A Zen Life of Buddha - Softcover

Martin, Rafe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1896559891 ISBN 13: 9781896559896

Publisher: Sumeru Press Inc., 2022

Synopsis

Zen Buddhism begins with the Buddha's enlightenment. While the word, "enlightenment" suggests there is something you get and that once have it you are "enlightened," "intimacy" comes closer to the truth. We gain nothing. Rather, through attention to counting the breath, experiencing the breath, or putting our attention into a koan, we become of less interest to ourselves and, in this losing is finding. The world steps in - trees, mountains, bugs, rivers, people - and we rediscover our original, undiminished intimacy with all things. No longer strangers to this Earth, to others, or to ourselves, such intimacy has healing power. This is to live our own Zen life of Buddha.

Drawing on ancient myth, on Zen koans, on stories, and on his own over fifty years of formal Zen practice and more than ten years of active Zen teaching, Roshi Rafe Martin reveals the life of the Buddha as our own actual life. Using his skills as an award-winning author and storyteller, he organizes the life of the Buddha into five archetypal chapters - Birth, Leaving Home, Enlightenment, Teaching, and Death and reveals how, at every point, the historic/legendary/mythic life of the Buddha is our own lived life. The end result is transformative, helping us to potentially live each day more consciously, skillfully, and gratefully - whatever comes.

About this title

About the Author

Rafe Jnan Martin, founding teacher of Endless Path Zendo, Rochester, New York, is a lay Zen teacher in the Harada-Yasutani koan line. A personal disciple of Roshi Philip Kapleau (Three Pillars of Zen) and the editor of Roshi Kapleau's final books, he also trained with Robert Aitken Roshi (Diamond Sangha) and, later, with Danan Henry Roshi, founder of the Zen Center of Denver, both a Kapleau lineage teacher and a Diamond Sangha Dharma Master. In 2009 Rafe received lay ordination and, in 2016, inka, or formal certification of his successful completion of the Diamond Sangha koan curriculum, as well as Dharma transmission, or authorization to teach as an independent Zen teacher.

Edition details

• Publisher: Sumeru Press Inc.
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1896559891
• ISBN 13: 9781896559896
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 80