Exploring Chan and Zen: Guo Gu and Jiryu Discuss Silent Illumination, Shikantaza, Huatou, Hongzhi, and Dogen, Online 1/18–1/25

Practice Center
Date / Time
Jan 18, 2025 / 2:00pm - Jan 25, 2025 / 4:00pm
Event Type
Workshops and Retreats
Description

The Zoom link will be provided at least 24 hours before the class begins. Please call 415-354-0360 if you have any questions.


Saturdays, January 18 and 25

Join us for a two-part teaching and discussion about Chan and Zen meditation moderated by Green Gulch Farm Abbot Jiryu Rutschman-Byler and featuring special guest Guo Gu, founder of the Tallahassee Chan Center.

During these two sessions, Guo Gu and Jiryu will use two parallel teaching poems, both called “The Acupuncture Needle of Zazen,” to discuss the perspectives of the Chan/Zen ancestors Hongzhi and Dogen on the practice of sitting meditation. In his essay Zazenshin, “The Point of Zazen,” Dogen Zenji presents and comments on both of these poems, giving us a lens through which to reflect on our own meditation practice and to look at the relationship between Dogen Zenji’s Japanese Zen and Hongzhi’s Chinese Chan approaches, as they were expressed centuries ago, and as we express them today in our harmonious and distinct Zen and Chan teachings.

Guo Gu has immersed himself in the teachings of the late Master Sheng Yen for over three decades, and has deeply studied and translated the work of Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157) and other Chan ancestors. He brings a pragmatic understanding of a variety of Chan approaches, including Silent Illumination (mozhao chan) and Huatou practice. Abbot Jiryu Rutschman-Byler offers perspectives from the Soto Zen tradition.

A brief reading, including both poems and Dogen Zenji’s comments, as well as Guo Gu’s own translation of Master Hongzhi’s poem, will be shared with registered participants prior to the first session.

These sessions will include a Q&A segment for participants to engage directly with the teachers and topics.

Fee Information

Two part workshop series: Both January 18 and January 25 are included with fee

Register Online

Or call 415-354-0360.

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