Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on December 10, 2008.

"There is no self and no person; how, then, kinfolk and stranger? I beg you, cease going from lecture to lecture. It is better to seek the truth directly."
-- Layman Pang

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on December 3, 2008.

"The Supreme Way is not difficult; it just precludes picking and choosing. Without yearning or loathing, The Way is perfectly apparent, while even a hair's breadth difference separates heaven and earth. To see The Way with your own eyes, quit agreeing and disagreeing. The battle of likes and dislikes is the disease of the mind."

--Seng-ts'an, "Relying on Mind"

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on November 26, 2008.

"The teachings of the Three Vehicles all cure diseases such as greed and hatred. Right now, thought after thought, if you have such sickness as greed or hatred, you should first cure them. Don't seek intellectual understanding of meanings and expressions. Understanding is in the province of desire, and desire turns into disease. Right now, just detach from all things, existent or nonexistent, and even detach from detachment."
- Pai Chang

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on November 19, 2008.

"In reading scriptures and studying the doctrines, you should turn all words right around, and apply them to yourself."
- Pai Chang

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik leads a retreat workshop at the Toledo Zen Center on November 16, 2008.

"This principle is originally present in everyone. All the Buddhas and bodhisattvas may be called people pointing out a jewel. Fundamentally, it is not a thing - you don't need to know or understand it, you don't need to affirm or deny it. Just cut off dualism; cut off the supposition 'it exists' and the supposition 'it does not exist.' Cut off the supposition 'it is nonexistent' and the supposition 'it is not nonexistent.' When traces do not appear on either side, then neither lack nor sufficiency, neither profane nor holy, not light or dark. This is not having knowledge, yet not lacking knowledge, not bondage, not liberation. It is not any name or category at all. Why is this not true speech? How can you carve and polish emptiness to make an image of Buddha? How can you say that emptiness is blue, yellow, red or white?"

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik leads a retreat workshop at the Toledo Zen Center on November 16, 2008.

"In the teaching hall, the master said, 'The spiritual light shines alone, far transcending the senses and their fields. The essential substance is exposed, real and eternal. It is not contained in written words. The nature of mind has no defilement; it is basically perfect and complete in itself. Just get rid of delusive attachments and merge with the realization of thusness.'"

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik leads a retreat workshop at the Toledo Zen Center on November 16, 2008.

"Somehow, a process started to happen where things went from [being very freeform] to being very much sectarian. Things started to close down, people started to need to self-identify their group as distinct from other groups, and it's in the midst of that transition that this character Pai Chang finds himself."

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on November 12, 2008.

"A man sitting in a mountain pass --
robed in clouds, tricked out in sunset's rose.
In his fingers a fragrant flower, to pass along,
but the road's so long and hard to climb!
In his mind: disappointment and doubt;
old as he is, he's accomplished nothing.
People laugh at him, call him a cripple,
yet he stands alone -- constant, untouched."
- Han Shan

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on November 5, 2008.

"I wanted to go off to the eastern cliff--
how many years now I've planned the trip?
Yesterday, I pulled myself up by the vines,
but wind and fog forced me to stop halfway.
The path was narrow, and my clothes kept catching,
the moss so spongy I couldn't move my feet,
So I stopped under this red cinnamon tree.
I guess I'll lay my head on a cloud and sleep."
- Han Shan

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on October 29, 2008.

"I think of all the places I've been,
chasing from one famous spot to another.
Delighting in mountains, I scaled the mile-high peaks;
loving the water, I sailed a thousand rivers.
I held farewell parties with my friends in Lute Valley;
I brought my zither and played on Parrot Shoals.
Who would guess I'd end up under a pine tree,
clasping my knees in the whispering cold?"
- Han Shan

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on October 22, 2008.

"Now I have a single robe,
not made of gauze or of figured silk.
Do you ask what color it is?
Not crimson, nor purple either.
Summer days I wear it as a cloak,
in winter it serves for a quilt.
Summer and winter in turn I use it;
year after year, only this."
- Han Shan

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

First Steps: An Introduction to Zen Practice Weekend with Rinsen and the Toledo Zen Center Sangha, August 21, 22, 23, 2009.



For more information or to register see toledozen.org or send an email to info@toledozen.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on October 15, 2008.

On the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, Rinsen talks about Atonement and the Zen way of working with it.

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on October 8, 2008.


For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on September 24, 2008.

"A Layman asked: 'I'm grateful for your teaching of the unborn, but I find that thoughts easily come up as a result of my ingrained bad habits, and when I'm distracted by them, I can't wholeheartedly realize the unborn. How can I put my faith totally in the unborn Buddha Mind?'

"The Master said: 'When you try to stop your rising thoughts, you create a duality between the mind that does the stopping and the mind that's being stopped, so you'll never have peace of mind.  Just have faith that thoughts don't originally exist, but only arise and cease temporarily in response to what you see and hear without any actual substance of their own.'"

- From Master Bankei's Hogo Instructions: Duality.


For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on September 17, 2008.

"Well, the interesting thing is, that where that difficulty is, when
you're honest, is the edge of our practice.  That's where the edge is
for you."
- Rinsen

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on September 3, 2008.

"Turn around the light to shine within, then just return.
The vast inconceivable source can't be faced or turned away from.
Meet the ancestral teachers, be familiar with their instruction,
bind grasses to build a hut, and don't give up.
Let go of hundreds of years and relax completely.
Open your hands and walk, innocent."
- Shih-Tou

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on August 20, 2008.

