A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
Saturday, February 18, 2023
Via Tricycle // A Practical Guide to the Zen Precepts
When she was first learning the Zen precepts, Nancy Mujo Baker found that they were often taught in a way that was abstract and difficult to grasp, drawing on concepts like suchness, emptiness, and enlightenment without explaining what they really mean or how we can live them in our daily lives.
When she became a lay preceptor herself many years later, Baker, a Zen teacher and philosophy professor, came to explore the precepts in a much deeper way. Around the same time, she was undergoing a deep inquiry into the work of the 13th-century Zen priestEihei Dogen, which greatly enriched her understanding of the precepts.
Inspired by Dogen’s work, Baker believes that working with the precepts can be a way of becoming whole human beings—which means compassionately embracing the parts of ourselves that we tend to reject. In her new book, Opening to Oneness: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to the Zen Precepts, Baker offers simple exercises for lovingly acknowledging the stealer, liar, and killer within each of us so that the precepts may be naturally expressed through us.
On the latest episode of theTricycle Talkspodcast, Baker joins Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, to discussthe importance of cultivating self-compassion, Dogen’s commentary on the precepts, and her approach to working with the precepts to reveal our innate buddhanature.
What did the Buddha mean when he spoke of the absence of self (anatta)? Join Theravada monk Thanissaro Bhikkhu for a conversation on the not-self teachings on February 27.Sign up now.
Discover the power of spacious, non-conceptual awareness with insight meditation teacher Martin Aylward in his upcoming workshop,Finding Freedom in the Unknown.
Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, and other early community members share stories of IMS’s early days inInside Insight: The Founding Story.
Gobeyond distractionand find practical ways to focus the mind with Bodhi Courses teacher Shaila Catherine’s new Dharma Talk series.
A Practical Guide to the Zen Precepts With Nancy Mujo Baker
The Zen precepts aren’t just a list of rules and regulations. According to Nancy Mujo Baker, they are a practical way of revealing our inherent buddhanature.
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