Sōtō Zen crest

If you’ve been hanging around here much at all, you know that we we’re usually all over the map—quite literally. Every week, we pick a new topic (from all corners of the world) and each one—usually—has just a thread of a connection to the one before (e.g., a decadent dessert we named “Chocolate Nirvana” one week leads us to a discussion of the Buddhist festival of Nirvana Day the next). This week, though, I’d like to stay with some of the Buddhist ideas a little longer. The reason is that while I was working with last week’s posts, I was reminded of a story a friend once told me and I wanted to share it with you. We’ll get to that in a minute. Specifically, I thought it might be interesting to delve a little deeper into what is known as Zen, short for Zen Buddhism.

Now, Zen—by very definition—is indefinable, so that makes this somewhat difficult, but here we go…

Bodhidharma by Blockdruck von Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892)

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