Tuscaloosa Zen Meditation Circle

10/10/2026

Announcement for Sunday 10/11. All are welcomed to join for live/zoom hybrid meditation this Sunday. No meditation this Thursday.

We are meeting IN PERSON/HYBRID this Sunday, at our regular location at Lifeline Solutions, 315 Main Avenue, Historic Downtown Northport, 35476 (Livewell Studio - immediately inside front door).

To join via Zoom please click this link: https://mailchi.mp/a24c3c01b718/6zi7qo4i37-10156870

ZEN PASSAGE OF THE WEEK:

ZEN WON’T SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS
Zen can help you find your head, but it won’t necessarily solve all your problems. I remember hearing a Zen master say, “Zen will never get rid of your problems. The best it can do is to teach you how to deal with them.”

My mother-in-law happened to be in the room at that time, and she said, “Why get involved, then? What good is it if you’re not going to get rid of your problems?”

The Zen cook doesn’t believe in Utopias. Problems will always arise, both in our individual life and in society. It’s the Zen cook’s job to cook a meal and then clean the dirty dishes. Some people might say that cleaning the dishes is solving the problem of dirty dishes. But it’s not, because you are going to eat another meal. The work of the Zen cook is cooking meals and cleaning dishes. It’s an endless process.

The basic problem, actually, is how to get rid of the idea that we’re going to get rid of our problems. Only then can we relate directly with the real issues of our life.

--Bernie Glassman, Zen Teacher, Founder of the Zen Peacemaker Order, Aeronautical Engineer, Social Justice Activist, Author, in Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master’s Lessons in Living a Life that Matters, p.37-38.

10/04/2026

All are welcomed for zoom meditation this Sunday 10/4 and Thursday 10/8. (Please join us via zoom only for Zen meditation this Sunday. Our in-person/hybrid meditation will be on the 2nd Sunday of October (11th) rather than the usual 1st Sunday (4th) because Hank & Lynn were in Auburn this weekend to lead an Alabama Meditation Network retreat.)

Please click link for Zoom information: https://mailchi.mp/b4c5c9503294/6zi7qo4i37-10156741

ZEN PASSAGE OF THE WEEK: We put an emphasis on the actual practice of zazen or shikantaza, on how to be concentrated on what we do moment after moment. Shikantaza is to live in each moment, so you can apply shikantaza in your everyday life. The point is to be concentrated on what you do in its true sense, without seeking for anything inside or outside. It is to do everything in harmony with your surroundings. When you ignore your actual activity, thinking about something else, that is not real practice.

If you miss the practice in your everyday life, you will regret it. The only way to be yourself and to be with everyone is by doing your best. When you are with everyone, you are keeping the precepts without knowing it.

If you become you yourself, and if your practice includes everything, moment after moment the precepts are with you. That may be more important than a verbal transmission of precepts. If I try to explain the written precepts, it takes time. But how you keep them, in short, is to live in each moment and to be sincere with yourself always.

----Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Teacher and Author, in Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life. Penguin Publishing Group, pp 120 (There is Only One Way for You to Go).

All are invited to join us. Both Sunday and Thursday groups include a 30-minute meditation followed by a short teaching and facilitated community discussion.    Sundays we are reading together from Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life by Shunryu Suzuki and Bring me the Rhinoceros...

09/27/2026

All are welcomed for zoom meditation this Sunday 9/27, no meditation this week on Thursday 10/1.

Please click link for Zoom information: https://mailchi.mp/bea521969840/6zi7qo4i37-10156605

ZEN PASSAGE OF THE WEEK:
NOTHING IS MISSING
When we meditate, we begin to see the self-sufficiency of our own mind. We don’t need to add all sorts of things. We don’t need to build ourselves up. We don’t even need to “improve” ourselves because we have everything we need right now. But we forget this. There is an old Buddhist story about a prince who was very handsome. Every morning, when he woke up, he would look at himself in the mirror and exclaim, “Ah! How beautiful!”

One day he woke up and picked up the mirror the wrong way. Because he was looking at the unpolished back of the mirror, he couldn’t see his face. He ran out of his palace into the streets yelling, “My head is gone! My head is gone!”
He went completely crazy, looking everywhere for his missing head. Finally one of his friends found him and grabbed him. “Why are you running around like this?” his friend said. “Your head isn’t missing.” “No, no, my head is gone. It’s gone,” the prince cried.

They took him back to the palace, but no matter what they said, they couldn’t calm him down. Because they didn’t have straitjackets in those days, they tied him to a pillar. Because he was screaming so much, they put a gag on him. He kept struggling […]and his friend hit him in the face.

