Question

I admire you to have known how to create a community, even if you did not want it, even if your believers came like the butterflies attracted by flame. I admire you even more if you wanted it. But, I ask it to you, this community life, this life where everything is to be experimented, but within the community, how to know that it is not a life locked up? Because this chick who wants a baby, who has a profession, is she lost? To go to you to think that it is bad faith: you have never recommended not to make a baby! You have never recommended to have no profession!! You have never obliged your disciples to come to snuggle up like sheeps in the very warm sheepfold!!! But CONCRETELY? How can we reconcile a profession, a baby, a summer camp, the camp of each season?

Answer from Master Kosen

In old times, Zen was reserved exclusively to the monks who did not have the right to marry nor to have a civil life. Master Kodo Sawaki wanted it differently and started to teach in the universities and with laics of all kinds (actors, geishas...). He even had as a disciple, after the war, a Minister of Finances who today is an eminent Zen Master in Japan. It was for Zen a true revolution. Master Deshimaru followed his example and transmitted this teaching to laic French and Europeans. Myself, I am the example of my Master and must face the difficulties that it holds but, in my opinion: How enriching for Zen and how enriching for society!

Mondo On the same theme : Everyday life

Goals

We are advised to practice zen without any goal, since it is the path, the process and practice themselves that should be the center and it is through them that we attain our goal. Is it the same in life at large? Should I abandon my goals in life and concentrate on what life gives me?
...

Daily living

How do we live a spiritual life with so much dysfunction around us? I feel it is much like my practice. Sitting without wanting an outcome but wanting an outcome none the less
...

Burned out

I started practicing Buddhism more than ten years ago, I did retreats, etc., but my life is just as miserable as before, or even more. I have lost my faith in chanting mantras or sitting because it had not made me any happier or wiser. I feel old and kind of burned out, I do not feel the slightest inspiration to sit zazen, chant mantras or ...

escape?

Dear Master!I`m writing from Norway, where I got back 3 times to take a job, try myself and get to know myself. i feel the same all the time, I can`t do it, but insist on it to fullfit my dream and attain the knowlidges and find myself even if I`m alone and am among uknown people. If I feel the pain in my stomach in hara it means i have to ...





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