Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on May 21, 2008.

"In studying the teachings of the Buddhadharma, in studying reality, what we're actually studying is ourselves.... Ironically enough, the way of studying those teachings, the way of studying that Self, is that you have to get the Self out of the picture.... What that means, what that's pointing to, is the direct experience of your life. The direct experience of experience itself, free from the conditionings and the boundaries of the limited mind. What happens, then, is that you become awakened by everything. Everywhere you go, you encounter the teachings."

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.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik leads a retreat workshop at the Toledo Zen Center on May 18, 2008.

"Styling himself a latter-day Vimalakirti framed Wang Wei's dual life in the most positive terms. Not as a split or a straddle, one foot in the affairs in state, the other in monkhood, but as a unity; the best of both worlds. It states his understanding that fundamentally there are not two worlds, pure and impure, and that a true person of the Way may go anywhere unhindered." --The Roaring Stream

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.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik leads a retreat workshop at the Toledo Zen Center on May 18, 2008.

"Mindful creativity - or Zen art, if you will - requires a certain kind of consciousness to be able to really call itself Zen art. There's a quality required, expressed in the body, of tranquillity; open, receptive, clear, awake presence. It's absolutely essential. In other words, not discriminating, not judgmental, not tangled up in ideas and concepts."

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.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik leads a retreat workshop at the Toledo Zen Center on May 18, 2008.

Hidden on this mountain, many Buddhist monks
Chant sutras, meditate together;
Men on distant city walls gazing towards the peaks
See only white, enshrouding clouds.

-Wang Wei, A Poem to my Brothers and Sisters

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.

In honor of the first anniversary of the Drinking Gourd Podcast, Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik gives an interview at the Toledo Zen Center on October 22, 2008.

"When I finally got to see a full-out Zen monastery, I was hooked. It really helped me by providing a specific way of working on this, and working with this whole contemplative intelligence, that I couldn't find in the Western approach."

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.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on May 14, 2008.

"To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many people, to want to help everyone and everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful." -Thomas Martin, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

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.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on May 7, 2008.

"If with kindly generosity one merely has the wish to soothe the aching heads of other beings, such merit knows no bounds. No need to speak, then, if the wish to drive away the endless pain of each and every living being, bringing them unbounded virtues." -Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva

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.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik gives a talk and leads discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on April 30, 2008.

"How do you take a spiritually awakened individual and how does that individual engage their life? What are the qualities of an awakened being in the world? ...One of the aspects that you'll find in any of the traditions is there's an embracing of this sort of luminal not-knowing."

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.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik leads a talk and discussion at the Toledo Zen Center on April 23, 2008.

"Elements of the self come and go like clouds, without purpose. Greed, hate, and delusion appear and disappear like ocean foam. When you reach the heart of reality, you find neither self nor other, and even the worst kind of karma dissolves at once." -Yung-Chia

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.

Jay Rinsen Chikyo Weik leads a retreat workshop at the Toledo Zen Center on April 20, 2008.

"Let others criticise you. Let them condemn you. Trying to set the sky on fire, they'll just end up exhausted. I hear abusive words as though I were drinking ambrosia; everything melts, and suddenly I enter the inconceivable. When you understand the real value of abuse, your worst critic becomes a wise friend. If harsh words raise no waves of bitterness or pride, how better to show the persistence and compassion of the unborn?" -Yung-Chia

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.