Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Zen Life of Buddha
    A Zen Life of Buddha
    A Zen Life of Buddha
    Ebook79 pages1 hour

    A Zen Life of Buddha

    By Rafe Martin

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Zen Buddhism begins with the Buddha's enlightenment. While the word, "enlightenment" suggests there is something you get and that once have it you are "enlightened," "intimacy" comes closer to the truth. We gain nothing. Rather, through attention to counting the breath, experiencing the breath, or putting our attention into a koan, we

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Sumeru Press
    Release dateMar 1, 2024
    ISBN9781998248018
    A Zen Life of Buddha
    Author

    Rafe Martin

    Rafe Jnan Martin, founding teacher of Endless Path Zendo, Rochester, New York, is a lay Zen teacher in the Harada-Yasutani koan line. A personal disciple of Roshi Philip Kapleau (Three Pillars of Zen) and the editor of Roshi Kapleau's final books, he also trained with Robert Aitken Roshi (Diamond Sangha) and, later, with Danan Henry Roshi, founder of the Zen Center of Denver, both a Kapleau lineage teacher and a Diamond Sangha Dharma Master. In 2009 Rafe received full lay ordination, in 2011 authorization to teach, and in 2016 Dharma Transmission as an independent Zen teacher.Rafe is also an award-winning author of more than twenty books and an internationally known storyteller whose work has been cited in Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, and USA Today. He is a recipient of the prestigious Empire State Award for the body of his work. His most recent books are Before Buddha Was Buddha: Learning from the Jataka Tales, (Wisdom Publications, 2017), The Buddha's Birth (Merlinwood Books, 2022) A Zen Life of Buddha (Sumeru 2022), and The Brave Little Parrot (Wisdom, 2023). He has spoken at Zen and Dharma Centers around the US and Canada, and his writings have appeared in Buddhadharma, Tricycle, Lion's Roar, The Sun, Parabola, Zen Bow, Inquiring Mind, as well as other noted publications.

    Read more from Rafe Martin

    Related to A Zen Life of Buddha

    Related ebooks

    Philosophy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Glimpses of Buddhanature

      Sep 20, 2023

      Glimpses of Buddhanature
      17 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How To Build A Better World

      Jan 23, 2024

      IN BECOMING GANDHI: My Experiment Living the Mahatma’s 6 Moral Truths in Immoral Times (Sounds True), author Perry Garfinkel sets out to live like Gandhi for three years. Garfinkel, a freelance journalist, worldwide traveler, and self-proclaimed “bon

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Do I Have Buddhanature?

      Mar 24, 2020

      Do I Have Buddhanature?
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Books In Brief

      Sep 17, 2024

      IN MEDITATION for Modern Madness (Wisdom Publications), the Seventh Dzogchen Rinpoche, Jigme Losel Wangpo, offers teachings that he feels have all too often been confined to Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. He brings the wisdom of Dzogchen into contempo

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Fully In Bloom

      Nov 21, 2023

      Fully In Bloom
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Heart Of A Buddha

      Nov 21, 2023

      UNSHAKEABLE: Trauma-Informed Mindfulness for Collective Awakening (Parallax) is a guide to cultivating stability of mind and resiliency. Author Jo-Ann Rosen is a mindfulness teacher and psychotherapist who worked for thirty years in marginalized comm

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Her Story

      Mar 23, 2021

      Her Story
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Epic Faith

      Jul 25, 2019

      Epic Faith
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Book Briefs

      May 7, 2019

      N 1940 IN NEPAL, Chittadhar Hrdaya was arrested for publishing poems in the Newari language, an act regarded as subversive by Nepal’s ruling Rana dynasty. During his subsequent five-year imprisonment, he wrote The Epic of the Buddha: His Life and Tea

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      It’s All Pure Dharma

      Jun 1, 2021

      WHEN I ARRIVED at Buddhadharma eight years ago, I was stepping between two worlds. For twelve years, I had been living in Japan, where I trained as a Soto Zen monk. Not all those years were in the monastery, but I was rarely far from it. So when I fi

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Book Briefs

      Nov 7, 2017

      Shozan Jack Haubner’s SINGLE WHITE MONK (Shambhala 2017) is self-deprecating, blunt, humorous, and profoundly troubling. Haubner was a close disciple of the Zen teacher Joshu Sasaki, whose reputation crumbled when his long history of sexually abusing

