Today is Thanksgiving Day and a Holiday. For tens of thousands of years, humankind has been giving thanks for the harvest after clearing and cultivating the land, sowing seeds, watering, and weeding. For generations we have aspired and worked – storing seeds and spades, restoring the soil and our surroundings, improving our situations and environment.

We celebrate by giving thanks to and for families, friends, rain, rivers, plants, the planet, the sun, the moon, and all that have brought such abundance. We are the outcome of our ancestors’ efforts, and those of their relatives and all relations throughout the world.

The Buddha said that religion is cultivation. Dogen, the 13^th-century Japanese Zen monk and teacher, said that the Awakened Way or Great Way is with all from the very beginning. He described the Awakened Way as a cyclical advancement of aspiration, action, awakening, and unconditioned peace.

If we make the whole more wholesome, we can…

We at the Missouri Zen Center are frequently invited to talk about Buddhism and Zen at schools and other institutions. This Civil Religion site provides a forum to engage in interfaith dialogue and discussion. While we enjoy and seek out opportunities to have these discussions, we also note the paradox of the situation. An essential characteristic of Zen Buddhism is the recognition that, ultimately, human language is incapable of expressing the truth. Language is like a finger pointing to the moon of truth. By practicing zazen, or meditation, we seek to witness truth by going beyond language and other human creations.

Language is just one of the many things that humans create. We dwell in things – cities, civilizations, castles in the air – and then we hold onto things such as money, matter, and mind. Ultimately, we are shut in and bound by these things, becoming separated (selfish, sinful) and disintegrated…