08/26/2026
I'd like to start this week's email with some great news. All recorded dharma talks at CRZ from August 1st going forward are now being made available via podcast. Here is a link along with a QR code, either of which you can use to register to be notified when each talk becomes available. You will be able to access these through all of the main platforms for podcasts such as Apple, iHeart Radio, Amazon, and Spotify. Many, many thanks to Mike who has taken on this project and thereby enabled us to become available to a wider audience. https://www.podbean.com/site/podcatcher/index/blog/ErbodguOwC6J
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And as long as I'm sharing links here let me also include one that will connect you to our YouTube video channel where recorded talks are also stored but with the additional enhancement of video being included. We have a much larger archive of talks posted to this platform. https://www.youtube.com/
We will be following our typical schedule this week with sittings on Thursday at 7pm and Saturday at 9:30am. Following our sitting on Thursday we will be conducting a Full Moon Ceremony as we do each month. The dharma talk after our service will be looking at the section from Shohaku Okumura's commentary on the Heart Sutra titled "Emptiness in Practice" which can be found in his book "Living by Vow." For the dharma talk on Saturday I will be drawing from the section that begins on pg. 107 of Suzuki Roshi's "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" which bears the heading "NATURALNESS - Moment after moment, everyone comes out from nothingness. This is the true joy of life."
One final item I wanted to call to your attention this week is a broadcast tomorrow (Tuesday) evening on PBS at 9pm of the newest installment in their American Master series entitled "Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World." I know a number of you are already fairly familiar with Mary so you will need no further encouragement from me to be sure to view this when you are able to. I was fortunate enough to have been in the audience at Playhouse Square on the evening of 4/6/2010 to see her give a reading of her poetry. I will leave you this week with one of her poems entitled "The Buddha's Last Instruction."
Gassho,
Dean
"Make of yourself a light,"
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal - a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills, like a million flowers on fire -
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches, he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.
