Treeleaf Zendo - Treeleaf Community: Topics About Zen Practice

Sunday Sit with Washin - March 15th, 2026

Kotei — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 08:41:24 GMT

Hello everyone,

we are meeting again the coming weekend, coming together out of compassion for those suffering, our hope for peace and our mutual support throughout the year.

The sitting is anchored in Ukrainian time.
The beginning time will still shift an hour for you, if you are visiting from the US or another country that already changed to DST. It will be back to normal on March 29th.
Please double check with the calendar!

Led by Washin from Odessa, we'll be sitting for peace in the Ukraine and around the world this coming Sunday.

You can check with the Treeleaf Practice Calendar for your local time, under the listing Sunday Sit (Zazen for Peace):
https://www.treeleaf.org/practice-calendar/
We meet in the Treeleaf Scheduled Sitting Room:
https://www.treeleaf.org/zendo-ssr/
password if needed is << dogen >>

A livestream of the meeting can be found here:

The format of the sitting will be:

- Heart Sutra
- Zazen 40 minutes
- Verse of Atonement and the Four Vows

All are welcome. Please, join us! No prior experience is required - just follow along - come sit with us.

Gassho,
Kotei

Kannon fodder

Onsho — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 12:04:22 GMT

Through the many different lenses, sects and flavours of Buddhism, is Avalokiteshvara the source of all compassion? Would compassion exist without her? Is she commonly viewed as the method where our motivation to be compassionate, (us conscious of it or not), is born from? Is she seen as the divine catalyst that benevolence is created from? I'm curious what the global perspectives are.

Gassho
Onsho
satlah

Situations Vacant

michaelw — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 14:18:16 GMT

You don’t often see this sort of advert as the old saying goes enlightenment is not a career path.
Translated from French and just in case someone is looking for an opportunity.

Candidacy for guardian of the Temple of Caroux
Francesc, the current goalkeeper, comes down from the mountain after more than two years of samu at the Temple. The position became available, offering a monk or nun the opportunity to live in the heart of the Temple.

Please send us your application to the following address: leconseildesanciens@googlegroups.com

The temple aka Yujo Nyusanji is the main temple of Zen Deshimaru Buddhist Association. It is located at 850 meters on the plateau above the Orb valley in the Languedoc. Stunningly beautiful area the temple is an ancient Hameau with buildings fields and a lake. There is a road up and parking. Although remote there are sesshins over winter so not totally cut off.