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Book Briefs

      Dec 7, 2021

      FIRST PUBLISHED in 2001 when the author was seventy-eight, Setouchi Jakucho’s memoir Places (Hawai’i) has finally been translated into English, by Liza Dalby. Setouchi, now ninety-nine, is perhaps Japan’s most famous Buddhist nun; before she was orda

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Buddhadharma On Books

      Jun 13, 2023

      FOR THE ANALYTICALLY minded who appreciate a systematic presentation of ideas, the Science and Philosophy in the Indian Buddhist Classics series (Wisdom), conceived by the Dalai Lama, compiled by a team of monastic scholars, and edited by Thupten Jin

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ride The Waves

      Mar 21, 2023

      Ride The Waves
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Shambhala Publications

      Jun 5, 2020

      Oxford University lecturer Sara Shaw presents perhaps the most complete overview of mindfulness, its Buddhist roots and evolution, and its variety across Buddhist traditions. There is something here for everyone and the reader is sure to walk away wi

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Book Briefs

      Jun 28, 2022

      AS A STUDENT and teacher of Zen, Joan Sutherland has spent her entire adult life with koans. That she has “loved and struggled” with koans for so long is evident in her lush and evocative Through Forests of Every Color: Awakening with Koans (Shambhal

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Refuge In The Storm

      May 23, 2023

      Refuge In The Storm
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Teachers You May Not Know But Should

      Nov 23, 2021

      Ven. Bhante Suhita Dharma taught through his good deeds. “EXPERIENCE IS the best teacher when it comes spiritual practice,” the late Ven. Bhante Suhita Dharma once said, reflecting on his own life. Born into the Jim Crow South, the racism he endured

      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Book Briefs

      Mar 8, 2022

      BUDDHADASA BHIKKHU (1906–1993), one of Thailand’s most revered monks of the twentieth century, wants us all to be problem solvers. In an edited series of his lectures recently published as Seeing with the Eye of Dhamma: The Comprehensive Teaching of

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Up-to-date Dharma

      Jul 19, 2022

      Up-to-date Dharma
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Learning Is the Path Forward

      Sep 27, 2022

      THERE IS NO END to learning. The Chinese philosopher Xunzi says that he once spent a whole day ruminating but that it was not as good as a moment’s learning. The best kind of learning gets us out of the head. The Buddhist monk and poet Kenko observed

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The How Of Happiness

      Nov 22, 2022

      The How Of Happiness
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Reviews

      Jan 21, 2020

      A Memoir By Rebecca Solnit Viking 2020; 256 pp., $26 (cloth) Each chapter of this memoir has the punch of a stand-alone essay, but taken as a whole they’re even more powerful. In Recollections of My Nonexistence, the famed writer (Men Explain Things

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      What Stories Do We Allow Ourselves to Hear?

      Dec 7, 2021

      MOST MORNINGS, I sit with a cup of coffee and read a portion of a Buddhist sutra before doing my practice. The first two I ever read this way were the Lotus Sutra and the Diamond Sutra, both of which are chock full of profound doctrine and vivid, eng

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      All Beings Liberating, Together, At Once

      Jun 5, 2020

      All Beings Liberating, Together, At Once
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Why Buddhanature Matters

      Sep 20, 2023

      Why Buddhanature Matters
      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Search For Light

      Jun 7, 2022

      The Search For Light
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Motherhood Is More Than a Metaphor

      Jun 1, 2021

      Motherhood Is More Than a Metaphor
      12 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Zen Life of Buddha

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      A Zen Life of Buddha - Rafe Martin

      Drawing on ancient myth, on Zen koans, and stories, as well as on over fifty years of formal Zen practice and more than ten years of Zen teaching, Roshi Rafe Martin reveals the historic/legendary life of the Buddha as our own actual, lived life. Using his skills as an award-winning author and storyteller, he organizes the life of the Buddha into five archetypal chapters: Birth, Leaving Home, Enlightenment, Teaching, and Death, revealing each to be an essential turning point on our own path to greater wisdom and compassion. The result is transformative, helping us to potentially live more consciously, skillfully, and gratefully – whatever comes.

      Praise for A Zen Life of Buddha

      Should be required reading for all Zen students. Rich in the insight and detail that can only emerge from years of dedicated Zen practice and teaching.

