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We’re happy to add this excellent interview with Roshi Rafe Martin to our podcast series. The interview was conducted by Berry Crawford of “Simplicity Zen” on January 27, 2023. While informal and enjoyable it is also informative, focusing on the essence of Roshi Martin’s teaching as well as his background as a lay Zen practitioner, and his emphasis, as a teacher, on the importance of lay practice. If you’re interested in getting a sense of what Rafe is about, this interview ill give you a good sense of his approach to teaching, practice, and realization, as well as his dual inheritance in both Kapleau and Diamond Sangha (Robert Aitken Roshi) lineages. (Note: This interview is also available as a video on the Home Page [“About Us”] of the Endless Path Zendo Website.)
With thanks to Berry Crawford! - Learn more at SimplicityZen.com.
Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org -
Recorded February 22, 2025
This third and final Te-shan koan completes our overview of Zen practice as the hero/heroine’s journey/pilgrimage from unconscious self-centeredness to selfless wisdom and compassion. Maturing means more than aging. Becoming not just “olders” but “elders,” takes conscious effort and perseverance. Yamada Roshi counseled his Zen students to take care of their health so as to live as long as possible, continue working on their practice, and become as mature as possible. Let’s see how Te-shan does.
The Gateless Barrier: The Wu-Men Kuan (Mumonkan) — Robert Aitken, translatorA Future of Ice: Kenji Miyazawa: Poems and Stories of a Japanese Buddhist -- Hiroaki SatoHaiku — 4 vols. R.H. Blyth Vol 1: History | Vol 2: Spring | Vol 3 Summer/Autumn | Vol 4 Autumn/WinterHaiku Master Buson — Yuri Sawa and Edith ShiffertIn Such Hard Times: The Poetry of Wei Ying-wu — Red Pine Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org
As commentary on the koan itself is rather brief ( 20 mins), for the teisho’s first 15 minutes Roshi Martin offers a respite from our troubled times by reading and commenting on short (including haiku) Chinese and Japanese Zen-related poems, to help us touch base with our essential humanity of wisdom and compassion, “in such hard times.”
Books referenced: -
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Recorded February 15, 2025.
“Let’s be honest: Death is our greatest difficulty. Accepting it and, for lack of a better word, doing it, are our most severe challenges, fraught with deepest anxiety and trauma. All challenges and difficulties in life seem to stem from or circle around this primal one of awesome finality. To face head-on what, as Shakespeare wrote, “... ends this strange eventful history ... Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything,” (As You Like It), can be terribly hard. It is beyond everything and anything we can imagine. A lifetime of practicing, of learning to be fully present with what IS, seeing through habitual, unconscious identifications with the isolated, interior, small-minded sense of ourselves crouched down and terrified, is our best preparation.
“Roshi Kapleau liked Woody Allen’s joke: “I don’t mind dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” He used to say, “You know, he almost had it there.” What was missing? I think of the old saying – “To gain a certain thing, you must become a certain person, but once you become that person, you may no longer need to gain that thing.” In short, Woody could joke about it but what about “living” it?
“Death is at the core of Zen because it is at the core of life. Hakuin wrote about the terrific virtue of what he called, “The great death,” his version of Dogen’s “Dropping body and mind; mind and body dropped.” It is liberation itself he is referencing. . . The Buddha’s teaching is traditionally known as a poison drum. Anyone who hears it is killed dead. Isn’t that great news?!
“It’s not just an Eastern thing. In 1826 in London, William Blake signed a guest book with a beautiful drawing of a human figure stretched out as if reclining or flying. Surrounding this elegant form were the words – “William Blake who is very much delighted in being in good company. Born November 28, 1757 in London and has died several times since.” I wonder what the other guests at that gathering made of that. ”-Excerpt from “A Zen Life of Buddha” by Rafe Martin, Sumeru Press 2022
“The Hungry Tigress: Buddhist Myths, Legends, and Jataka Tales: Completely Revised and Expanded Edition,” Rafe Martin, Yellow Moon Press, 1999“A Zen Life of Buddha,” Rafe Martin, Sumeru Press, 2022“Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo,” ed. Kazuaki Tanahashi, Shambhala, 2010
Books cited —Photo: Buddha’s Parinirvana Altar at Endless Path Zendo
Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org -
Recorded Saturday, February 8, 2025.