Gassho
MichaelW

satlah

Guy Eugène Dubois: Just Sitting

Jundo — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 02:27:05 GMT

A translator name Guy Eugène Dubois posted these reflections elsewhere. Just lovely ...

~~~

Just Sitting

What do we actually mean by just sitting? At first glance it seems simple: sitting down, becoming still, doing nothing. Yet sitting is not merely a posture. It is an inner tone, a way of being present.

Sitting does not only mean sitting. It also includes walking, working, eating, speaking, and being silent. Not because everything is literally “sitting,” but because everything—when it is no longer taken up by desire, resistance, or confusion—can rest in the same simple clarity.

And what about “just”? It does not point to a technique. It points to the liberating absence of adding anything. “Just” means not wanting to become anything, not wanting to achieve anything, not wanting to fix this moment. It is a return to a fundamental simplicity in which life is no longer divided into “meditation” and “non-meditation,” into “sacred” and “ordinary,” into “path” and “goal.”

Here this simplicity touches Udāna 1.10. When the Buddha says:

❛ In the seen, only the seen. In the heard, only the heard. In the thought, only the thought. In the known, only the known.❜, he is not presenting a method, but opening a door.

For as soon as there is only seeing, without a seer, only hearing without a hearer, only knowing without a knower, the whole of existence becomes just sitting. Not because everything is still, but because nothing remains outside this moment.

Then the thought falls away that there is someone who meditates. No “I” that wants to move forward. No “I” that wants to go back. Only this. Simple. Immediate.

And then something arises by itself that cannot be forced: silence as non-grasping, simplicity as not adding anything, service as a gentle presence without claim. Not as an ideal, but as the natural expression of clear seeing.

Everything “sits.” Even the walking. Even the speaking. Even the silence. And when nothing is held onto, what remains is what has always been simple: in the seen only the seen—and in that “only,” a peace that is not made. Nibbāna.

ORIGINAL LINK

Treeleaf One Day Spring Retreat - April 4, 2026

Shujin — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 15:00:30 GMT

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Hey y’all,

I’m happy to announce that we'll be having a one day spring retreat on Saturday, April 4th of this year, to celebrate Hanamatsuri. The format for this retreat can be found here. Our hope is that this is a manageable schedule for everyone to join in full or in part, so that you'll also be able to have time with family or handle responsibilities during that day/weekend.

The topic for this year’s retreat is “Arousing and Maintaining the Mind of Awakening.” The talks will focus on the importance of bodhicitta and its inseparable connection to our practice.

On Hanamatsuri

Hanamatsuri traditionally takes place on 8 April in Japan, and is a dual celebration of the birth day of the Buddha, and the emergence and viewing of cherry blossoms which is an important part of Japanese culture. Hanamatsuri literally translates as Flower Festival. It is not unlike the Christian Easter in its combining of a religious event with nature's cycles.

Hanamatsuri corresponds to Vesak in South Asian Buddhist traditions as marking the birth of the Buddha, with this based on the lunar calendar and taking place on the full moon in April or May depending on the date.

We will also release some updated information from our Buddhist Family Holidays project in the coming weeks!

Gassho,
Shujin
st/lah

Sunday Sit with Washin - March 8th, 2026

Kotei — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 08:50:30 GMT

Hello everyone,

we are meeting again the coming weekend, coming together out of compassion for those suffering, our hope for peace and our mutual support throughout the year.

The sitting is anchored in Ukrainian time.
The beginning time might shift an hour for you, if you are visiting from the US or another country switching to DST this weekend!
Please double check with the calendar!

Led by Washin from Odessa, we'll be sitting for peace in the Ukraine and around the world this coming Sunday.

You can check with the Treeleaf Practice Calendar for your local time, under the listing Sunday Sit (Zazen for Peace):
https://www.treeleaf.org/practice-calendar/
We meet in the Treeleaf Scheduled Sitting Room:
https://www.treeleaf.org/zendo-ssr/
password if needed is << dogen >>

A livestream of the meeting can be found here:

The format of the sitting will be:

- Heart Sutra
- Zazen 40 minutes
- Verse of Atonement and the Four Vows

All are welcome. Please, join us! No prior experience is required - just follow along - come sit with us.

Gassho,
Kotei

Thoughts on Getting Swept Up in the Storm (and Sitting Anyway)

Ryūdō-Liúdào — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 04:51:11 GMT

The following is one of my personal little “discourses.” I write these mostly as reminders to myself — things I’ve picked up from teachers, books, friends, and a lot of long-dead folks who were wiser than I am.

I tend to frame them in a student–teacher format. The “teacher” voice isn’t me claiming anything lofty; it’s just my current understanding (and likely misunderstanding ) of what I’ve been taught and what I’ve fumbled my way through in practice.

So please take it as one practitioner thinking out loud. If it resonates, great. If it’s off the mark, I’m always open to being nudged back toward center.

Anyways, here goes!

Student:
How can we remain at peace when the world these days is so full of pain and suffering? It seems that now, more than ever, our world is in chaos. I feel full of fear and anxiety, even when I sit on the mat. What can we do about this?

Teacher:
You say the world is in chaos now.
Tell me… when exactly was it not?