"I've built a grass roof hut, where there's nothing of value.
After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap.
When it was completed, fresh weeds appeared.
Now it's been lived in - covered by weeds.
The person in the hut lives here calmly,
not stuck to inside, outside, or in between."
-Shih-Tou

"When you can get past the 'It's not OK' about 'It's not OK,' and just be OK with 'It's not OK,' then, OK!"
-Rinsen

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Recorded at the Toledo Zen Center on August 17, 2008, this afternoon workshop discussion explores the teachings of Shih-T'ou with Rinsen.

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Recorded at the Toledo Zen Center on August 17, 2008, this afternoon workshop discussion explores the teachings of Shih-T'ou with Rinsen.

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on August 6, 2008.

"All of the senses and all of the things sensed -
they interact without interacting.
Interacting, they permeate each other,
yet each remains in its own place.
By nature, forms differ in shape and appearance.
By nature, sounds bring pleasure or pain.
In darkness, the fine and mediocre accord;
brightness makes clear and murky distinct."
- Shih-T'ou, Identity of Relative and Absolute

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on July 30, 2008.

"The mind of the great sage of India was intimately conveyed from West to East.
Among human beings are wise ones and fools, but in the Way there is no northern or southern patriarch."
- Shih-T'ou, Identity of Relative and Absolute

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Rinsen's talk from the Toledo Zen Center community retreat, December 14, 2008.

Jay Rinsen Weik leads a retreat workshop at the Toledo Zen Center on July 27, 2008.

"I've built a grass roof hut, where there's nothing of value.
After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap.
When it was completed, fresh weeds appeared.
Now it's been lived in - covered by weeds.
The person in the hut lives here calmly,
not stuck to inside, outside, or in between."
-- Shih-T'ou

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Rinsen's Zazenkai talk on December 14th, 2008.

A talk by Rinsen at the Toledo Zen Center's community retreat. December 12, 2008. Part 1 of 4.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik leads a retreat workshop at the Toledo Zen Center on July 27, 2008.

"Shih-Tou's awakening happened as he read this passage from the teachings of the early scholar monk Seng-Chow:

"'The Ultimate Self is empty and void.  Though it lacks form, the myriad things are all of its making.  One who understands the myriad things as the Self, isn't that a sage?'

"That seeming dichotomy right there, the myriad things and the self, the form, the empty, the void, the relative and the absolute became the essential insight that Shih-Tou would plumb the depths of and elucidate in a way that hadn't happened before him, to such a degree that his 'Identity of Relative and Absolute' is a teaching that we chant to this day."

Note: This talk also addresses what it means to "sit with" koans as a practice, and how it relates to concentration practices.

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Jay Rinsen Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on July 16, 2008.

"Mostly, our mind remains fixed in what's called a dualistic state...which means being trapped, unawaredly in a way of perceiving the universe such that everything is shattered, separate and distinct... In the practice of Zen, there is uncovered another way of perceiving, a way that's not bound by the traps of this and that, or the distinctions of high and low... You have to be willing to drop your images of what God is to be able to really see God's face. As long as you have an image in your mind, your mental construction of what you think that's supposed to be, there's a block. There's a stage at which having an image can be a useful thing.  There's a stage at which it becomes a problem and needs to be transcended."

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Visited by a local University World Religions class, Rinsen contextualizes Zen practice and awakening within religious Tradition.

"Most religious traditions are founded with the experience or essential insight of an individual or group of individuals who have some unique way of perceiving themselves and the world that fits the society that they find themselves in, in a way that hadn't happened before."

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on June 11, 2008.

"Develop meditation that is like the earth, for when you develop meditation that is like the earth, agreeable and disagreeable contexts will not invade your mind and remain. Just as people throw clean things and dirty things, excrement, urine, spittle, pus and blood on the earth, and the earth is not horrified, humiliated or disgusted because of that." --Buddha

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on June 4, 2008.

"One of the primary ways that we do great harm to ourselves and to those around us is by becoming attached to a particular view. 'Attached' here means a very specific thing: it means sort of an unexamined clinging that has almost a panting, desperate quality to it. The majority of these views, these opinions that we hold, are actually unknown to us, ironically enough. They're more or less unconscious."

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on May 28, 2008.

"Long seeking it through others, I was far from reaching it.
Now I go by myself and I meet it everywhere.
I now am not it, and just now, it is nothing but myself.
Understanding this way, I can be as I am."
-Master Dong-Shan

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on May 21, 2008.

"In studying the teachings of the Buddhadharma, in studying reality, what we're actually studying is ourselves.... Ironically enough, the way of studying those teachings, the way of studying that Self, is that you have to get the Self out of the picture.... What that means, what that's pointing to, is the direct experience of your life. The direct experience of experience itself, free from the conditionings and the boundaries of the limited mind. What happens, then, is that you become awakened by everything. Everywhere you go, you encounter the teachings."

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik leads a retreat workshop at the Toledo Zen Center on May 18, 2008.

"Styling himself a latter-day Vimalakirti framed Wang Wei's dual life in the most positive terms. Not as a split or a straddle, one foot in the affairs in state, the other in monkhood, but as a unity; the best of both worlds. It states his understanding that fundamentally there are not two worlds, pure and impure, and that a true person of the Way may go anywhere unhindered." --The Roaring Stream

For more information about the Toledo Zen Center, please visit toledozen.org. The Toledo Zen Center is a member of the Hermitage Heart Sangha, online at hermitageheart.org.