Zazen is Not Meditation - Sensei Tom Dharma-Joy Reichert - 6/14/26

And the origins of this talk are that it's all Miyoki's fault, as we all know it usually is.

Myogi recently moved her desk in the office upstairs in the Sangha house.

Now you have to get through two locked doors to get to her.

The only person who's further away from the door is Jyotai, who sits with the computers in Iceland.

But in any event, so Miyuki moved her desk.

And in the great Zen center tradition, I noticed behind her new desk, there was just this pile of paper, because there's piles of paper everywhere.

And on the top of it, there was a piece of paper that said, Zazen is not the same as meditation.

And I thought, wow, how great is that? And then I said, oh, I have to give a talk about that.

So here we are.

Because my teacher, Egyoku, who is going to be showing up here on Tuesday, she used to say the same thing.

And for the same reason.

So what I found, that paper, which I snatched to find only there was a whole pile of them.

So at some point, they must have been connected to either a talk or something.

So the paper was the condensed version of a talk given by Reverend Isho Fujita.

And I'm going to talk this today about a number of these different Zen teachers.

But in particular, I'm going to talk about a few people in his lineage.

So Reverend Fujita is a really interesting guy.

He's come and given a talk here.

Perhaps it was on that particular topic.

But he is the grandson in the Dharma, Uchiyama Roshi, who many of you know.

And Uchiyama Roshi, who wrote Opening the Hand of Thought, was in himself, was the Dharma successor of Kodo Sawaki Roshi.

And so I'm going to talk mostly about some teachings that each of those three gave over the course of the last hundred years or so.

So...

And all three of them, unquestionably, are really known for their propagation of the practice of Zazen.

And Zazen as the core and heart of our practice.