Stoep Zen

When we come into ourselves, we are naturally awake and the world naturally meets us. So selfless, so simple.

Compassion in Buddhism is not cute; it is grounded in Emptiness, in Taoism it is grounded in Tao, ordinariness. And both of these are marked by a fundamental unfathomable interconnectedness.

Whether we are on formal retreat or out in the everyday world, our practice continues. We pay attention, whatever we are doing and whomever we are with. We honour our inherent relatedness. This is where our practice is tested, refined, enjoyed and deepened.

We come to Zen through the teachings of the tradition. The brilliance of the teachings is that they have a self-destruct button. We are asked to leave the house of explanation and go into the fresh air. There we can find the Way of Attention and Connection. Very clear. Complete faithfulness to Just This.

In a world awash with information, disinformation, misinformation, debates, opinions, what can we truly rely on? This question points us back to our Zen practice itself, towards our learning to return to the roots of our unassailable experience.

Our practice is not about achieving any particular experience or state of mind; it is about coming to our cushions with nothing beyond our willingness to turn up and sit down. In this way we honour the purity and humility of this Way.

Beyond heroism and psychodrama lies the fundamental reality of interconnection. We take this as the foundation and focus of our practice as Poplar Grove Zendo.

Zen practice reminds us how natural it is to move beyond the self of judgement into the selflessness of true connection.

When heatbreak appears, boundless compassion arises instantly.

Sometimes my ancestors of yesterday are the villains of today. How do I go beyond judgement, to honour them in the fullness of their flawed humanity and include them in my life?

If we can be clear and bright on a mountaintop as well as in the city, the Way is also clear and bright.

Guided meditation 1 December 2024, after Dharma Talk : Awakeness as our natural condition.

We are naturally awakened, we just have to open our eyes. Then our attachment self falls away by itself.

Accompanying the Dharma talk "Democratizing the Dharma

."

The original Buddhist refuges in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha can be expanded to include our suffering-self, our practice self, our enlightenment-self, and every blade of grass.

Zen is not an elite sport. It is not spiritual apartheid. It is for everyone who is willing to tune into this world and hear its song.

In this talk Antony Osho teaches that our Zen practice is essentially about finding our connection to the earth beneath our feet. It is here that we detect the health and distress of our environment and it is from here that we step back into the world with healing hands.

In this talk, Antony Osho looks at how the natural faculty of attention is hijacked by the self and how Zen practice works to rediscover attention in the service of enlightenment, the kind of attention that connects us with the world. A friend's haiku and the discovery of bushman rock engravings are part of the story.

In this talk, Antony Osho talks about our modern relationship with the Buddha and reads a piece of writing about the Buddha appearing in a hospital ward.

Zazen can not be mastered by the practising self. It can only be enfolded in the Dharma of Infinite Connection. When the meditating self is resolved in this way, it becomes the expression of our interconnectedness.

When we meet with others, we bring some kind of judgement, complication and confusion with us. This is part of our life as self. But everything becomes very simple when we drop everything and step into the meeting with only pure presence. This is part of our life as Dharma itself, as the radical acceptance of What Is.

People ask how to deal with environmental problems and climate change. In Zen we practice on this very earth where we sit. That is where we begin and where we end. And our environmental repsonses come from this.

Instead of seeing Zen as a training of the mind, it is helpful to consider it as essentially the practice of embodiment - to begin in the body, with its particular intelligence, memory and straighforwardness.

Our practice is not about finding the right words. It is finding freedom in our life, then the words will shine by themselves.

Even when we face a situation where we long to help but cannot, our practice remains the same - to take that helplessness into our life and allow it to transform us. Then, on the day we are able to help, we can.

People often express their helplessness at not being able to help the suffering in the conflicts raging around the world. This is one response from the clarity and purity of our original compassion.

We all find ourselves in a particular landscape and it is here we live, as part of it and with respect and gratitude.

The old texts say life is suffering, that the world is burning, that the world is in trauma. Our practice is not to discuss the merits of this statement but to take the next step, to make it real. Insofar as there is suffering, how will I respond? In the same way, other texts say life is beautiful; how will I respond? Then Zen goes beyond slogans and comes to life.

