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Excerpt from Intimacy with All Things, If I am a stranger to my own mind carried away by the rise and fall of thought and feelings I am going to be blind to see the grace that abounds and the final aspect of intimacy that I want to talk about is, the cultivation of the practice of intimacy with “all things” as Dogen teaches When we forget ourselves then we are awakened by the myriad of things. This is because as one teacher puts it, The myriad things communicate their wisdom with their forms and sounds, and the emptiness, harmony, and uniqueness of the ephemeral self and the world are understood clearly. I see this as a call, as an integral part of our mindfulness practice. Through our practice we are invited to become intimate with the sunrise and sunset, slow days basked in boredom, days shorter than a heartbeat. We are invited by the silence to turn our attention to the dance of bees and butterflies, of the color blue or that scent of lilac, the sound of thunder or the crash of waves, to turn our attention to the soil, the sun, to each leaf helping us to breathe, and to become aware of the grace of clouds and their gift of rain. We are invited as we let go of the primacy of self to become aware of the support of the universe sustaining us in each thing on our plate for dinner – In this awareness, in the cultivation of intimacy with these things we can learn their wisdom we can learning from them oneness, It is in the myriad of things that we can meet in the absence of the idea of each another. That is where true intimacy is found.

Dharma talk given by Christopher Kakuyo Sensei of the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship on letting go of the past and living in the flow of Now.

Excerpt "For the past few Sundays, we have been talking about gratitude and about some of the things that get in the way of us experiencing the transformative kind of gratitude that can change our lives and lead us to our awakening. I want to continue with the theme of gratitude today by talking about gratitude and oneness. In our fellowship and lineage, we talk a lot about the way of oneness. One meaning of oneness is the transcending of the idea that we are alone when in reality we are one – We tend to see the world dualistically. We see ourselves separated from the dynamic flow of existence – but when we slow down and become aware of our integration into the wholeness of life we can see things from a non-dualistic point of view, we can come to experience the oneness of all life and how we are an integral part of that oneness. This happens when we begin to experience things as they really are, instead of just the story we have fabricated to explain reality."

Excerpt "So why this talk about deserving and not deserving – because it creates a view of the world  that cuts us off from experiencing life as it really is  - it can separate us from one another and because it is almost impossible for us to enter into a profound gratitude, a transformative gratitude while we are stuck in the cycle of reward and punishment – we are only marginal grateful for the thing we earn and unable to accept the gift that is unearned which is most of your life. Lastly,  because it can be delusional – because of our time here on earth so little of what we do is earned by ourselves but by the support of the earth and the processes that give us life, our ancestors that brought us into this world, our fellow beings, and lastly the dharma. All the countless others that have made your life possible, as Gyomay sensei teaches, "There is no I apart from others."

"Over the years we have talked a lot about our stories of self and how these stories are rarely examined, and how our sense of a solid, unchanging self is really a creation of these unexamined stories – today I would like to talk more about this – As a child I was raised to be a martyr – my mother being Catholic, unconsciously had sewed the book of martyrs deep within her heart and when I came along, mine also -……." so lets start with a quote by Guy Claxton He writes that consciousness is “a mechanism for constructing dubious stories whose purpose is to defend a superfluous and inaccurate sense of self.” So begins our podcast about our stories of self and our need for introspection, as Haya Akegarasu wrote, to identify which ones are ours and which ones were stolen, borrowed or painted on so we can give them back or scrape them off to touch our true selves.

The title of this podcast comes from a poem by Rumi. “What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle.” Here Kukuyo Sensei shares how darkness is not something the be afraid of, but something to learn from. He draws on various teachers to share their insights and his in regards to the valuable lessons we can learn from the dark, not the dark that can be tamed by electric illumination - but the wild an unknown parts of ourselves –

“ A reporter from a local newspaper came to our house to interview my wife about the Japanese tea ceremony. This report continually asked, “What is the meaning? What for? Why do you do that? What is the purposes for that?” This kind of question was directed at everything in the making tea – at every gesture, every implement. Without thinking or deliberating, my wife finally replied, “No meaning. Meaningless meaning. It is purposeless purpose.” – Gyomay Kubose Sensei Starting with this quote from his mentor, Kakuyo Sensei reflects on the meaningless meaning and purposeless purpose and how it make more sense then we might think.

“It’s important to take time to have some quiet moments in our lives, otherwise we get caught up in the busy-ness of always having something going on.” Gyomay Kubose Sensei With this quote Kakuyo Sensei shares his thoughts on the importance of Quiet in our lives and seeking out silences.

Most people don't equate Buddhism with prayer - Here Kakuyo Sensei shares his thoughts on what Buddhist prayer can be and how it can be a skillful means in our practice of the Buddha Way.

The Grace of Oneness by Kakuyo Sensei