In our previous koan teisho, (case 28, "Gateless Barrier"), Te-shan, that noted scholar of the Diamond Sutra, had set off with the clear intention of wiping out the “Zen devils” in the South. Fortunately for him -- and for us -- he fell into Master Lung-t’an’s Dragon Pond where he found his Original Face from before his parents were even born.
Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org
Even so, he was still the same old hot head. Now, sure that all his learning was wrong and only realization "right," he sets off to check himself against against “the best minds of his generation,” (Allen Ginsberg, Howl). In this second koan on Te-shan ( case 4, "Blue Cliff Record") we find out that when he arrives at Master Keui-shan’s monastery he breaks with monastic convention, just storms in, peers around, announces, “Nothing, Nothing,” and then leaves, all while still carrying his unopened monk’s bundle. Is he now right or is he still wrong? If right, how right? If wrong, how wrong? What’s he now got, and what’s still missing before he’ll actually be mature? Let's see! -
Recorded February 1, 2025.
The traditional commentary on Case 28 in the Gateless Barrier says:
Before Te-shan left home, his mind was indignant and his tongue sharp. Full of arrogance, he went south to exterminate the doctrine of the special transmission outside the sutras. When he reached the road to Li-cho he sought to buy refreshments from an old woman at a roadside tea stand.
Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org
The old woman said, “Venerable monk, what are all those books you are carrying on your back?”
Te-shan said, “They are my notes and commentaries on the Diamond Sutra.”
The old woman said, “I hear the Diamond Sutra says, ‘Past mind cannot be grasped, present mind cannot be grasped, future mind cannot be grasped.’ Which mind does Your Reverence intend to refresh?”
Te-shan was dumbfounded . . . Unable to die the Great Death under the old woman’s words, he asked, “Is there a Zen master nearby?”
Now, here’s Gary Snyder (and I hope you know who he is!) speaking about koans in an Interview with Poetry Foundation, 2008:
‘The intention of a koan is to make people who are bright in an ordinary way, or ordinary people who are bright in an odd way, work harder and go further into themselves. . . So in a way we’re not talking about “language,” we’re talking about the theater of life.
For this to actually work, it needs the relation of student and mentor . . . Going into the teacher’s room and trying out your view of the koan on him or her is the only way to move through it. Without the mentor, you only dig yourself deeper into the hole, or you make up your own answer, which is invariably wrong.
This remarkable practice, developed and handed down for 1,000 years and more, is very refined and does not fit any exact paradigm of philosophy, rational analysis, or aesthetic strategy. Yet it throws light on them all.
I have no doubt that the Buddhist teachings are grounded in the remarkable, almost unique, exquisitely relevant insights of Gautama Shakyamuni, who is well-named “the Buddha,” the realized one. The koans—also known as the kungan, public cases, or teaching phrases—of Chan/Zen Buddhist practice go back to his mind and his insight.’ -
Recorded January 25, 2025.
This teisho is the first of a series from a new book by Roshi Rafe Martin, titled, "A Zen Life As Pilgrimage: Coming Home (To What Zen Is Really All About)."
What is the relevance of Zen to the difficulties of our time, right now? What is Zen really all about?A personal anecdote from Roshi Martin —
I was having lunch with Aitken Roshi in an Italian restaurant in Honolulu when I asked,“Roshi. What is this Zen thing, anyway? Why do we do it?” He answered quickly, saying “Happiness.” And then he stopped, put down his fork, and sat quietly, as if he’d caught himself mouthing a cliche. Then he looked at me and said,“No. Many people are happy. Absorbed in work, family, or hobbies they’re happy. But if impermanence has bitten too deeply, and a yearning for something more, a way to be at peace in the face of impermanence has taken root, then Zen can show you the way to happiness.”
A personal anecdote told to Roshi Martin by Danan Henry Roshi —“Have you ever seen anything so wonderful?!!” Roshi Philip Kapleau exclaimed, with a radiant smile on his face, upon seeing a rooster strutting down the dirt lane, just outside Tepotzlan, Morelos Province, Mexico. Now, remember, he’d been the Chief Court Reporter at both the Nuremberg and Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals. The anguish caused by the horrors of the testimony he took down at those trials had moved him to begin Zen practice. That radiant smile was a result of what Zen practice had opened to him.
Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org
Photo: Kapleau Roshi by Casey Frank -
Recorded January 18, 2025.
Fundamentally, Zen is not about becoming some better you. You are it, just as you are. Even a baby knows it. Maybe only a baby knows it. Perhaps the clearest take on this, koan-wise, is Blue Cliff Record 80 — “Chao Chou’s(Joshu’s) A Newborn Baby.”
