Pedaling Buddha

I recorded part of a chat I had with Gudo Nishijima recently about the difference between doing zazen regularly and not doing it regularly (or not doing it at all even). Nishijima thinks doing zazen regularly is the most important part of Buddhism. Doing it everyday helps us stay "balanced". He compared doing zazen to riding a bike. If we keep pedaling we keep our balance and the bike keeping moving, but if we stop pedaling we end up losing our balance and falling off.

I asked him some other things too, like what he thinks "Buddha" is.

You can download the mp3 file here (lasts about 6 minutes).

Now I'd better go and get a new bike,

Peter

Gudo Nishijima Roshi's 89th Birthday Lecture - What I Want To Do

My teacher, Gudo Nishijima, gave a talk in English at Dogen Sangha's Saturday zazen meeting in Tokyo yesterday. He doesn't give talks in English there so often now, but he agreed to give one yesterday as it coincided with his 89th birthday.

The theme of his talk was "What I Want to Do." He covered quite a few topics during the talk. Some of the things he spoke about were how Buddhism is different to idealism and materialism, his ideas about Western civilization and Buddhism, and whether Buddhism is a religion or not. He also talked about how he used to doubt if there really was something called "the truth", and how he thinks people should study the truth if they want to be happy. He also answered questions on Zazen practice and other topics for about 15 minutes at the end.

I recorded the talk on my digital recorder. Click here to download the audio file (about 22 Mb).

Btw, at the start of the lecture we recited "The Verse to Open the Sutras" in Japanese. That lasts about a minute. After that, Gudo Nishijima starts his talk in English.

And here’s a link to Nishijima Roshi's blog.

All the best,

Peter

Gudo Nishijima on Buddhism, realism, intuition, and precepts

Below is a link to an audio recording of a talk I had with my teacher Gudo Nishijima yesterday. It's an MP3 file that lasts around 18 minutes (4 megabytes).

In the first part, Nishijima Roshi talks about the difference between Buddhism and Western philosophies.

Then I asked a question about a story in chapter 20 "Kokyo" in Dogen's Shobogenzo (paragraph [139]). The story's about two Zen master's talking about what they call the "Eternal Mirror".

Next Nishijima talks about his theory on how doing Zazen relates to the autonomic nervous system.

After that I asked him where he thinks Buddhist intuition comes from.

In the last part he discusses his ideas on the Buddhist precepts.

Well, our talk went something like that anyway.

Click here to download.

Regards,

peter