It is upon us to begin the work; It is not upon us to complete it. – Talmud Zen work begins with samu 作務. Samu is physical and sometimes intellectual labor done in the spirit of mushotoku, with no thought of personal profit, without complaint or compensation, for the benefit of the sangha. It is a form of fuse (or dana, a donation freely offered).  But the gift of samu is not limited to working for the sangha, just as the sangha is not limited to the people you practice with in the dojo. Yes, samu can be cleaning the dojo, or building a temple, or working in the office. But like other asp ..read more

Richard Reishin Collins Here’s a lighthearted poem of mine, “The Zen Monk to His Designer Dog,” published in Alien Buddha Zine 61 (April 2024). In this dramatic monologue in the mode of Robert Browning, the monk speaks directly to his canine companion and addresses (however obliquely) Joshu’s famous koan from The Gateless Gate (Mumonkan) about whether a dog has buddha nature.  THE ZEN MONK TO HIS DESIGNER DOG I speak metaphorically of course but you have the eyes of a philosopher with a fluffy face. There was a time when I would only cuddle cats, but there was always something missing ..read more

Richard Collins Just over a year ago I attended my elder brother’s funeral on the Oregon coast. A few days later my wife and I took an early-morning hike down a steep cleft in the rocks just off the coast highway. At the bottom of the trail the Pacific Ocean tirelessly batters the stone palisades of the cove aptly called Devil’s Churn. On the way back, I glanced up to see the sun rising over the ridge, tangled in a tall pine which scattered its cold white rays like the spread fingers of a searchlight.  Moments like this don’t come that often, and being lucky enough to capture them in a ph ..read more

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Richard Reishin Collins Spring “Cicada” Sesshin, 24-26 May 2024 Stone Nest Dojo, Sewanee The Spring Sesshin at Stone Nest Dojo of Sewanee Zen took place near the end of May, with a small group of practitioners, some who had practiced some ten or twenty years, some fewer, and one who had never practiced zazen at all. Over the course of three days of intimate and intense practice, sitting, working, and eating together, the Abbot gave a series of kusen (talks during zazen) on Sekito’s “Song of the Grass-Roof Hut.” This is a transcription of the talks that were recorded and a reconstruction of th ..read more

Richard Reishin Collins Spring “Cicada” Sesshin, 24-26 May 2024 Stone Nest Dojo, Sewanee The Spring Sesshin at Stone Nest Dojo of Sewanee Zen took place near the end of May, with a small group of practitioners, some who had practiced some ten or twenty years, some fewer, and one who had never practiced zazen at all. Over the course of three days of intimate and intense practice, sitting, working, and eating together, the Abbot gave a series of kusen (talks during zazen) on Sekito’s “Song of the Grass-Roof Hut.” This is a transcription of the talks that were recorded and a reconstruction of th ..read more

Richard Reishin Collins, Abbot Kusen, Stone Nest Dojo, 19 May 2024 Yesterday, as I was reading in my study, I heard a thump against the glass of the outside doors. When I looked to see what had caused the noise, I saw a bird twitching on the bricks, but it didn’t twitch for long. It was a yellow-billed cuckoo, its long tail-feathers beautifully dappled, as though a painter had taken pains with each stroke. It was still warm with recent life and pliant, draped across my palm, head hanging down, and its white breast was plush and soft and still, its eyes black as glass beads and dead. Sometim ..read more

Zen poetry comes in many forms. There are the essential ancient wisdom poems by masters, like the Shodoka, the Shinjinmei, and the Hokyo Zanmai. There are koan poems and poems that comment on koans. There are poetry contests, like the one described in the Platform Sutra. There are satori poems and death poems. There are philosophical waka and lightbulb haiku. What they all have in common is that they give “a glimpse of it.” Early on in my Zen practice I published a series of 52 poems, one for each week of that first year of practice, that became the series Bodhidharma’s Eyelids, published in t ..read more

A talk given at Stone Nest Dojo by Richard Collins, 28 May 2023 An integer is a positive natural number or a negative number, with no fractional part, and includes zero. One thing that we see in the Zen masters whom we read about from long ago is that they had integrity. This doesn’t mean that they were perfect, or morally upright, certainly not confined by some rigid ethical code. On the contrary. It means that they were wholly themselves, authentic, vivid, unique, unpredictable, possibly eccentric.  The root of the word integrity is integer, from the Latin, which means “intact,” who ..read more

A talk given at the sesshin, 13 May 2023, New Orleans Zen Temple, by Richard Reishin Collins, Abbot Sometimes we have to be a sangha of one. We hear all the time about the Three Treasures: Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. These can be very abstract terms, however, so I always encourage you to nail those down to concrete, recognizable examples in your life, anchoring these abstractions in your experience. For example: Buddha is the posture; Dharma is breathing; Sangha, attitude of mind. We can find buddhas everywhere, all around us, if we just pay attention. It doesn’t have to be something on an alta ..read more