![Launching the Study Center]()
by Caryn Silberberg | Nov 30, 2011 | Uncategorized, Zen
We are excited to announce the official opening of The Lost Coin Study Center.
To start, there are 12 videos by Doen Sensei in three basic areas of practice: Mechanics, Training and Realization. We have also included a Musica section with three specially chosen musical pieces for study which address conscious art. New material by Sensei and other teachers in the form of videos, written material, conscious music and Zen art will be added each month. It is our aim to create a unique archive of the highest quality for serious students of the Way.
Have a look at the interview with Doen Sensei about the Study Center on the Lost Coin website. Subscriptions are available on the site for $14.99 per month via Paypal. To sign up visit http://study.lostcoinzen.com/signup/
by Daniel Doen Silberberg | Nov 26, 2011 | Uncategorized, Zen
He who is born in the Snow Country,
Free from worldly taints,
Blessed by the Succession of Naropa
The wondrous one who has conquered pain
and trials
The cure, the supreme remedy
For the ills of sentient beings,
Revered by all like sun and moon,
He is the Holy One, the famous Mila.
I bow to him, the father Repa, with great veneration.
The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa
Who are we talking about here? It is you, everyone one of you reading this song. The song is about you, the traveler of the way.
We lose our way and the most common detour leads to our heads. It is understandable because it is the way we have been taught to navigate our lives. It is an imporatant aspect of our self but it is often timid and powerless.We have a deeper, magical and more potent well from which to draw.
We can talk about this as the difference between “knowledge” and “being.” Knowledge is what we know and how we process, analyze, and use it. “Being” is who we are which is manifested in what we do. In practice and teaching this is the heart of the matter. The Dharma Lion’s roar. Who am I really? How do I act in my life? Do I really practice with my life? Being is and has always been the truth of our practice.
May we all attain that which is in us – the great courage of the Dharma, the great courage of being.
I bow with great gratitude to the great Dharma hero, Milarepa.
photo credit: dynamosquito
by Daniel Doen Silberberg | Nov 19, 2011 | Uncategorized, Zen
The degree to which we can forget the self is the degree to which we can walk the way.
photo credit: Joel Bedford
by Daniel Doen Silberberg | Nov 11, 2011 | Uncategorized, Zen
Form is exactly emptiness and emptiness is exactly form. This beautiful and difficult life is enlightenment, the timeless season. Yet historically religious institutions, yes even Buddhism, have separated the two and discouraged the development of our personal lives.
For example, we were told that we should certainly not pay attention to our financial lives as we pursued the spiritual. Strangely enough, the institutions telling us that owned fabulous amounts of property, the most elaborate real estate ever built in the form of churches and monasteries. Who was it that was paying for all that? Guess.
They also made science either criminal (remember Gallileo?) or irrelevant. Scientific thinking was taboo as well. We have inherited so much of value from Buddhism but as we do with science, we need to build on what is rational, what is of value and what is provable. In short, Buddhism needs to evolve.
In Lost Coin we want to go forward and make practice really new without discarding the traditional methods. Our shaky world demands it. Practice can’t be medieval or superstitious. We need to embrace our world – every inch and moment of it. Mind is Buddha, life is awakening. Every moment of it .
Form is exactly emptiness, emptiness is exactly form. This shore is the other shore.
photo credit: kevin dooley
by Daniel Doen Silberberg | Nov 5, 2011 | Uncategorized, Zen
Central to Buddhism and many esoteric traditions is the practice of empowerment. A student or adept must learn to give up their own power, their concepts, ideas and positions in order to be empowered by the lineage. The power of the Dharma is transmitted by the lineage holder – the teacher.
This is a very important practice. When a student instead empowers themselves they are empowering the ego. This empowers greed, anger and ignorance In fact, it embraces and supports a kind of weakness that is harmful to oneself and others. Students, and even teachers who have not been forged by this process manifest this weakness. They diminish the Dharma.
The true empowerment of the lineage is transcendent. It allows individuals to do what they could not do before for themselves and others. Having left home a long time ago, the adept now truly comes home.
Giving up one’s self power to be empowered by the lineage happens at many steps along the way. It is very important. Because this is so important to me as a person entrusted to hold the lineage, when I empower my students it will not be based on what they say. It will be based on what they do which demonstrates what they really value, what effort and sincerity and commitment they bring to the practice: in short who they really are.
photo credit: h.koppdelaney
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