Plumbing the Depths: Actualizing Realization in Everyday Life
Discover how examining the stories we retreat into can transform our practice into a seamless harmony of realization and everyday life. Explore the path to balance, courage, and equanimity in this inspiring reflection.
Saddle Up: Riding the Path of Practice
Sensei Michael Brunner reminds us that life demands action—whether it’s the work of bearing witness or the discipline of training. Standing still is not an option. Dive into this Early Morning Light reflection and discover the call to saddle up and ride!
Timeless Abundance: The Wine of This Moment
When we’re stuck in a mindset of scarcity, life moves too fast. There’s never enough time, and we feel like we’re drowning in the current. But when we step into the gap, time transforms. It slows down, opens up, and reveals its true nature. Suddenly, we have all the time we need—not to accomplish everything on some endless list, but to be fully present with what’s here.
Seeds of Sorrow, Harvest of Joy
Our mistakes are not deviations from the path; they are the path. In reflecting on his own misstep—an affair that caused immense pain—Sensei Michael shares how the process of facing it openly, guided by deep practice and the support of his teacher Roshi Diane Martin, brought profound transformation. Mistakes, when worked with instead of avoided, become Dharma gates, leading to growth and awakening.
Nothing Outside: Facing Life’s Challenges with Curiosity
To live this way, we have to do something that might seem counterintuitive: walk toward the things that challenge us. Look for those moments when you want to recoil, to retreat and regather your forces. Instead of retreating, step forward. Meet the challenge. Absorb it. Let it teach you. When you stop seeing it as outside, you’ll realize that you have all the resources of the vast universe at your disposal to transform that challenge into wisdom.
Carl Jung Meets Master Zuigan: The Dialogue Within
What happens when the worlds of Zen and psychology converge? In this engaging talk, Sensei Michael explores Mumonkan Case 12: Zuigan Calls Himself Master through the lens of Carl Jung's profound insights into the psyche. Discover how Zuigan's daily practice of calling out to the Master mirrors Jung's concept of individuation and the integration of fragmented identities.
Sōzan Shows Heidegger the Way
The clinging to roles, identities, and external validation acts as a barrier to authentic self-understanding. Heidegger called for Kehre, a radical turning. It requires confronting the truth of impermanence—what he called “being-towards-death.
The one-eyed dragon Isan spoke of isn’t mythical. It’s the clarity that arises when we stop seeing with the two eyes of duality—self and other, right and wrong. These two eyes bind us to judgment and striving. The one eye is the eye of wisdom, the eye that sees beyond. It’s the eye through which the universe looks back at you.
Seeing Through the Veil of Self-Deception
We possess an uncanny ability to hold two beliefs that don’t—can’t—reside together. Not only do we house them in separate corners of our minds, but we also deliberately keep their contradiction hidden, even from ourselves. Philosophers like Sartre called this phenomenon Bad Faith, describing it as a way of denying the truths of our own existence. But even that term falls short. Self-deception isn’t merely misplaced faith; it’s a deluded faith, fragmented by contradiction and incapable of seeing the whole.
Expanding Awareness, Discovering Self
As you expand your awareness, you’ll discover that there is no “outside” or “other.” The pull of the small self will fade, and you’ll realize that nothing lies beyond you—you are the whole, the boundless essence of life itself.
A Feather on the Wind
When we move through life so quickly, fixated on a distant goal, we interact with so little of what’s around us. We miss the richness of our lives, rushing past moments that could touch us deeply, if only we allowed them to. Instead of hardening ourselves and plummeting through life like a stone, what if we practiced living like a feather?