Metaphorical Buddhism: Non-Buddhist Models for Buddhist Practice, Online 4/1–4/22

Practice Center
Date / Time
Apr 1, 2025 / 7:00pm - Apr 22, 2025 / 8:30pm
Event Type
Classes & Extended Courses
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.


Four Tuesdays, April 1–April 22, 7–8:30 pm PT

What metaphors and images support or inspire your experience of Zen? Is there something in your life that invigorates your practice, though the connection seems mysterious? Or is there a personal aspect of your own spiritual path that you don’t talk about because it’s “not Buddhist”? This class will look at and celebrate how non-Buddhist ideas, practices, and lessons can support and deepen our practice in the 21st-century.

Buddhism emerged in a context of Vedic and yogic practices on the Indian subcontinent. As Buddhism has spread around the world, it has embraced and responded to the traditions it’s encountered, whether Daoist and Confucian philosophy in China, magical practices in Thailand, or psychological theories of mind in the United States. By looking at a few contemporary examples, this course aims to encourage all expressions of human experience that help us wake up to the true nature of reality and reduce suffering in this world.

In week one, we’ll look at scientific rationalism and especially at modern physics, examining Zen connections and models that emerge from quantum mechanics, cosmology, and other scientific views of the world.

Week two will turn to Christianity and Judaism, and how the deep imprint of Western Judeo-Christian thought aligns with (and differs from) the Zen perspective.

The third session will look broadly at the human experience of metaphor, and how our creative and artistic impulses can nurture and illuminate our practice experiences.

The fourth and final session will cover class participants’ own personal practice metaphors, and how we engage with them to enliven our understanding and experience of Zen Buddhism.

Each week will include a lecture on the material and a period of open questions and discussion.

This class is open to all, whether you have practice experience or are just curious about Zen and Buddhism in general. All sessions will be recorded and made available to registrants.

There will be no homework or preparation required. The materials below will likely be referred to during the class, and are listed here for those who wish to explore further on their own before or after the class.

Science
PBS Spacetime videos

  1. The Origins of Matter, Mass & Time playlist
  2. The Misunderstood Nature of Entropy 
  3. What Does an Electron ACTUALLY Look Like?

Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism

  1. The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence
  2. Magic of the Ordinary by Gershon Winkler
  3. What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula 

Metaphor and Creativity

  1. Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
  2. Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi (SFZC Chant Book) 

Particularly these lines:

Turning away and touching are both wrong,
for it is like a massive fire.
Just to depict it in literary form
is to stain it with defilement.
It is bright just at midnight,
it doesn't appear at dawn.

Recordings:

All course sessions will be recorded, and registered participants will receive temporary access to the recordings for later viewing.

Fee Information

Register Online

Or call 415-354-0360.

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