We practice Zen to make our life real, not to fit in with any words or scriptures. This radical non-attachment gives us wings and allows us the freedom to live, play and die without obstruction.

In this talk Antony Osho talks about attention as a natural human faculty that works efficiently, flexibly and full-bodiedly when we let it.

Our fundamental reality is one of selfless connection to this vast flow of life, death and transformation - early Bushmen poems from the Karoo illustrate this beautifully. But we live as if we are disconnected and the suffering that arises from this brings us to spiritual practice.

In this Dharma talk Antony Osho looks at a natural Zen practice that is an expression of our deep connectedness to the world, rather than a practice that expresses only our need, ambition or anxiety.

In this talk, Antony Osho looks at taking refuge as a gesture of connectedness with this life.

This practice is not just about finding the jewel in the world of form but of living the world of form as the jewel itself.

Antony Osho looks at our willingness to go to hell for others, through the koan 'Langzhong's Hell'.

There are many styles and forms of Zen practice but the essential characteristic of them all is that they grant us the fullness of a life beyond the self.

At  Poplar Grove Zendo we take refuge daily in Buddha Dharma and Sangha.  Sangha is our community, which is every person, thing, event or process  in our life - including our precious environment. We commit ourselves to  taking the world as friend, to looking after it as it looks after us.

Trauma and suffering accompany attachment to the activity of me-self. This also perpetuates the suffering and conceals our true nature. The Dharma teaches that only our authentic self can be the source of true healing and the Zen way is to find and make real that boundless life.

First we find the mind that is clear like a mirror, then we take a step into that clear world on our own two feet. 

Teachings that are helpful for the suffering self become beautiful when seen from the complete world - and then they disappear.

Thinking  about Dharma teachings can make our practice complicated and unreal.  Complicatedness is a neon sign telling us to look at things differently.  This is one part of koan work - taking the language of self and  translating it into the language of embodiment.

"We sometimes find  that what we call our spiritual path has become yet another strategy  for the ego, a tactic to avoid one part of our life and grasp another,  to escape suffering and find enlightenment. We remain divided.
Seeing this is wonderful. For, in truth, we are not dealing with freedom from sufferin...

The  image of a surfer riding a wave is a common one in Zen. But true wave  practice is not just the riding of the wave; it is also about falling  off, about paddling out, about failing and being cold and wet. The  purity of this never-give-up mind is the heart of a Zen life.

Zen is not an elite hobby for those who 'get it.' The Great Way embraces  both clarity and confusion, moments of awakeness as well as times of  selfless perseverance and commitment.

Zen is not just about great figures who 'got it'; it's really about everyone else.

This guided meditation follows on from the dharma talk on the true power of Zazen.

In this talk, Antony Osho looks at the real nature of zazen as well as the kind of teachings and instructions that support it.

Here Antony Osho talks about how we limit the path according to our own image; how the Way remains wide despite our tendency to narrow it down; and how we need to set a deep direction in our practice that includes both our self-projects and the infinite breadth of the Way.

We spend so much energy on being useful, we forget the beauty of uselessness and the wonder of going beyond both.

Zen as a response to suffering in a world of emptiness and a poem in memory of Archbishop Tutu. 

In  this talk, Antony Osho looks at the Taoist inspiration behind Ch’an and  Zen and asks whether it may point towards a practice that is  particularly at home in southern Africa.

In  this talk, Antony Osho looks at the aliveness that arises naturally  when we open ourselves to grief, and what this means for our Zen  practice.

When  we embrace every part of our experience, we have a chance to find a wider perspective and, in so doing, to step into a life of intimacy from  which wisdom and compassion can arise naturally.

This talk looks at layperson Vimalakirti’s ‘I am sick because the world  is sick’ and what this gesture offers those living a non-monastic life.

An exploration of the movement in our lives from impasse into the light.

After a week of riots and violence in South Africa, the nation realised that its heart had been broken. This is a Dharma talk about those events.

This talk looks at koan 43 of the Blue Cliff Record (Dongshan’s Hot and Cold) and the practice of Zazen as traditional Zen practices that enable us to meet our world as it is.

This talk is an introduction to the Stoep Zen lineage and practice style at Poplar Grove Zendo as seen through the lens of the traditional Three Refuges of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.