“A monk asked Chao Chou (Joshu), ‘Does a newborn baby possess the 6th sense or not?’ Chao Chou (Joshu) said, 'It is like a ball bouncing on swift-flowing water.’
The monk later asked T’ou Tzu (Tosu), ‘What is the meaning of a ball bouncing on swift-flowing water?’
Tosu said, ‘Moment by moment it flows on without stopping.’”
In his teisho on this, master Yuan-wu says that of the 16 forms of meditation practice, the baby’s practice is best. Voidness is not biblical in the sense of all was Void on the waters of Creation. Moment by moment, it flows on without stopping — as T’ou Tzu says. No sticking. This is it; right now is IT. “Form is emptiness, emptiness form” — the fundamental realization of non-dual prajna wisdom. We don’t have to go out and get to it, as if it were elsewhere in either space or time. An analogy might be living on planet Earth; we are just as far out in space as any planet in the universe. We don’t have to go anywhere to be out in space. Emptiness, too, is not something we have to get to.The fresh eyes of baby practice restores us, and all things. Jesus said you must become as a child again, to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Yuan wu says this, too — right in the Blue Cliff Record: “A person who studies the Path must become again like an infant.” Why? Do you see the point?
Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org -
Recorded January 4, 2025
The Hungry Tigress. Rafe Martin. Complete Revised and Expanded Edition. 1999. Yellowmoon PressThe Outermost House by Henry Beston.Young Men and Fire by Norman McLeanDe Profundis by Oscar Wilde Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org
For the first teisho of 2025 — and its challenges — Roshi Rafe Martin offers a vision of Buddhist insight/outlook and behavior, by looking at the Buddhist jataka tales (past life stories of the Buddha) and their deep import for us today. In these stories equal attention is given to the needs and aspirations of all living things, not just human beings. The tales, taken as a whole, offer a doorway into a primary realm of the imagination, which connects all life.
The source of this teisho is an article Roshi Martin originally wrote as the final chapter for the 1999, Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of his book, The Hungry Tigress: Buddhist Myths, Legends, and Jataka Tales (Yellowmoon Press) and includes his interviews with noted Buddhist teachers and writers, (including both Aitken Roshi and Kapleau Roshi) on their favorite jataka tale, and why they were drawn to that particular story. An inspiring teisho for the New Year!
Referenced in this talk: -
Recorded December 14, 2024.
The Gateless Barrier: The Wu-Men Kuan (Mumonkan) translated and with a Commentary by Robert AiktenA Zen Life of Buddha by Rafe Martin
To end the year - a teisho on the Buddha’s teaching — and a flower!
It should come as no surprise that Zen tradition sees the Buddha as the original Zen Master, someone who teaches by demonstrating and presenting, rather than simply by lecturing, or talking “about.” The Buddha offers living truth, not philosophy. Like the monk in the final Zen Oxherding picture, he enters the marketplace of human life with helping hands. Which sounds pretty good. Who doesn't need help? But what does such help look like? What kind of help does the enlightened Buddha offer?
To clarify, let’s look at Gateless Barrier, case # 6: “The Buddha Holds Up a Flower.”
Books referenced:
Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org
Photo credit: Flower by Rafe Martin -
Recorded December 8, 2024
A Zen Life of Buddha (Sumeru Press 2023) by Rafe MartinCrossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese, Sam Hamill
In this teisho Roshi Rafe Martin tells the dramatic story of the Buddha’s great enlightenment then comments on it (using his recent book A Zen Life of Buddha as his source), from the ground of ongoing Zen practice:
“Zen Buddhism reveres the story of the Buddha’s enlightenment because it so dramatically reveals our own potential, even as it reveals the determined, dedicated work that “even as it reveals the determined, dedicated work that underlies all milestone experiences. ”
“Buddhist tradition says that we all have the nature of Buddha, have exactly the same, vast, empty nature of endlessly creative and compassionate potential as Shakyamuni and all previous and future Buddhas. From the first we are each fully and equally endowed with limitless wisdom and virtue. And because it is already who we are, if we practice, if we make sincere efforts then we, too, can to one degree or another, awake to this same Original Mind.
“. . . After a long night of focused zazen, the Buddha-About-To-Be glanced up and saw the morning star. And suddenly, AHA! “Gone, gone, entirely gone!” That’s IT! A morning star sat beneath the Bodhi tree: “Star! No “me”, just Star!”
