YOU Are a Wandering MONK!! 

I'm a wondering monk. I wonder why I ever became a monk.

The 'Art of Making IT Up As You Go Along' is one of the key Zen Arts. Use of the term 'Contemplation' varies from author to author. Some consider it thinking meditation, others meditation without thought (mystical Christians use this definition), for others it is about focusing on experiencing impermanence, emptiness, or no-self. Thank you for explaining how you're using it!

I'm sitting for 2 years now, 25 minutes nearly every day. I'm doing this alone, so I'm taking your advice and share a bit right now. I recently started psychotherapy on top of my sitting practice and I find these two practices in combination to be very valuable. I needed to hear "No expectation! No guilt!" It's what I'm trying to learn right now, since I am such an ass to myself much of the time. Thank you so much for this video! We're all in this together.

I just finished your audio book - one of my favorite books in a long long time... thank you - thank you so much.

I really appreciate this as I have always been wandering and it is beautiful and difficult! thank you. Amen to no guilt!!

Brad Warner turned me on to you during one of his youtube videos - been following him for a while - i am terrible at my practice as a lay practitioner 😂- just a regular guy working, 5 kids (just 1 left at home) living a basic life, no time for anything, just want to rest after a long day, head full of noise, feeling guilty about not sitting more ... and when i do it ... it's a mess 😂... but i sit with my mess ... i ain't never gonna be enlightened 🤣... it was good to hear your perspective on this... i'll go with i'm a wandering monk - thank you

It is exactly that. Life is at least my practice and zazen the intimate moment of swinging, and balancing or whatever...that cannot be dictated at will .... and although I hear my ins and outs planning for the long term .... I say to myself..." with the one that is falling we will see", and the girl is happy for the truce... And if I get very frustrated I have the sea....and if I don't know where I am in my practice I have the staircase with an incredible audiophony where you try the voice and when you hear it my body is already placed in space... singing for a while I can see if things are really going well... Well I believe it, because I'm relaxed and I'm armed with patience .... For the rest people are in their own way, and they don't see me ok... "she's half German"....

Best lessons learned are the ones you listen to, without really listening, read without really reading.. Alan Watts often hinted at it in his recorded informal essays and his books. Practice outside of practice, zen beyond zen by being truly zen.

For the bookworm and nerd in me the "reading is food for your brain" metaphor is hard to swallow because it implies you can overeat and, if the metaphor holds, constant overeating will of course lead to problems.

This is great advice, thank you.

This helps a lot. I've only ever been a lay practitioner, going through several traditions before I settled on Plum Village Zen practice. I don't have a Sangha to practice with, as there are no Plum Village based practice groups that are close enough to me, so I tend to have a sort of virtual one through videos like yours and people I communicate with online. I also read teachings from other Zen masters. To use a pop culture reference, it's a bit like being a Jedi who's separated from the Jedi Temple so is getting his teachings through holograms and force ghosts. 😆

I took shukke tokudo 2 years ago but since then didn't have the opportunity to do monastic practice in a temple. Even being an "unsui" I've been practicing as a layperson so far. Despite not being in a temple for long periods I really think that practicing as a layperson is more challenging than the practice of a reclused monk for the same reasons Shozan sensei. Even with all the distractions and "normal" life chores I've been practicing zazen daily, studying (contemplating) and having this spiritual friendship you mention with my master and my senpais, along with involvment with the sangha. A chance for a period of training in a temple is showing up in the horizon. This will probably be good, but I don't see any good reasons to not come back to lay life after that. The dharma is not only inside the temple walls.

I come back to this video pretty frequently. Its one of your best.

In the absence of having a spiritual friend I find that it is incredibly easy to start dissecting your spiritual life in a way that is nonproductive - just in an attempt to form some sort of sense of direction. "Am I doing this correctly? Is this working? Blah blah"

I really liked your description of contemplation, we can get really caught up in trying to get something out of a text by a master. This sounds much more organic and less grasping

thank you for sharing this. :)

I think most of us go through an ‘angya’ period or stay in that state. And, it’s okay. Those three things you listed are very important. In the words of Harada roshi, Sojun roshi, and many others: ZAZEN! Shikantaza is also my method and breath as my anchor. I admit that it’s been hard lately as I recover from covid. For three days my body aches kept me from a seated posture, but using my breath as an anchor pulled me through those difficult periods. Those experiences, I’ve had a few now over the years, are key and inform my overall practice. I wish you all the best. However, we both know that struggle is part of it. May your perception of struggle lessen as time passes. Now, have a good laugh

Has it occurred to you that the three elements of your lay practice as you played them out sound pretty much like you’re talking about… the three jewels?

It happends to me that whenever I feel too many thoughts getting hypnotized I don't try to go away from that, insteed I look closer and at the same time comeback to the breath. Then not even the thoughts get quiet, but my surroundings, noices from everywhere are settle.

Heyshow zin jack it’s been a long time. Glad to see your videos videos are back up I’m not always on RU-vid. I can definitely understand. Trying to describe the practice to someone who doesn’t know what that is much less someone who probably has never lived in a monastery, as among or with monksa lot no matter what tradition you’re practicing

Thank you!

This was a favorite talk.🙏

Halloween 2022 sorted.

Just sitting, ehh? Welcome, my friend (I kid, I kid). Perhaps a vid on the benefits and obstacles of both?

All the external changes in the situation of our live as nothing to do with our state and peace of mind. Whether you are a monk, a lay person, working or not, moving or not, the consciousness is still the same. Only thoughts can change, always, or the body situation. But your are not the mind, neither the ephemeral thoughts, nor the physical body. You are the never changing consciousness beyong it, the formless witness . Real zazen is not a physical posture, it is the return to the inner source, which always present, whatever we do or not