Today, Roshi focused on the 37th gate of Dogen’s 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination – “Belief and understanding are a gate of Dharma – illumination; for [with them] we decisively comprehend the paramount truth.” Roshi noted that the word “Belief” is an interesting word. What do we actually believe in Buddhism? If we look…

Today, Roshi focused on the 12th gate of Dogen’s 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination – “Mindfulness of precepts is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we fulfill all vows” Roshi first wanted to distinguish a “Vow” and a “Precept”. Precepts are very specific or tactical behaviors we can perform to better our…

Roshi continued our exploration of Dogen’s Shobogenzo this week focusing on the section entitled the “108 Gates of Dharma illumination”. Firstly, Roshi noted that the number 108 is kind of arbitrary to us Westerners, but it has quite a history in Buddhism – and even before Buddhism. There has been quite a bit of…

Roshi continued our exploration of Dogen’s Shobogenzo this week focusing on the section entitled the “108 Gates of Dharma illumination”. Needless to say, it will take a few weeks to fully explore this part of Dogen’s teaching. For this week, Roshi wanted to provide us with some background on the teaching along with touching…