Christopher Keevil

How did that orb
Glorious, mysterious
Get such beauty

Painting the hemlock
Beyond my window
With nighttime colors

Soaring wide
In this precious moment
This gift of

The whole cosmos
With its kind embrace
Brings me here

Profound thankfulness
For being alive
Amid such riches

Thank you, Jamie. That’s a good quote, and an important reminder. As my Zen teacher Bo Mun says, the pace of our own development and change is often frustratingly glacial. So sangha and good friends on the path are really helpful.
🙏

So see this fleeting world
A star at dawn
A bubble in a stream
A flash of lightning
In a summer cloud
A flickering lamp
A phantom and a dream

—The Diamond Sutra

I’ve often wondered if the Buddha illuminated the path to awakening 2500 years ago why it’s still so hard for us humans to wake up.

With all that time, why didn’t the human race figure it out?

I’m interested in your response to this question.

#Zen 🙏

The many beings are numberless
I vow to save them
Greed, hatred, and ignorance rise endlessly
I vow to abandon them
Dharma gates are countless
I vow to awake to them
Buddha’s way is unsurpassed
I vow to embody it fully

🙏 #Zen

Jiko
Whole self
How to live
All in
Engaged
Invested
Open-hearted
Exchanging self
For other
You are me
I am you
Enacting from within
Aware of all

🙏 #Zen

What is it
Really
A cat
Stalking in the grass
A nest of herons
A water buffalo
Coming up for air
Thunderheads
Approach
And I am drenched
Clean
Until
The next time
My chain is pulled
The sun
Also rises

When teaching Zen, say less. There’s no need to convince anyone of anything. We have the practice, and a deep lineage tradition. Come from your heart, and your direct experience. The rest will take care of itself.
— Guidance on teaching from my teacher Bo Mun

#Zen 🙏

“Exchange self and other”
“We’re in this together”
“It’s a deep democracy”
“There’s no need to force feed the Christmas goose”
“Trust emergence”

—Sayings of my teacher Zen Master Bo Mun

#Zen 🙏🪷🧘‍♂️

My teacher’s teacher would say, “Just don’t make anything.”

Dogen says, “Refraining from.”

Rather than observing oneself from the outside, we jump wholly into life

Just this. Moment by moment.

🙏 #Zen

Impermanence
Is happening
Everywhere
In everything

Thoughts
Come and go
Food is
Digested

Sound
Light
And even matter
Are merely vibrations

How
To live
In this wild
Impermanence?

I too
Am a process
A host of vibrations
Nothing fixed

Soaring
Tumbling
Through
Life

🙏 #Zen

Enlightenment
Can happen
To anyone

Not that
There is “someone”
Who gets enlightened

We are a process
Like all creation
There is no static being

Entering this process
Wholly and wholeheartedly
Enlightenment is already there

Welcome
Peace and
Joy

🙏 #Zen

What if I could encourage you to see the present moment with great simplicity and clarity. Just this. In truth, it’s what the Buddha was talking about.

🙏 #Zen

Beautiful! 🙏

Offer people the gift of attention. We all yearn to be genuinely noticed, to be held in another’s awareness.

Nonjudgmental present awareness arises in meditation and is a gift we can give to others.

🙏 #Zen

Offer people the gift of attention. We all yearn to be genuinely noticed, to be held in another’s awareness.

Nonjudgmental present awareness arises in meditation and is a gift we can give to others.

🙏 #Zen

What is it if nothing seems to have any meaning anymore?

There is meaning in no meaning.

Or, the concept of “meaning” has no intrinsic meaning.

Rather, care for those around me. Admit when I have done wrong. The outcome is not up to me.

🙏 #Zen

Thank you, @jack111111111111.bsky.social

Realizing
That I am interconnected
With everything else
With everyone else

Anger and frustration
With another
Are anger and frustration
That accrue back to me

Loving kindness
Towards another
Is loving kindness
That accrues back to me

🙏 #Zen

I do not exist
I do not not exist
Existence is a figment
A fiction of convenience
Every thing is a process
There are no fixed entities

Some things change
Very fast
Some things change
Very slow
A gamelan of cycles
Mysterious and uncertain

But love is here
A prayer
A benediction

In sharing the dharma
In a teaching capacity
No need fret
Feel puffed up
Or scared

Let the dharma
Do itself
You are only
A mouthpiece
To invite each of us
To meet our true selves

—From my teacher Bo Mun

All blessings
All appreciation
Maha prajna paramita
(Great unexcelled wisdom)

All is one
One is all
One is one
All is all

No words
Can express it
All words
Come from it

This is this
This is only this
Only this is reality
Reality is a concept

Shaking hands
With you!
🙏 ❤️

A lovely dinner
With a dear friend
Yesterday evening

When there is genuine love
And a true spirit
How can AI touch this

Let me not forget
In the candy shop of technology
Where my true origins are

🙏

Some days I am well
Some days I am struggling

Some days gifts are given
Some days gifts are taken away

And so my teacher says
Life and death sleep in the same bed

🙏 #Zen

Artificial intelligence cannot replace one’s own direct experience of this present moment, and using that awareness to enact one’s true self in daily life.

Maha prajna paramita

🙏

Tall,
Taller than
The talisman
Above the back door.

And glorious—
Such golden eyebrows.
Taking my hand
We ride the foam.

But oh!
Pain. Gripping
Knees, hips.
And mental anguish

Festooned
On every ornament.
How could
It be otherwise?

(Our #Zen retreat)

Today, sitting for a #Zen retreat in Huntsville, Alabama, led by my dear friend Bodhin at the Green Mountain Zen Center.

Such gratitude and appreciation to join with other practitioners dedicated to spiritual investigation.

www.gmzc.us

🙏 🧘‍♂️ 🪷

It takes great effort to overcome our conceptual and discursive mind road. It’s a misnomer that meditation is just sitting down and getting blissed out. Take it up with energy, step through the ring of fire, enter wide open clarity, and walk the road of compassion.

🙏 #Zen

When I face troubles, I’ve learned not to run away, but to get close in. Like when a telephone pole is first installed before being attached with cables. If it starts to topple, my intention would be to run like hell. But the inexperienced guy says, stand close to the base.

1. Meditation seems like a waste of time. It feels annoying to have to do it. I don’t want to let go of my ego. I don’t want to face the truth of this one moment

2. Engaging in meditation, wholeheartedly, deeply, is a most remarkable and beautiful thing

Both are true

🙏 #Zen