It need not be so dramatic. A poem of Li Po’s from ancient China titled, “Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain,” goes like this:
The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.
– Trans. by Sam Hamill, from Crossing the Yellow
River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese
Books cited:
Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org
Photo: Seated Buddha and standing Buddha (after enlightenment) at Endless Path Zendo by Rafe Martin -
Record December 7, 2024
This teisho, the opening teisho of our two-day rohatsu sesshin, itself the culminating event of five previous days of heightened daily practice, is on the Buddha’s leaving home and its relation to our own maturing Zen practice.
A Zen Life of Buddha. Rafe Martin (Sumeru Press)What?: 108 Zen Poems. Ko UnThe Blue Cliff Record. Trans, Thomas and J.C. Cleary
According to legend, when at the age of twenty-nine, the long-sheltered prince, Siddhartha Gautama, left his comfortable palace to explore life in his home city, he suddenly saw an aged person, a sick person, a dead person, and a homeless truth-seeker and his life was irrevocably changed. Traumatized by this collision with reality, he didn’t turn and run, but became determined, instead, to get to the root of it.
With lay Zen practice we leave home without leaving home. What we learn to leave is our unconscious, self-centered habits regarding relationships, family, meaningful work. We abandon nothing but our own painfully dualistic habits of mind. Home leaving is actually the beginning of coming home. The Korean ex-Zen monk poet Ko Un, wrote – “But surely you can only come home/if you’ve really left home, can’t you?”
Books Cited:
Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org
Photo: Old wooden Chinese Buddha at Endless Path Zendo by Rafe Martin -
Recorded November 23, 2024
Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org
In this teisho, using Dharma Transmission case 30 in the “Transmission of Light,” Bodhidharma’s heir, Huike, to Seng t’san, (the author of “Affirming Faith in Mind”) as a case in point, Roshi Martin explores gratitude and thanksgiving — from a Zen perspective.
Seng t’san, suffering from a serious illness, realized the empty ground of his disease, the foundation of what the koan calls his “sins,” and awoke to wholeness and gratitude.
The Buddha upon his great Awakening, didn’t exclaim that one day all beings will be Buddha. Instead, legend insists what he said was that all beings are Buddha, right now! How can that be? And what did he mean? The work of finding out is called, “practice.” To come to see and know for ourselves, to even a slight degree, who or what we already Truly are, is to uncover a life of endless gratitude, endless Thanks.
Photo: Standing Buddha at Endless Path Zendo by Rafe Martin
Referenced:
"Transmission of the Light" ("Denkoroku") - Keizan Jokin
"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" - William Blake
"Shobogenzo" ("Eye of the Treasury of the True Dharma" - Eihei Dogen -
Recorded November 16, 2024.
“A Zen Life of Bodhisattvas” by Rafe Martin“The Gateless Barrier: The Wu-Men Kuan (Mumonkan)”, Translated and with a Commentary by Robert Aitken“The Odyssey,” Robert Fitzgerald translation
With this teisho Roshi Martin looks into the nature of painful failure: “Is it wonderful indeed” as the koan of “Manjusri and the Young Woman” (“Gateless Barrier” 35) proclaims? If so, how? Roshi Martin begins with the opening lines of "The Odyssey” pointing out how they reveal that it is Odysseus’s failure that sets the epic of a man overcoming difficulties and temptations to return to his true home, in motion. Then he reads and comments on Chapter 5 of his recent book “A Zen Life of Bodhisattvas,” which explores the koan of how the great Bodhisattva of Wisdom fails to awaken a young woman. The koan’s conclusion that “the failure is wonderful indeed” merits special exploration. What does it mean?!
Books referenced:
Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org
Photo: Manjusri and students at Endless Path Zendo by Rafe Martin -
Recorded November 9, 2024.
The Collected Poems. W.B. Yeats.Storehouse of Treasures: Recovering the Riches of Chan and Zen. Nelson Foster
In this first post-Nov. 5th election teisho, Roshi Martin opens with two poems of W.B. Yeats, speaking from the Irish “Troubles,” then moves on to read from and comment on Chapter Seven —“The Resource of Shame” — in Nelson Foster Roshi’s new book: Storehouse of Treasures: Recovering the riches of Chan and Zen.
Some bits to savor:
The great T’ang era Zen master Chao-chou (Joshu) was once asked — “What place to you accord an individual entirely without shame?” “Not among us,” the master answered. The questioner persisted, How about if one suddenly appeared? “Throw him out!” said Chao-chou.
