Appamada

This is the link to Stillness was a gift : https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct6wyn

2026-02-02 | Depth In Practice | Not Two: The Appamada Story by Appamada

This Sunday, Nate opens our practice period theme, "Living in Sangha". In the first of a three-part series of dharma talks, we explore sangha not as comfort or belonging alone, but as the ground that reshapes how we show up in the world. Grounding in Dogen’s teachings in Tenzo Kyōkun (Instructions to the Cook), we remind ourselves how practicing fierce, attentive care together becomes both a refuge and an act of resistance.

link to science and zen https://scienceofzen.org Link to Mary Oliver poem https://wordsfortheyear.com/2018/04/14/at-the-river-clarion-by-mary-oliver/

2026-01-26 | Depth In Practice | Not Two: The Appamada Story by Appamada

2026-01-25 | Head Student Entering Ceremony | Seren8y by Appamada

2026-01-19 | Depth In Practice Not Two: The Appamada Story by Appamada

May the vulnerable be guarded with love. May the powerful awaken to wisdom. May the earth and its being be cherished. May peace take root in every direction. ~Jack Kornfield Praying It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak. Thank you ~ Mary Oliver Instructions for Having a Soul Take it out in the rain sometimes. It has vast, invisible wings that gather dirt and need rinsing. When it tries to kill you that is because you've forgotten to let it look into someone's eyes for longer than a minute. It needs that the way a bee needs nectar in the early morning dew. Every so often, take it on a journey. Let it read long, hard books and let it stare into the depths of the sea. Yes, you can give it chips and whiskey but from time to time let it kneel in a place that is holy like the simple cathedral of the willows. All it wants is to live, to keep becoming. Nourish it, and it puts down roots, it opens. But starve it, and the mind, the flesh is empty; the world breaks down; symphonies go unwritten; the rockets fall; the children die in flames. Listen. It is not too late to wake it. Say the names of the wild, the forgotten things: bluebird, red wolf, robin; violet, child, clover. You cannot save the world but you can open the window for the trapped wren in the cellar. Read a book to a blind man, to your father. Tell a child you do believe her anger. Make your life the first life that you save. —Joseph Fasano

2026-01-18 | Way-Seeking Mind Talk | Q. by Appamada

2026-01-13 I Inquiry I Actualization of love Part 2 I Suzanne Kilkus by Appamada

2026-01-12 | Depth In Practice | Not Two: The Appamda Story by Appamada

Selected Gathas from Zen Vows for Daily Life, by Robert Aitken Roshi Watching the sky before dawn I vow with all beings to open those flawless eyes that welcomed the Morning Star. __________ Waking up in the morning I vow with all beings to listen to those whom I love, especially to things they don’t say. __________ Preparing to enter the shower I vow with all beings to wash off the last residue of thoughts about being pure. __________ Preparing to enter the shower I vow with all beings to cleanse this body of Buddha and go naked into the world. __________ Turning to use the toilet I vow with all beings to honor my body’s knowledge of what to retain and discard. __________ Lighting a candle for Buddha, I vow with all beings to honor your clear affirmation: “Forget yourself and you’re free.” __________ With the sound of the temple bell I vow with all beings to offer my skull as a bell in the echoing chiliocosms. * __________ When thoughts form an endless procession, I vow with all beings to notice the spaces between them and give the thrushes a chance. __________ Taking my seat in the Zendo I vow with all beings to acknowledge that here is the sacred: this bottom, this body, this breath. __________ When people show anger and malice I vow with all beings to listen for truth in the message, ignoring the way it is said. __________ When I’m worried about my attachments I vow with all beings to remember interdependence: if I weren’t attached I’d be dead. __________ In dealing with questions of sex I vow with all beings to recall the perennial precepts: “Don’t harm, don’t steal, don’t exploit.” __________ Kicking a chair in the dark I vow with all beings to let the pain and surprise slow me down to this step, this step. __________ When everything loses its meaning I vow with all beings to honor this intimate teaching that clears my dependence away. __________ When a car goes by late at night I vow with all beings to remember the lonely bakers who secretly nurture us all. __________ Whenever I’m tempted to judge I vow with all beings to remember we both have two nostrils and the same implacable fate. __________ Watching the stars after midnight I vow with all beings to remember the point of existence has no dimension at all. __________ When roosters crow before dawn I vow with all beings to acknowledge each voice in the chorus, there you are, there you are, friend. * In Buddhist cosmology, a chiliocosm is a “thousandfold world system,” a unit in a hierarchical structure of multiple universes.

2026-01-06 I Inquiry I Actualization of love I Joel Barna by Appamada

2026-01-05 | Depth In Practice | Not Two: The Appamada Story by Appamada

2026-01-04 | Dharma Talk | Vow | Sandra Medina Bocangel by Appamada

2025-12-25 | Way-Seeking Mind Talk | C. Seren8y by Appamada

Annunciation ~Marie Howe Even if I don’t see it again - nor ever feel it I know it is and that if once it hailed me it ever does - And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction not as towards a place, but it was a tilting within myself, as one turns a mirror to flash the light where it isn’t - I was blinded like that - and swam in what shone at me only able to endure it by being no one and so specifically myself I thought I’d die from being loved like that. Gabriel’s Annunciation ~ Jan Richardson For a moment I hesitated on the threshold. For the space of a breath I paused, unwilling to disturb her last ordinary moment, knowing that the next step would cleave her life: that this day would slice her story in two, dividing all the days before from all the ones to come. The artists would later depict the scene: Mary dazzled by the archangel, her head bowed in humble assent, awed by the messenger who condescended to leave paradise to bestow such an honor upon a woman, and mortal. Yet I tell you it was I who was dazzled, I who found myself agape when I came upon her— reading, at the loom, in the kitchen, I cannot now recall; only that the woman before me— blessed and full of grace long before I called her so— shimmered with how completely she inhabited herself, inhabited the space around her, inhabited the moment that hung between us. I wanted to save her from what I had been sent to say. Yet when the time came, when I had stammered the invitation (history would not record the sweat on my brow, the pounding of my heart; would not note that I said Do not be afraid to myself as much as to her) it was she who saved me— her first deliverance— her Let it be not just declaration to the Divine but a word of solace, of soothing, of benediction for the angel in the doorway who would hesitate one last time— just for the space of a breath torn from his chest— before wrenching himself away from her radiant consent, her beautiful and awful yes.

2025-12-15 | Depth In Practice | Not Two: The Appamada Story by Appamada

2025.12.14 | Dharma Talk | Forgiveness | Nate Smalley by Appamada

link to poem : https://www.poetryverse.com/emily-dickinson-poems/you-cannot-put-a-fire-out