very high degree of enlightenment considered by some second only to the Buddha's. The Vimalakirti Sutra is a great read!

When you were living in a monastery in Japan, did Ultraman have to wear robes or did he wear his superhero suit?

I remember mentioning a few years ago in the comments that I had difficulty reading Eat Sleep Sit because there were passages about how senior monks would physically abuse the younger/"lower" monks, though I think at the time you hadn't read the book yourself. I still very much appreciated your thoughtful answer!

Thank you so much Brad. Over many years of lay Zen practice and study I have wrestled with this idea of -never enough unless I wear the robe.

Any practice is better than no practice.

I did buy a copy of The Other Side of Nothing. I’ve been learning a lot from your books and I’m happy you wrote this one. I’m happy for all of your books. I am particularly interested in what you have to say about ethics. I’ll need to read it three times to absorb it all. Hah! If even that will be enough.

Dearest Brad, your videos have become Joy and Delight of our days. We also LOVE your movie star precious puppy dog. And every time I see him in his plush and perfectly clean doggy bed, I am thinking, he needs an oval bed! Is it just because I am used to seeing my dog in his oval bed, or do you think Ziggy could stretch better in one too? Hope I got his name right. WE LOVE YOU!!!!!

Just ordered your book. Hopefully in this lifetime i get a chance to meet you but I am in the east coast so if not I hope karmic connections will take over in future lives.Stay well now so we test it much later.

In the Pali Cannon the Buddha is asked if a lay person can become enlightened, and yes, they can.

Imogen all the people, living for todaaay...

Brad help me out please - what is the full version of “since the beginning of your race, since…” as a way of calling on a question. I’ve heard it in past videos, you said it to me at a retreat, and I’ve been trying to find it on/off for a little bit. I think it was a way that Gudo Nishijima called questions and a tradition (or maybe just a thing) you were carrying along? Thanks for taking the time if you get a chance.

I'm interested in buying the book, but I think you need more sun, or not. Who am I anyway?

"That's what she said..." 😂

Layman Pang has entered the chat...

IF you can't find ''it'' without the robes, the shaved head, the monastic life inside a temple, it ain't worth having.

"Something fell..." ;})>

Karen Armstrong in her book "Buddha" describes how monastic life looked in Gautama's times.

Maybe the questioner could go for three months to live in a monastery such as Throssel in the U.K. and get a sense of whether the monastic life is for them. They could then become a postulant if it felt right but could leave after a year or two if it wasn’t right for them. I can highly recommend your book The other side of nothing. It really is excellent.

I think if you really want to know zen you have to do a few longer ango retreats... but then again some people do lots of those and dream their life away 😅

no effort is wasted. if one is only practicing zen at 46.76% instead of the 96.7% that a monk does, it doesn't matter.

Interesting topic as usual, but odd question to ask you … if you had answered in the affirmative, and given that this questioner seems to respect you, it would mean you spent 35+ years doing nothing worthwhile (from a Zen perspective). 😅

Hi Brad..so are you a monk? or not? I don't believe I understand this term "monk" as it is used in Zen. Can you please clarify? Is it lay monasticism? or some other something else. if that makes sense. lol and thank you 🙏

Wherever you go, there you are. B. Banzi Dude that's quite a hard sell ya got there🙃😊 Neat observation re christian monastics.

Descendants rule!

Clearly The Vimalakirti Sutra is not appreciated here, lol 😆

If you want to be a monk go try for a year. You don’t have to commit for life. There are many stories of lay people achieving enlightenment and there’s nothing wrong with being a layperson. If you take the teaching seriously and stay diligent you’ll be fine. In the end you kind of need to let go of the pursuit of craving even enlightenment to achieve it no?

This is a repost of my reply to Shozan Jack Haubner's video on the same subject, with a bit more added to the end: Most people probably have a different view, which is fine (I'm no expert in these things), but I've always worked on the basis that you can meditate anywhere, anytime. Any act, be it walking, sitting, eating, taking a dump, whatever, can be a meditation, and the attainment of enlightenment comes from how much awareness you have of whatever act it is you're doing in your everyday life, and not whether or not you're living in a monastery. Your mind is your mind, and it's the same mind whether you're sitting cross-legged on a cushion in your bedroom or sitting cross-legged staring at a wall in a monastery. You have the same five skandhas in a monstery as you do outside of one, so I think you have the same potential to be enlightened as a lay practitioner as you do as a monastic... but, like I said, I'm no expert. 19:27 That one's easy, the answer is 42. 😆

I believe the missing years of Jesus were due to him studying Buddhism. Where, I cannot say.