Buddhist Temple Of Toledo Podcast

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on September 3, 2008."Turn around the light to shine within, then just return. The vast inconceivable source can't be faced or turned away from. Meet the ancestral teachers, be familiar with their instruction, bind grasses to build a hut, and don't give up. Let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. Open your hands and walk, innocent." - Shih-TouFor more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on August 20, 2008."I've built a grass roof hut, where there's nothing of value. After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap. When it was completed, fresh weeds appeared. Now it's been lived in - covered by weeds. The person in the hut lives here calmly, not stuck to inside, outside, or in between." -Shih-Tou "When you can get past the 'It's not OK' about 'It's not OK,' and just be OK with 'It's not OK,' then, OK!" -RinsenFor more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Recorded at the Toledo Zen Center on August 17, 2008, this afternoon workshop discussion explores the teachings of Shih-T'ou with Rinsen. For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Recorded at the Toledo Zen Center on August 17, 2008, this afternoon workshop discussion explores the teachings of Shih-T'ou with Rinsen. For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on August 6, 2008. "All of the senses and all of the things sensed - they interact without interacting. Interacting, they permeate each other, yet each remains in its own place. By nature, forms differ in shape and appearance. By nature, sounds bring pleasure or pain. In darkness, the fine and mediocre accord; brightness makes clear and murky distinct."- Shih-T'ou, Identity of Relative and Absolute For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on July 30, 2008. "The mind of the great sage of India was intimately conveyed from West to East. Among human beings are wise ones and fools, but in the Way there is no northern or southern patriarch."- Shih-T'ou, Identity of Relative and Absolute For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik leads a retreat workshop at the Toledo Zen Center on July 27, 2008. "I've built a grass roof hut, where there's nothing of value. After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap. When it was completed, fresh weeds appeared. Now it's been lived in - covered by weeds. The person in the hut lives here calmly, not stuck to inside, outside, or in between."-- Shih-T'ou For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik leads a retreat workshop at the Toledo Zen Center on July 27, 2008. "Shih-Tou's awakening happened as he read this passage from the teachings of the early scholar monk Seng-Chow: "'The Ultimate Self is empty and void.  Though it lacks form, the myriad things are all of its making.  One who understands the myriad things as the Self, isn't that a sage?' "That seeming dichotomy right there, the myriad things and the self, the form, the empty, the void, the relative and the absolute became the essential insight that Shih-Tou would plumb the depths of and elucidate in a way that hadn't happened before him, to such a degree that his 'Identity of Relative and Absolute' is a teaching that we chant to this day." Note: This talk also addresses what it means to "sit with" koans as a practice, and how it relates to concentration practices. For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at herm

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on July 16, 2008. "Mostly, our mind remains fixed in what's called a dualistic state...which means being trapped, unawaredly in a way of perceiving the universe such that everything is shattered, separate and distinct... In the practice of Zen, there is uncovered another way of perceiving, a way that's not bound by the traps of this and that, or the distinctions of high and low... You have to be willing to drop your images of what God is to be able to really see God's face. As long as you have an image in your mind, your mental construction of what you think that's supposed to be, there's a block. There's a stage at which having an image can be a useful thing.  There's a stage at which it becomes a problem and needs to be transcended." For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Visited by a local University World Religions class, Rinsen contextualizes Zen practice and awakening within religious Tradition. "Most religious traditions are founded with the experience or essential insight of an individual or group of individuals who have some unique way of perceiving themselves and the world that fits the society that they find themselves in, in a way that hadn't happened before." For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on June 11, 2008. "Develop meditation that is like the earth, for when you develop meditation that is like the earth, agreeable and disagreeable contexts will not invade your mind and remain. Just as people throw clean things and dirty things, excrement, urine, spittle, pus and blood on the earth, and the earth is not horrified, humiliated or disgusted because of that." --Buddha For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on June 4, 2008. "One of the primary ways that we do great harm to ourselves and to those around us is by becoming attached to a particular view. 'Attached' here means a very specific thing: it means sort of an unexamined clinging that has almost a panting, desperate quality to it. The majority of these views, these opinions that we hold, are actually unknown to us, ironically enough. They're more or less unconscious." For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on May 28, 2008. "Long seeking it through others, I was far from reaching it.Now I go by myself and I meet it everywhere.I now am not it, and just now, it is nothing but myself.Understanding this way, I can be as I am."-Master Dong-Shan For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on May 21, 2008. "In studying the teachings of the Buddhadharma, in studying reality, what we're actually studying is ourselves.... Ironically enough, the way of studying those teachings, the way of studying that Self, is that you have to get the Self out of the picture.... What that means, what that's pointing to, is the direct experience of your life. The direct experience of experience itself, free from the conditionings and the boundaries of the limited mind. What happens, then, is that you become awakened by everything. Everywhere you go, you encounter the teachings." For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik leads a retreat workshop at the Toledo Zen Center on May 18, 2008. "Styling himself a latter-day Vimalakirti framed Wang Wei's dual life in the most positive terms. Not as a split or a straddle, one foot in the affairs in state, the other in monkhood, but as a unity; the best of both worlds. It states his understanding that fundamentally there are not two worlds, pure and impure, and that a true person of the Way may go anywhere unhindered." --The Roaring Stream For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik leads a retreat workshop at the Toledo Zen Center on May 18, 2008. "Mindful creativity - or Zen art, if you will - requires a certain kind of consciousness to be able to really call itself Zen art. There's a quality required, expressed in the body, of tranquillity; open, receptive, clear, awake presence. It's absolutely essential. In other words, not discriminating, not judgmental, not tangled up in ideas and concepts." For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik leads a retreat workshop at the Toledo Zen Center on May 18, 2008. Hidden on this mountain, many Buddhist monks Chant sutras, meditate together; Men on distant city walls gazing towards the peaks See only white, enshrouding clouds. -Wang Wei, A Poem to my Brothers and Sisters For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

In honor of the first anniversary of the Drinking Gourd Podcast, Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik gives an interview at the Toledo Zen Center on October 22, 2008. "When I finally got to see a full-out Zen monastery, I was hooked. It really helped me by providing a specific way of working on this, and working with this whole contemplative intelligence, that I couldn't find in the Western approach." For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on May 14, 2008. "To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many people, to want to help everyone and everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful." -Thomas Martin, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on May 7, 2008. "If with kindly generosity one merely has the wish to soothe the aching heads of other beings, such merit knows no bounds. No need to speak, then, if the wish to drive away the endless pain of each and every living being, bringing them unbounded virtues." -Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.