VIRTUAL DOJO

Fear, anger, despair, hopelessness, helplessness: These feelings make us want to hide, to run away, and to protect ourselves from the pain we see around us. This, however, we have learned, is a downward spiral into depression and sickness. So, how do we get out? What is the secret sauce?

The daily functioning of a dojo happens through the action of individuals. Someone takes out the trash. Someone opens the zoom room. Someone makes granola. There is no “they”.

Now instead of performing kata to the point of exhaustion, we blow one note each with one breath to the same extreme… Tanouye Rotashi said “to practice so that one note puts someone into samadhi”

In this video, Esteban Martinez Sensei talks about "How We Train" in Zen using meditation, physical training, and fine arts.

One of the lesser known laws of the universe (like gravity) is that the state of no-mind can be transferred to others. We call it “transferring samadhi” but also talk in more serious terms about “giving fearlessness.”

In a growing series of publications we are presenting edited versions of talks that Tanouye Roshi gave more than forty years ago in various settings, some of them quite informal while others are formal teisho given during sesshin.

The reason that repetition is the best way to master any martial art, because it will lead to perfection of desired skills, since incorrectly performing a skill wastes energy and is inefficient.

In the Virtual Dojo, “where we train” is exactly where we are.

Tanouye Roshi looked at me, shook his head, and said, “You read too much.” Then, he surprised me handing me a book that he had been reading and saying, “Here, read this.”

In Xhosa, an indigenous language spoken in South Africa, the word apha means “this location”, “this place” or “being here right now”.

My goal shifted from training because I wanted something in particular out of the week to wanting to train strong so that I could help those around me train strong and have the sesshin they needed to have.

There came a moment during the sitting when I was no longer in my tatami room with a panoramic view of our prairie and oak savanna. Instead, I felt myself strapped to the front of a locomotive speeding down the track toward a black tunnel.

Sit 30 minutes and do something vigorous that you enjoy to move your body everyday. See how it changes your life.

The jiki who instructs, “Don’t move” is like a guest in your home who smelled smoke and asked, “Is something burning?”

The kind of comfort that satisfies doesn't come from a dojo, or from all the many things that you miss right now ... but from within oneself. We're here for that.

I quickly learned that a shakuhachi tells you what it is; that is, what key it will play in.

Times continue to change, and we continue to accord these changes.