Awesome Presence of Active Buddhas, Online 5/17

Practice Center
Date / Time
May 17, 2025 / 9:00am - 12:00pm
Event Type
Workshops and Retreats
Description

The Zoom link to participate in this event will be provided at least 24 hours before it begins. Please call 415-354-0360 if you have any questions.


Eihei Dogen’s masterful "Awesome Presence of Active Buddhas" delivers a message for our times:

The practice place of Buddhas in the three times turning the Dharma wheel is invariably inside flames. Inside flames is always Buddhas’ place of practice.

But how do we take care of our Active Buddha self, cherishing the gift of our unique lives while practicing inside the flames? How do we, Active Buddhas, cope with the mental, emotional and physical exhaustion of these times, regaining our equilibrium and maintaining our equanimity?

Dogen invites us to act from a vast identity of interconnectedness, which is exactly who we are. That interconnectedness is always grounded in compassion, but it is an active compassion, not one of blind acceptance or passivity.

Please join us as we look to the Dharma for guidance and well-being during these times.

A translation of the fascicle appears in these sources:

  1. As "The Awesome Presence of Active Buddhas" in Beyond Thinking: A Guide to Zen Meditation, ed. Kazuaki Tanahashi
  2. As "On the Everyday Behavior of a Buddha Doing His Practice" (Gyōbutsu Iigi) in Shobogenzo, transl. Rev. Hubert Nearman, O.B.C.,

All Buddhas, without exception, make full use of Their everyday behavior for Their practice.
This is what is meant by ‘a Buddha doing Their practice.’ — Dogen

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