      Sunyana Graef Roshi,

      Dharma Heir of Roshi Philip Kapleau and Abbot of Vermont Zen Center

      I love this book, so deeply important for beginners and experienced practitioners alike! Taigen Henderson Roshi, Abbot of the Toronto Zen Centre

      It rescues the Buddha from the prison of unapproachable myth, revealing him to be utterly human, utterly you, utterly me. Short and eminently readable, it is the fruit of Martin Roshi’s half-century deep dive into Zen practice and teaching. Hoag Holmgren, author of No Better Place: A New Zen Primer

      Rafe Jnan Martin, founding teacher of Endless Path Zendo, Rochester, New York is a lay Zen teacher in the Harada-Yasutani koan line. He has spoken at Zen and Dharma Centers throughout the US and in Canada. His writings have appeared in such noted journals as Buddhadharma, Tricycle, Lion’s Roar, The Sun, Parabola, Zen Bow, and Enquiring Mind. He is also an award-winning author and storyteller whose work has been cited in Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, and USA Today and is a recipient of the Empire State Award for the body of his work.

      The Sumeru Press Inc.

      sumeru-books.com

      A Zen Life of Buddha

      Rafe Martin

      Published by

      The Sumeru Press Inc.

      PO Box 75, Manotick Main Post Office,

      Manotick, ON, Canada K4M 1A2

      Copyright © 2022 by Rafe Martin

      Cover painting: Moon Among the Clouds by Rafe Martin

      ISBN 978-1-896559-89-6

      ISBN 978-1-998248-01-8 (e book)

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transcribed in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher.

      LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

      Title: A Zen life of Buddha / Rafe Martin.

      Names: Martin, Rafe, 1946- author.

      Description: Includes bibliographical references.

      Identifiers: Canadiana 20220415935 | ISBN 9781896559896 (softcover)

      Subjects: LCSH: Gautama Buddha. | LCSH: Zen Buddhism.

      Classification: LCC BQ882 .M37 2022 | DDC 294.3/927092—dc23

      For more information about The Sumeru Press

      visit us at sumeru-books.com

      For the Quadruple Sangha –

      and for all our many guides along the Ancient Way

      Contents

      Introduction

      Birth

      Leaving Home

      Enlightenment

      Teaching

      Death

      About the Author

      Bibliography

      I would we were all of one mind, and one mind good; O, there were desolation of gaolers and gallowses! I speak against my present profit, but my wish hath a preferment in ’t.

      – Shakespeare, First Gaoler, Cymbeline

      Where man is not, nature is barren.

      – William Blake

      If you just know that flame is fire,

      You’ll find your rice has long been cooked.

      – Wu-men, Gateless Barrier, Case 7

      Introduction

      Roshi Philip Kapleau, author of the classic Three Pillars of Zen whose disciples my wife Rose and I became, used to say, Zen is rather simple. To practice it you need only one article of belief, i.e., that the Buddha was not a fool or a liar when upon his great enlightenment he spontaneously exclaimed, ‘Wonder of wonders! All beings are Buddha, fully endowed with wisdom and virtue.’

      The essence of Zen Buddhism begins here, with the ex-prince Siddhartha Gautama’s historic realization or enlightenment. Enlightenment suggests there is something you get and that once you’ve gotten it, you are enlightened, but the word intimacy may come closer to the truth. We gain nothing. We don’t get enlightened. Rather, through attention to counting the breath, experiencing the breath, or putting our attention into a koan, we become of less interest to ourselves and, in this losing is finding. The world steps in — trees, mountains, bugs, rivers, people — and we rediscover our original, undiminished intimacy with all things. No longer strangers to this earth, to others, or to ourselves, such intimacy has healing power.

      Around two thousand five hundred years ago, the Buddha revealed a path of fulfillment that unfolds where and as we are. This is the essence of the Buddha Way, of a Zen life of Buddha. To begin to walk this path, nothing more is needed than sincerity and a fundamental desire to see more clearly into who we ourselves are.

      With this little book I’ve aimed at clarifying the central role of the Buddha’s life in Zen practice, a path of practice that is becoming more Western each day. It is this foundation that makes Zen a spiritual path. The Buddha’s life is where mythos, ethics, and practice unite.

      This seems simple enough. However, Zen tradition itself adds an interesting complexity.

      Contemporary lay Zen teacher, Yamada Koun Roshi of Sanbo Zen, (heir to Yasutani Roshi who, with his teacher, Harada Sogaku Roshi, established the Harada-Yasutani koan line, so central to contemporary Western koan practice), wrote, in an

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1
      pFad - Phonifier reborn

      Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

      Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


      Alternative Proxies:

      Alternative Proxy

      pFad Proxy

      pFad v3 Proxy

      pFad v4 Proxy