Every generation believes it stands at the edge of collapse. Wars, plagues, revolutions, disasters… people in every century have said, “Surely this is the darkest time.” Yet here we are: still breathing, still sitting, still asking how to live with clarity.

This does not mean the suffering you perceive is unreal. It means the feeling of unprecedented crisis is itself a recurring human experience. When the mind encounters pain, it naturally magnifies it. That is part of its survival function.

Zhuangzi reminded us that the world is in constant transformation; turmoil and harmony endlessly alternate.
Dōgen taught that practice is not reserved for peaceful eras. It is precisely in unstable times that practice reveals its necessity.

So first, understand this: the world has always contained cruelty and kindness, confusion and wisdom, destruction and renewal. This is not new. It is the basic texture of samsaric existence.

You say you feel fear and anxiety even on the mat. Good. That means you are sitting with reality, not with an imaginary bubble of calm. Zazen is not a method to eliminate fear. It is the posture in which fear can be seen clearly without immediately becoming the master of your actions.

Fear is a sensation. Anxiety is a pattern of thought and bodily arousal. They arise from causes and conditions: news, uncertainty, empathy for suffering beings, personal insecurity. They are not enemies; they are signals. Yet they are not the whole of reality either.

Events are simply events.
We label them good or bad from a narrow perspective, with limited knowledge and a short time horizon. History repeatedly shows reversals: today’s disaster becomes tomorrow’s turning point; today’s triumph becomes tomorrow’s regret.

There is an old Chinese story about an old farmer and his family. He lives with his wife and teenage son out on the frontier, and they have a strong stallion that helps with the farmwork. One day, the stallion runs away. The neighbors all tell the farmer, “What bad luck!” Yet the farmer only replies, “Bad luck, good luck — who can say?”
A couple of days later, the horse returns, bringing a few wild mares with him. “What good luck!” the neighbors all say. “Good luck, bad luck — who can say?” he replies.
The next day, while attempting to tame one of the mares, the horse bucks and sends the son flying, breaking his leg when he lands. Once more, the neighbors cry, “What bad luck!” And our farmer once more replies, “Bad luck, good luck — who can say?”
Soon after, the army comes by, looking to conscript all the young, able-bodied lads. They take all the young men of the village, except the one with the broken leg.

“Good luck, bad luck — who can say?”

This story is not about passivity. It is about humility in the face of unfolding causes and conditions. Our judgments are provisional, not final.

When you say, “The world is ending,” you are reacting to a snapshot within a vast unfolding process. The mind freezes a single frame and declares a conclusion. But reality is not a photograph, it is an ongoing film.

Even in times of darkness, quiet acts of care continue: neighbors helping neighbors, strangers showing kindness, ordinary resilience persisting unnoticed. These rarely become headlines, yet they continue ceaselessly. Light gives birth to shadow, and shadow reveals the presence of light. They arise together.

To remain at peace does not mean becoming indifferent to suffering. It means not adding secondary suffering through catastrophic imagination and helpless rumination. Peace is the capacity to act where you can, grieve where appropriate, and rest where action is not possible; all without being internally shattered by every wave of world events.

So what can you do?

First, see clearly: the chaos you perceive is real, but it is not uniquely unprecedented, nor is it the whole of reality.

Second, recognize that anxiety on the cushion is not a failure of practice; it is the practice material itself. Sit with the fear as sensation, as thought, as tightening in the chest or belly. Let it arise, remain, and pass without turning it into a story about the future of the world.

Third, act locally and concretely. You cannot hold the entire globe in your nervous system without breaking it. But you can be kind to the person in front of you, make ethical choices, and support what reduces suffering in your immediate sphere. Vast compassion expresses itself through small, steady actions, not through global emotional overload.

The world has always burned in some places and blossomed in others.
If you wait for a perfectly peaceful world before being at peace, you will never begin.

Sit in the midst of the fire.
Notice the warmth, the fear, the breath.
In that very moment, the spark of light is already present.

Gasshō,
流道-Ryūdō-Liúdào
Satlah

Sitting while ill

Bob-Midwest — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 22:50:24 GMT

I fortunately am not ill very often, but doing Zazen with shivers, aches and congestion and cough has been very enlightening and a fortunate opportunity to really just let the sensations and commentary of the mind pass. Working with the approach of what if this were the end, no getting physically better. No experience is not a teaching.

bob
sat, lah

Sunday Sit with Washin - March 1st, 2026

Kotei — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 08:02:16 GMT

Hello everyone,

we are meeting again the coming weekend, coming together out of compassion for those suffering, our hope for peace and our mutual support throughout the year.

Led by Washin from Odessa, we'll be sitting for peace in the Ukraine and around the world this coming Sunday.

You can check with the Treeleaf Practice Calendar for your local time, under the listing Sunday Sit (Zazen for Peace):
https://www.treeleaf.org/practice-calendar/
We meet in the Treeleaf Scheduled Sitting Room:
https://www.treeleaf.org/zendo-ssr/
password if needed is << dogen >>

A livestream of the meeting can be found here:

The format of the sitting will be:

