(Excellent bio about the Buddha: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha) In May 544 BCE in Kushinagara, India the Buddha (“the awakened one”) whose real name was Siddhartha Gautama or Shakyamuni (the name of the family clan) was lying down peacefully waiting to die. Ananda his cousin and faithful disciple asked him to teach one more time. Around them were 500 […]

Q1: I am new in meditation and a bit concerned if not somewhat stressed in joining a group practice. A: Our group meditation is very relax and very friendly. This is the way I want it. No worries please. Zen is not an esoteric and weird practice. On the contrary you will find it quickly. Q2: […]

When Zen literature speaks about the  "walls or gates" blocking access to our inner serenity and happiness it uses the words "poison" since these walls are, most of the time, like poison pills that we swallow without being fully conscious of their effects. Of course many sources of our suffering, sadness, sorrow, grief come from […]

Zen Buddhism has an interesting way to describe the various components of a human being and in fact of all living beings. It calls them: the 5 aggregates. The classification is very practical and includes: Physical: 1)  Form.= Matter  Form is our body from head to toes including 5 senses 2)  Perception=  Our sensorial recognition of our surrounding […]

2000 years of recorded Zen dialogues between Zen students and their teachers are often bizarre, cranky, weird, paradoxical and very often without any sense. They are in fact somewhat similar to Koans in their content and purpose that is "the awakening". Zen literature is full of them. Here are some of them. They will be […]

ALSO GO TO  THIS POST :  The 7 pillars of a Zen Mind march 10th 2015 What is a Zen mind ? Quick sum-up: Having a Zen Mind is being mindful moment to moment to what is REAL and being indifferent to what is not. What is REAL is what we see,  hear, touch, smell […]

We think and communicate through words. Words carry our thoughts, concepts, ideas and opinions. However, the basic building blocks to proper communication are our concepts, ideas and opinions. We have here a perfect catch 22 dilemma: words are the basic tools of communication but also they are the impediments to efficient communication. Words facilitate our […]

Zen is the Japanese word for meditation. One of the most important goal of Zen is to teach us how to overcome and get rid off our detrimental and deceptive ego-self or ” I, my and myself “ also called "little self" in Zen. Why Zen talks about detrimental & deceptive self? Our ego-self which […]

I am receiving many questions such as “What does Zen practice mean”? This is a very good, practical down to earth question different from the usual “What is Zen”? which is somewhat more cerebral. Here are the 6 pillars that define our daily Zen practice. To apply all of them every day is difficult. Hope […]

Dialogue between a little dog named Zap and myself or Zen Buddhism in a nutshell. Zap is our adorable 8 years old sixteen pounds male Shih Tzu dog. Zap is a very smart and very happy little dog wagging his tail almost all the time even during the night (probably having nice dog dreams). One […]