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.