“My head is there, after all!” the prince shouted. He was beside himself with joy. For the next few days, he went around telling everybody how wonderful and miraculous it was that he had found his head. His friends just looked at him in disbelief. But it took a long time for him to stop being so exuberant about the fact that he had found the head that had been there all along.

Like the prince who thought he had lost his head, we sometimes run all over the place looking for what we already have. Zen is a practice that ties you up and makes you sit down and stay still.

That in itself is not enough, however. Once we’ve been tied down, we need to be jolted or startled. This jolt could be subtle, like the sound of a stone hitting a bamboo, or the sight of a falling peach blossom, or the morning star. Or it could be shocking, like […] stubbing your toe. Only then do we realize that we already have our head—that we have always had our head—and that, as Dogen says, “Everything as it is is the enlightened way.”

--Bernie Glassman, Zen Teacher, Founder of the Zen Peacemaker Order, Aeronautical Engineer, Social Justice Activist, Author, in Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master’s Lessons in Living a Life that Matters, p.35.

All are invited to join us. Both Sunday and Thursday groups include a 30-minute meditation followed by a short teaching and facilitated community discussion.    Sundays we are reading together from Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life by Shunryu Suzuki and Bring me the Rhinoceros...

09/20/2026

All are welcomed for zoom meditation this Sunday and Thursday 9/20/26 and 9/24/26.

Please click link for Zoom information: https://mailchi.mp/6aa2385481a9/6zi7qo4i37-10156456

ZEN PASSAGE OF THE WEEK:
[...] We say, “If you can appreciate food, you can appreciate Dharma.” If you appreciate the real value of the absolute being of food, you can appreciate the Dharma. When your practice gets to this stage, you are said to be a good Zen student.

Some people are tall Buddhas; people like me are short Buddhas. Short or tall, good or bad, we can appreciate “things as it is,” and we can appreciate the value of each being.

We cannot ignore the ideas of good and bad, long and short, but more and more as we grow up, we must be able to appreciate things as they are. Bamboo is good, pine trees are good, oak trees are good, grass is good, darkness at night is good, frogs are good. Everything should be good. That is “every day is a good day.” Also, “nothing” is good: the bare field is good and the dark vast sky is good. We should reach this actual feeling.

----Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Teacher and Author, in Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life. Penguin Publishing Group, pp 98 (Every Day is a Good Day).

All are invited to join us. Both Sunday and Thursday groups include a 30-minute meditation followed by a short teaching and facilitated community discussion.    Sundays we are reading together from Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life by Shunryu Suzuki and Bring me the Rhinoceros...

09/13/2026

All are welcomed for zoom meditation this Sunday and Thursday 9/13/26 and 9/17/26.

Please click link for Zoom information: https://mailchi.mp/677e2f15cce0/6zi7qo4i37-10156291

ZEN PASSAGE OF THE WEEK:

There is a Zen poem that goes something like this:

When the wind stops, flowers fall. When a bird sings, the mountain becomes more calm.

This poem refers to the feeling of “there is” and “there is not.” There is, and sometimes there is not; and when there is not, sometimes there is. When a flower falls, it is because there is wind, but when there is no wind, flowers still fall. When you see a flower fall, you feel the presence of wind even more than you do when the wind is blowing. When a bird sings, you feel the calmness of the mountains even more than you did when you did not hear any sound.

----Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Teacher and Author, in Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life. Penguin Publishing Group, pp 95 (Every Day is a Good Day).

All are invited to join us. Both Sunday and Thursday groups include a 30-minute meditation followed by a short teaching and facilitated community discussion.    Sundays we are reading together from Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life by Shunryu Suzuki and Bring me the Rhinoceros...

09/05/2026

Announcement for Sunday 9/6/26 and Thursday 9/10/26. All are welcomed to join for live/zoom hybrid meditation this Sunday and zoom meditation this Thursday.

We are meeting IN PERSON/HYBRID this Sunday, at our regular location at Lifeline Solutions, 315 Main Avenue, Historic Downtown Northport, 35476 (Livewell Studio - immediately inside front door).
To join via Zoom please click this link: https://mailchi.mp/e87c82e2268f/6zi7qo4i37-10156162

ZEN PASSAGE OF THE WEEK:
You may have discrimination in the realm of thinking mind, imagination, feeling, or emotional activity. You may discriminate, saying “right or wrong,” “good or bad,” “agreeable or disagreeable,” or that you like it or don’t like it. How is it possible to reach the supreme way that is beyond discrimination and non-discrimination?

--Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Teacher and Author, in Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life. Penguin Publishing Group, pp 87 (Small Mind and Buddha Mind).

