“Sponsoring your shadow” is a term coined by the psychologist Stephen Gilligan. With luck, you learned to do this somewhat in childhood. My grandson couldn’t sit still when first in school. And as with all children of that age, he had no language or other sponsorship skills for feeling states (such as being tired, hungry, lonely, or angry). Over time he learned to recognize and "sponsor" his own feeling states, and he became "re-spons-ible." And he became even more re-spons-ible when he was able to understand, with his teachers and parents help, what “dysgraphia” meant and talk openly abo ..read more

The goal of meditation practice is to see beyond so-called “conventional reality” which we create through filters. Filters are necessary and important to living a meaningful, well-balanced life. However, the memories and beliefs which make up these filters cloud our ability to see and act from a spaciousness and freedom far beyond their limitations.   We develop constellations of memories and beliefs over time which create and solidify certain sub-personalities. Through our meditation practice we learn to open and close each filter, so we no longer experience constipation of thought, feel ..read more

Regardless of our past wounds or traumas, we can each tap into a quiet joy which is not of time or space; a joy which is just as present even in a year like the last one as it was when Buddha tapped into it more than 2500 years ago.   As a Zen teacher, my goal is to help you open up to this quiet joy, sometimes called “enlightenment.”  Buddha’s teaching about a path to do this has three simple parts: understanding/wisdom; and the two legs of ethical behavior and meditation.  We begin with our initial understanding that the small self is a component of a huge, interconnected web ..read more

As practitioners of meditation, our goal is to enable our chattering mind to slow down and sink into our hearts, so we are no longer imprisoned by a single point of view or feeling. I call this opening up into Heart-mind or Buddha Nature. Any time we are experiencing a di-lemma, we are caught between two thoughts, beliefs, or points of view. In tetralemma practice we first move beyond a single point of view to experience its opposite.  Then we embrace both, and finally, we let go of both.                   ..read more

During my years as a psychologist/counselor, I helped many people who were in distress both set boundaries and maintain them once they were set.  As a Zen teacher I help people move toward healthy boundarylessness, which means increased intimacy, a feel of connection with the world around them.  But this really can only happen when we establish and maintain good boundaries.      I began a serious meditation practice at a time when meditation was considered weird within mainstream society and by my family.  I had to continually set and reinforce my boundary with my ..read more

 As William Blake says, “In every cry of every Man, In every Infants cry of fear, In every voice: in every band, The mind-forg'd manacles I hear” and, as many of you know, he urged us to break out of these manacles, and clean the doors of perception, so we can see everything as it is, infinite.  Dogen gives us his advice about how to do this: “Examine walking backward and backward walking and investigate that walking forward and backward never stopped since before form arose.” Instead of thinking that you are a “stubborn person,” an “anxious person,” or “depressed person” or even an ..read more