- Heart Sutra
- Zazen 40 minutes
- Verse of Atonement and the Four Vows

All are welcome. Please, join us! No prior experience is required - just follow along - come sit with us.

Gassho,
Kotei

Please Join our Friday Zazenkai for a little Zen Raving ...

Jundo — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 05:15:59 GMT

Our Friday Zazenkai ...
.

February 20-21st Treeleaf Weekly Zazenkai: Zen Life as Music & Dance

https://forum.treeleaf.org/forum/tre...as-music-dance

... and Heart Sutra recital will feature a club version by Japanese DJ Utsu-P ... and AI "vocaloid" Hatsune Miku ... Please come rave (not rage), sway and swing and sit if you can ...

Utsu-P (鬱P) (born December 1, 1990) is a Japanese musician. He is best known for his work using VOCALOID voice synthesis software. In addition, Utsu-P has performed as a DJ and maintained two further musical projects; the metalcore band OHAYOGOZAIMAS, and the alternative idol group Zsasz.

LINK and LINK

Hatsune Miku (Japanese: 初音ミク, [hatsɯne miꜜkɯ]), officially code-named CV01, is a Vocaloid software voicebank developed by Crypton Future Media ... and has performed at live virtual concerts onstage as an animated holographic projection (rear-cast projection on a specially coated glass screen). Miku uses Yamaha Corporation's Vocaloid 2, Vocaloid 3, and Vocaloid 4 singing synthesizing technologies, alongside Crypton Future Media's Piapro Studio, a standalone singing synthesizer editor. She was the second Vocaloid sold using the Vocaloid 2 engine and the first Japanese Vocaloid to use the Japanese version of the 2 engine. Her voice is based on samples taken from Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita. The name of the character comes from merging the Japanese words for first (初, hatsu), sound (音, ne), and future (ミク, miku), thus meaning "the first sound of the future" ...

Utsu-P's Heart Sutra (Hannya Shingyo) which we will move to today ...
.

Gassho, J
stlah

The "Disabled/Differently-Abled" Ancestors Recitation

Jundo — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 04:06:23 GMT

UPDATE: Based on discussion of impacted peoples' varied feelings about terms, and current consensus and varied viewpoints among persons with disabilities, we have changed to title of our Ceremony to the "Disabled/Differently-Abled" Ancestors Recitation.

A few years ago, our Treeleaf Sangha developed a recitation for our "Disabled/Differently-Abled" Ancestors, those in centuries past who practiced with obstacles, or for whom doors were closed, due to physical and mental disabilities. We searched the histories and found the names of several representative persons, although there are surely countless more whose names are unknown because hidden to history. It is now a part of our annual "Rohatsu" Retreat each December.

We are hoping that other Zen and Buddhist Sangha will consider to adapt this ceremony as part of their own Ancestor recitations, much as we now often recite for our Women Ancestors and, in our Sangha, our "Same, yet Diverse" Ancestors of many identities who often met difficulty and misunderstandings in the past for who they where. So far, it seems that Treeleaf remains unique in this regard.

We just created a new video demonstrating and explaining the recitation. The ceremony begins at the 4 minute mark, and is followed by "Reclining Zazen," where we ask all our Sangha members, abled and not, to sit or recline Zazen together in support of those who must. There are subtitles on Youtube for those who need.
.

This is part of our Monastery of Open Doors program at Treeleaf, opening opportunities for Ordination and Priest Training to many who, due to health or other major life obstacles, find the normal paths to Ordination barred. (https://www.opendoorsmonastery.org/)
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image.png

Gassho, Jundo
stlah

Sunday Sit with Washin - February 22nd, 2026

Kotei — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 08:32:45 GMT

Zazen and driving

Ryumon — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 10:55:19 GMT

This is from the recent book by Kosho Uchiyama, The Sound that Perceives the World:

”To use an example closer to home, it is dangerous to drive a car when you're preoccupied or upset. Also, drunk driving or falling asleep at the wheel is perilous. Don't drive like this but drive while first letting go of the hand of thought; you can't fall asleep, but you need to become fully awake, take in the scene moment by moment; all the places you come across are all the selt, driving is at hand, flowing past. As long as you drive past these scenes, just as they are passing by you, if you take all of this as the self, you will drive safely. This is seeing. That is, "seeing the sounds of the world" is the essential attitude you should take when safely "driving" your life.”

I think this metaphor of driving, seeing things pass you by but not grasping them, is an excellent metaphor for doing zazen.

Gassho, Ryūmon (Kirk) Sat Lah

Uchiyama on takuhatsu (begging)

Ryumon — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 15:05:29 GMT

I came across this essay today by Uchiyama Roshi:

https://www.lionsroar.com/laughter-t...-a-zen-beggar/

Gassho, Ryūmon (Kirk) Sat Lah

About keeping "One mind"

Gyoshin — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 02:03:15 GMT

Hey everyone!
The Rinzai lineage (especially in Korea and China) puts a strong emphasis on "always keeping One mind", what I suppose Nishijima Roshi called "keeping the balanced state". The Linji tradition has techniques such as the 'hua tou/hwadu' that helps them in keeping this One mind through the cultivation of the so-called 'Great Doubt', but in our Soto tradition how do we keep that state outside seated meditation? I think Tenzo Kyokun suggests that in everything we do we should keep the same mental posture that we manifest in zazen, but it is a little bit confusing. Any tips, suggestions or practical advice?
Thank you

Gassho

sat/LaH