Teisho Today Archives
Welcome to the Teisho Today archives, where we present our most recent Daily Zen Journals as audio files for your enjoyment. Over time, we aim to have the entire library of journals available in this format; however, this is a work in progress, as the first journal was released in 1998, and this is now 2025!
Join us on this journey as Daily Zen evolves and grows into the present moment, heading into our 25th year.
The Teishos are also available wherever you get your podcasts.
Great Enlightenment – Part 3
Do not think, as most people do, that if one has Great Enlightenment and becomes a buddha, you are different from ordinary people, or that Great Enlightenment causes Bodhisattvas to return to the world and try to save others.
The True Form of the Ground of Original Nature
The Ground of Original Nature is not in the body-mind, nor is it outside of the body-mind. It is not correct to say that the entire body-mind constitutes the place of Original Nature.
Practice Instructions
Empty and desireless, cold and thin, simple and genuine, this is how to strike down and fold up the remaining habits of many lives. When the stains from old habits are exhausted, the original light appears, blazing through your skull, not admitting any other matters.
Platform Sutra – Part 2
Good friends, the Dharma isn’t direct or indirect. It’s people who are sharp or dull. For those who are deluded, there is indirect persuasion. For those who are aware, there is direct cultivation: know your mind and see your nature. For those who are aware, there is basically no separation. For those who aren’t aware, there are infinite kalpas on the Wheel of Rebirth.
Independence
What do you people come to me for? Each individual should lead life autonomously—don’t listen to what other people say. An ancient declared, “I knew how to lead life by the time I was eighteen.” You people must learn to live independently.
A Boatload of Moonlight
The early sages lived with utmost frugality, and the ancient worthies overcame hardships and lived austerely. They purified their will in this, forgetting food and sleep. They studied with total concentration and accurate focus, seeking true realization.
A Single Handful
There aren’t that many fundamental, or root, principles of Dhamma. The Buddha said that his teaching is “a single handful.” A passage in the Samyutta-nikaya make this clear.
Shodoka – Song of Enlightenment
Do you see that Zen student? He has forgotten what he has learned, yet he practices easily and freely what he has learned and also what he should learn. He lives in equanimity, calmly and contentedly. He is free of all care, yet he acts naturally and reasonably.
The Mirror of Zen – Part 2
The tradition regarding the Buddha’s words holds that he taught his disciples for forty-nine years. This tradition is sometimes viewed with regard to five kinds of teaching: the teachings that lead to good rebirth in human or celestial form; the Hinayana teaching; the Mahayana teaching; the teaching of Sudden Enlightenment; and the complete teaching on the Bodhisattva Way.
Awakening
When I was a young man, at the beginning of my life, I looked at nature and saw that all things are subject to decay and death and thus to sorrow. The thought came to me that I myself was of such a nature.
Records of the Source Mirror – Part 2
When Buddhas realize the mind-essence it is called complete enlightenment. When bodhisattvas cultivate it, it is known as the practice of the six perfections. Transformed by “ocean wisdom” it becomes water. Sought after by good friends, it becomes a treasure that is granted as one pleases.
Convention and Liberation
The things of this world are merely conventions of our own making. Having established them we get lost in them and refuse to let go, clinging to our personal views and opinions. This clinging never ends as it is samsara flowing endlessly on. It has no completion.
Delusion and Zazen – Part 2
In the zazen posture we are able to calm down, and our mental excitability diminishes. It is by nature a posture in which it is impossible to think continuously about the same thing, and the fictions we set up in our heads dissolve.
Delusion and Zazen
The zazen taught in Zen Buddhism is the actualization of the Middle Way that is at the very quick of life; it is life as life—that is, life as interdependence. Zazen enables life to be life by letting it be.
Interdependence and the Middle Way
To look more deeply into the Buddhist notion of life, we have to take up the teachings of interdependence and the Middle Way. Buddhist teachings explain self as life, and they explain the vivid world self lives in as interdependence, or the Middle Way.
Search for the Pearl
When Buddhism spread to China, the Chinese of those days were intelligent and clever enough to accept it. Eventually, there arose teachings such as those of Hui neng and Huang Po, which explained mind, Dhamma, Buddha, the Way, and voidness in just a few words so that people could understand.
The Four Great Barriers
At some point, after diligent practice, you begin to experience things beyond the simple tranquility that came easily in the early stages. You should know that the path that lies ahead is the same path traveled by the Buddhas and bodhisattvas, and therefore presents unlimited potential for liberation.
“No Mind” Is Buddha
What exactly is this No Mind we are talking about? Let’s use a mirror as an analogy, since the mirror is often used in Buddhism when explaining fundamental Mind, fundamental nature, or original face.
West Evening Mountain Talk – Part 6
‘The truth can be attained neither by words or by silence.’ The Patriarchs and the descendants of Bodhidharma are not supposed to rely on words and letters. Is that supposed to mean that silence is to be preferred and words are to be avoided? On the contrary, the one thing they want is for students to see that the real truth lies neither in words nor in silence.
Reaching the Fundamental Ground
Since the fundamental ground is neither a feature of the world nor a transmundane phenomenon, many people who want to practice Zen wonder how it can be reached. This question itself, however, indicates a failure to digest the implications of the term fundamental.
Mind is the One Vehicle
Are ordinary and sage different or not? There is no difference at all. With awakening, the person who is ordinary in the morning is a sage by evening. Without awakening, you are subject to birth in the six planes of existence.
Great Enlightenment – Part 2
“Throughout history, all the woodcutters in the mountains and fishermen in the seas have had enlightenment.” If students study Rinzai’s words they will not be wasting their time. However, we should also study the teachings of other Patriarchs.
Selections from the Diamond Sutra
Those who aspire to the consummation of incomparable enlightenment should recognize and understand all varieties of things in the same way and cut off the arising of views that are mere aspects. As regards aspects, the Tathagata declares that in reality, they are not such. They are merely called “aspects.”
Sermon of Zen Master Bassui – Part 2
Now, then, when you look for what is the host, the master who is now seeing colors, hearing sounds, raising hands and moving feet, though you realize all this is the doing of your own mind, actually you don’t know what its inner reality is. If you say it is nonexistent, it is clear that it is free to act; if you say it exists, its form cannot be seen.
Walking the Middle Path
The Sutra on the Middle Way has profound and wonderful meaning. But only when we discover how to apply the teachings in it to our daily lives can they be truly beneficial. Even when we are able to talk eloquently about the Middle Way, no-self, or Dependent Co-arising, we still need to ask: How can these teachings be put into practice every day?
