Robert Aitken Roshi (1917-2010)
Guiding teacher for the Zen Center of Denver & other Diamond Sangha centers; respected Roshi, scholar, translator, writer,
lover of birds, fighter of social injustice, beloved by countless students, students' children, and readers around the world.

www.tricycle.com/blog/?p=2166

http://robertaitken.blogspot.com/2010/08/goodbye-dad-grandfather-papa-friend.html

Zen is not about creating positive change in one's life; it's about realizing the miraculous in the imperfect.

Zen is not about a higher self; it's about no-self. Looking up at the night sky, the stars are just this body.

Grasshopper

Grasshopper, a short film which premiered at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

Cat Box Dharma

Spirituality and cleaning out the cat box are not two separate things. How could they be? Form is emptiness; emptiness is form.

Practice of the Wild

A trailer for Practice of the Wild, a film on the one, the only, Gary Snyder. Thanks to Paul Lynch at Zen Mirror.

Yuanwu (1063-1135)

I'm reading the letters of Yuanwu, author and compiler of the Blue Cliff Record, one of the seminal koan collections. He's one of those masters whose depth of realization sings on every page, in almost every line:

"Everywhere everything becomes the Great Function, and every single thing flows forth from your own breast. The ancients called this bringing out the family treasure. Once this is attained, it is attained forever. How could it ever be used up?"

Skiing Zarlengo

SKIING ZARLENGO

moose tracks bewitching the breath
black squirrel daggled with powder

no lodgepole but this tree this bough
too many to read but one is enough