08/29/2026

All are welcomed for zoom meditation this Sunday and Thursday 8/30/26 & 9/3/26.
Please click link for Zoom information: https://mailchi.mp/beaff75df248/6zi7qo4i37-10156037

ZEN PASSAGE OF THE WEEK:
What makes a human life real and beautiful is available in every place. An insubstantial and alienated life—eating a hearty breakfast of a cardboard photo of corn flakes—is always on offer but its consolations are not consoling. In order to embrace a handmade life, you do have to be willing to deal with the Minmin lights* along with awe and fear. But you have to deal with awe and fear anyway, and when you pay attention, a continual turning toward the genuine just happens.

We can’t say that human lives have a purpose, since a purpose would be smaller than we are. It’s true though, that the impulse to give freely to the world seems to be at the bottom of the well of human intentions where the purest and clearest water arises. To be able to offer back what the world has given you, but shaped a little by your touch—that makes a true life. Eventually we find our song and remember it and sing it. And we can never know who else will sing the song, or how the story will turn out in the end; its ripples widen beyond us and there is no end in sight.

--John Tarrant, Zen Teacher, Founder of the Pacific Zen Institute, Author, in Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life. From Chapter 15 – The Master Song Man: An Australian Koan (p. 183). Shambhala.

*"In the outback [of Australia] you see mysterious moving lights, will-o’-the-wisps called Minmin; they are thought of as spirit lights and have their own creation stories and dreaming, but are considered to be dangerous."

All are invited to join us. Both Sunday and Thursday groups include a 30-minute meditation followed by a short teaching and facilitated community discussion.    Sundays we are reading together from Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life by Shunryu Suzuki and Bring me the Rhinoceros...

08/22/2026

All are welcomed for zoom meditation this Sunday and Thursday 8/23/26 and 8/27/26.
Please click link for Zoom information: https://mailchi.mp/a9daa48a4b6c/6zi7qo4i37-10155929

ZEN PASSAGE OF THE WEEK:
I HAVE OFTEN IMAGINED KOANS AS vials of ancient light; in this image, when you get the vial open, the light shines out and everything you see shines too. You can also think about koans as conversations that come out of a dreaming, out of the place that art comes from, that the universe is born from.

--John Tarrant, Zen Teacher, Founder of the Pacific Zen Institute, Author, in Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life. From Chapter 15 – The Master Song Man: An Australian Koan (p. 183). Shambhala.

All are invited to join us. Both Sunday and Thursday groups include a 30-minute meditation followed by a short teaching and facilitated community discussion.    Sundays we are reading together from Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life by Shunryu Suzuki and Bring me the Rhinoceros...

08/15/2026

Announcement for Sunday 8/16/26 and Thursday 8/20/26. All are welcomed to join for live/zoom hybrid meditation this Sunday and zoom meditation this Thursday.

We are meeting IN PERSON/HYBRID this Sunday, at our regular location at Lifeline Solutions, just across the river from their old location, 315 Main Avenue, Historic Downtown Northport, 35476 (Livewell Studio - immediately inside front door).
To join via Zoom please click this link: https://mailchi.mp/883ca37291a3/6zi7qo4i37-10155832

ZEN PASSAGE OF THE WEEK:
IF YOU ASK WHETHER you are awake or dreaming, the question itself makes life more interesting and resonant. A lot of things we do might be like finding a song to sing in a dream. If you want to solve a problem, your situation could be like [the] dreamer’s. You don’t have the song, and what’s more, you are asleep. It all seems impossible. Then you notice something odd, and it makes you curious. There is an air of the uncanny and perhaps of danger, but you sense an opening and it makes you happy. This noticing is a kind of involuntary reaching out and when you reach out like this, without thought, your hand lights upon something. It turns out to be your song.

--John Tarrant, Zen Teacher, Founder of the Pacific Zen Institute, Author, in Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life. From Chapter 15 – The Master Song Man: An Australian Koan (p. 171). Shambhala.

08/09/2026

All are welcomed to join for live/zoom hybrid meditation this Sunday 8/9/26 and zoom meditation this Thursday 8/13/26.

We are meeting IN PERSON/HYBRID this Sunday, at our regular location at Lifeline Solutions, just across the river from their old location, 315 Main Avenue, Historic Downtown Northport, 35476 (Livewell Studio - immediately inside front door).
To join via Zoom please click this link: https://mailchi.mp/790446195e52/6zi7qo4i37-10155738

ZEN PASSAGE OF THE WEEK:
In your everyday practice do you develop your idea of yourself, or do you develop Buddha mind? We should always put the Buddha mind first and the self next.

----Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Teacher and Author, in Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life. Penguin Publishing Group, pp 87 (Small Mind and Buddha Mind).