And from Mencius, 372-289 BC, “Cunning opportunists have no use for shame. Unashamed of being inhuman, what humanity to they have?”
Or this — from Nelson — “Recognition that you’ve erred [i.e. shame] becomes an indicator of which way your ethical compass points, lending shame an ennobling aspect.”
In short, shame has nothing to do with “shaming,” or with guilt — or with beating ourselves up. But as a matter of scrupulous honesty and character, it helps us proceed along the ancient Way of the maturing Human Being — whatever comes. Not to own up to the uneasiness caused by one’s own errors and shortcomings, and not to resolve to correct our mistakes and do better would be rather . . . shameful.
Books referenced:Photo credit: “door/way,” Rafe Martin
Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org -
Recorded October 26, 2024.
Roshi Rafe Martin examines the important koan of Pai-chang and the Fox (case 2 of the Gateless Barrier), in light of both Halloween and the ghostly anxieties of our pre-election week.
The Gateless Barrier: The Wu-Men Kuan (Mumonkan), Translated and with a Commentary by Robert Aitken
Referenced:Photo : Hungry Ghost Altar, Endless Path Zendo 10/2024, by Rose Martin
Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org -
Teisho by Roshi Rafe Jnan Martin, 10/15/2024 Vermont Zen Center
Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org
Recorded October 15, 2024.
In this teisho, the final teisho of the October 2024 Jataka Sesshin at the Vermont Zen Center, Roshi Martin tells an ancient jataka (past life tale of the Buddha) that's very much like a sci-fi story! He then examines it from the perspective of Zen practice. In the story, which the Buddha told near the time of his approaching parinirvana (death), shows him attempting to satisfy desire. And how that necessary failure changed him.
Referenced: Before Buddha Was Buddha by Rafe Martin
Image: Galaxy painting by Rafe Martin -
Recorded on October 12, 2024
This teisho was presented by Roshi Martin on the first day of the recent, Oct. 11-16th 2024, 16th Annual Jataka sesshin at the Vermont Zen Center. In it, Roshi Martin first puts on his hat as an award-winning author and storyteller, giving a dramatic reading of his book, The Banyan Deer: A Parable of Wisdom and Courage (Wisdom Publications, 2010). Then, putting his Zen teacher hat back on, he comments on this ancient Buddhist jataka tale from the perspective of actual ongoing Zen practice-realization! Enjoy!
Image: Cover art for Rafe Martin's "The Banyan Deer" (Wisdom Publications), by Richard Wehrman
Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org -
Recorded 10/05/2024.
Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org
Roshi Martin comments on case 41 in The Gateless Barrier — “Bodhidharma and Peace of Mind,” the core of which is as follows:
Bodhidharma sat facing the wall. Huike, the Second Ancestor . . . said, “Your disciple’s mind has no peace as yet. I beg you, master, to please put it to rest.”
Bodhidharma said, “Bring me your mind, and I will put it to rest.”
The Second Ancestor said, “I have searched for my mind, but I cannot find it.”
Bodhidharma said, “Then I have completely put it to rest for you.”
Buddhist practice is not simply a matter of study, of amassing learning, of finding psychological nuance, or of gaining “merit.” At its core where Zen resides is the practice of realization, actually awakening to Mind itself. Bodhidharma’s Zen was and is radical – in the primary sense of aiming for the root.
The Zen brought to life by Bodhidharma, shifted the Buddha’s teaching from the cosmological/philosophical to the practical. It’s aim remains to help us come to the end of suffering and realize Peace. At some point we all recognize the difficulties and challenges of this life, and are anguished by them. This is where we begin. To find Peace all we need do then, as Bodhidharma insisted, is bring forth our troubled mind so it can be pacified. That shouldn’t be too hard should it? What do you think? -
Recorded September 21, 2024.
Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org
Roshi Martin reads from (and comments on) "A Zen Life: D.T. Suzuki Remembered" focusing on the important, indeed, seminal role Dr. D.T. Suzuki (NOT Shunryu Suzuki) played in the transmission of Zen to the West. In his reading aloud from the book he focuses on the chapters written by his own teachers -- Philip Kapleau and Robert Aitken -- as well as the chapter by Gary Snyder, all of whom reveal that Suzuki was absolutely central to their own personal turn to the actual practice of Zen. It made for an inspiring morning, putting our own connection with Zen tradition within a larger context. - Visa fler
