Zen Buddhism begins with the Buddha’s enlightenment. While the word, ‘enlightenment’ suggests there is something you get and that once have it you are ‘enlightened, ‘ ‘intimacy’ comes closer to the truth. We gain nothing. Rather, through attention to counting the breath, experiencing the breath, or putting our attention into a koan, we become of less interest to ourselves and, in this losing is finding. The world steps in – trees, mountains, bugs, rivers, people – and we rediscover our original, undiminished intimacy with all things. No longer strangers to this Earth, to others, or to ourselves, such intimacy has healing power. This is to live our own Zen life of Buddha.
Drawing on ancient myth, on Zen koans, on stories, and on his own over fifty years of formal Zen practice and more than ten years of active Zen teaching, Roshi Rafe Martin reveals the life of the Buddha as our own actual life. Using his skills as an award-winning author and storyteller, he organizes the life of the Buddha into five archetypal chapters – Birth, Leaving Home, Enlightenment, Teaching, and Death and reveals how, at every point, the historic/legendary/mythic life of the Buddha is our own lived life. The end result is transformative, helping us to potentially live each day more consciously, skillfully, and gratefully – whatever comes.
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