Zen poetry and prose from dogo
breath
No Body at Home
As we explore the body through the breath, it’s necessary to have a trusted guide on your journey into uncharted world. Otherwise, you can end up practicing in unwise ways as I have before. You also need an experienced teacher to tell you when you’re not trying hard enough and when you’re trying too hard. […]
Breathe Easy
A simple meditation object is oftentimes the best object for beginners to meditation. When your mind is running wild and your body feels even more restless, it can hard to settle down. This is particularly true when you’ve chosen to focus on an object that doesn’t provide much substance. That’s why learning to breathe in […]
Breathless
As a teen, I’d occasionally suffer from intense stomachaches, as result of food allergies or physiological imbalances in the body. Witnessing my battles with stomach pain, my father gave me specific instructions for how to find ease, even though I felt my body was under relentless attack. “When you feel pain, breathe as deeply and […]
Simple and Direct
A simple solution was the right solution to my meditation problem. But the principle of simplicity when applied on its own can lead to reductionism that ironically makes finding the solution to a problem even more difficult and complex. That’s because following a basic principle cannot provide a complete picture of reality. Simplicity must be […]
Delusions and Diversions
A direct experience of death speaks to the heart in a way that philosophical musings never can. There was a time when I was struggling with my meditation during a stay at a forest monastery on the East Coast of the United States. I was experimenting with a wide assortment of techniques to calm my […]
In…sigh…t
is how we breathe, a light, delicate, clean breath, bathing the tonguewith a core of earth,the way sliced apples taste on a crisp fall day George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, […]
Tears of Tonglen
There is no timeline forshamans we dreamthrough our heartwhile stayingin the centerletting go of the softflow of careswhat we are tryingto hold without being together