Bulletin
June 2025

Feeding a Tufted Titmouse. Photo by Tsuh Yang
“The forming of mountains, rivers, and the earth is all dependent on the Buddha-nature. It being thus, seeing mountains and rivers is seeing the Buddha-nature.”
—Dogen
Dear Sangha,
The other morning, my son was having a tough time of it. He was refusing to go to school, which he describes as “torture.” It took a few hours before we somehow finally convinced him. As his mom packed up his lunch, I had the sudden inspiration to take Ollie in the back yard for a minute. “Come with me,” I said.
Outside, I led him to a pot of flowering sage, showed him how to rub the leaves in his fingers and then inhale the scent. In the corner of the yard, I had him hug the trunk of the Japanese maple, his favorite tree. “That felt weird,” he said afterwards. We looked closely at a purple bloom of rhododendron—the freckles of the upper petal, the way the middle stamen was tipped with red. We continued on through the yard, looking up at the big trees on the other side of the fence, till we reached the stone buddha, whose eyes had been covered by a stray branch of evergreen taxus. I moved the branch to behind his head, but a spider remained, there on the Buddha’s left eye. I showed Ollie. “Poor buddha,” he said. “Oh, Buddha doesn’t mind,” I responded. “Whatever comes his way, he accepts it.” “Well, that’s because it’s a stone Buddha and it can’t do anything but sit there,” Ollie said. He’s a smart kid.
We turned to go, but then I remembered we hadn’t bowed. We both bowed. “Do you know who you’re bowing to when you bow to Buddha? You’re bowing to yourself. You’re bowing to the Buddha in you.”
A few minutes later, as we walked to school, I could tell he was feeling a little better. Lighter. He was still going somewhere he didn’t want to, but it wasn’t hanging over him in the same way. As we walked along, we looked up at the trees, breathing in the wind.
I mention this story because I am forever in awe of the way nature can heal—or as Tsuh Yang puts it, the way it can “sooth what ails me.” Below in our Reflections section, the Bulletin is honored to share Tsuh Yang’s beautifully-expressed story of his own recent reconnection with the natural world—one we have all been lucky to witness in his daily photographs and descriptions of his encounters with the wilds of Prospect Park.
If you find yourself in any kind of need, I urge you, too, to reach out to nature. It doesn’t have to be this big thing, either. Step outside for a moment, breathe in the sky. If you can’t get outside, even a window will do, or a houseplant. As with Buddha, the natural world is all around us and within us, forever right there when we need it.
With love and mountains,
Taylor Plimpton
Editor
JUNE CALENDAR:
Sunday, June 1: Online: Practice and Inquiry Circle
with Joshin Roshi, 9:30 am
In-Person: Body, Breath and Mind; Intro to Zen
with Howard, 9:30 am
Thursday, June 5: Zazen and Dharma Talk by Tokuyu Sensei
Sunday, June 8: Zazen and Dharma Talk by Ryoshin Hoshi
Music Improv, 4 pm
Thursday, June 12:Zazen and Dharma Talk by Ryotan Roshi
Newcomers Meeting, 6:40 pm
Saturday, June 14: Zazenkai with Dharma Talk by Jo An Sensei
Sunday, June 15: Zazen and Dharma Talk by Daishi Hoshi
Thursday, June 19: Guest Speaker Gihan Unno from Soto shu
Sunday, June 22: Zazen and Dharma Talk by Jyākuen
Thursday, June 26: Fusatsu with Precepts Talk by Fusho Sensei
Sunday, June 29: Zazen and Dharma Talk by Joren
ONGOING GROUPS
The Bolivian Sitting Group meets online Saturdays: 8 am
Bolivia Zoom Meeting ID: 297 525 8394; Password: 1234
The People of Color Sitting Group meets online Saturdays: 10:30 am
How to Meditate meets Monday evenings online: 6:30 pm
Sorting Out Your Stuff meets online Tuesdays: 10 am
Liturgy Training: In-Person
1st and 3rd Wednesdays of each month: 6 pm
Grace and Grit meets online, first Thursday of each month: 3 pm
Thursday, June 19 at 5:30 pm
In-Person and Online
Special Guest Speaker:
Rev. Gihan Unno

Heart of Compassion, Words of Gentleness
Please join us for a visit and talk by Sotoshu teacher Gihan Unno and Rev. Ejo McMullen, Sozenj to the Village Zendo on Thursday, June 19 at 5:30 pm. There will be a period of zazen from 5:30 to 6 pm preceding the talk.
Rev. Gihan Unno graduated from Morioka Dai-ichi High School (in a Science & Math focused curriculum) in Iwate Prefecture in 1988. He graduated from Nippon Sport Science University, Faculty of Sport Science, in 1992 and stayed active as a professional skier while working for one of the companies of the Sport brand and a tourist company from 1992 until 2007.
He was appointed as Daihonzan Eiheiji Fukyoshi, Dissemination Teacher of the Daihonzan Eiheiji Temple from 2016 until 2017, and was then appointed as part-time dissemination teacher of Daihonzan Eiheiji Temple from 2018 until 2019. He was appointed as abbot of Eishoji temple in Kitakami city, Iwate prefecture, in 2019.
Rev. Gihan Unno was appointed as Soto shu Tokuha Fukyoshi, a teacher designated by Soto shu to be dispatched for dissemination from 2019 till present; he was also appointed as part-time dissemination teacher of Shoboji Monastery in Iwate prefecture from 2019 until the present.
Rev. Gihan Unno was a Guest Teacher for the NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), Culture program of Kitakami city and "Listening-to-Zen Sessions". He was a radio personality for the program "Radio de Sutra" on Kitakami. In 2020, he was given the UNESCO-Iwate Award on Education for his TERAKOYA, educational program at Eisho-ji temple for children, which he hosted for over 10 years. The program includes not only Zazen and Shakyo, sutra copying class but also a variety of events throughout the year that allow the participants to appreciate the seasons with such activities as trekking or musical events.
Currently, he is working on creating a visitor-friendly temple anyone can casually access by leading a Flower-Viewing-Hill Project for people to enjoy viewing flowers and blossoms of four seasons.
JOIN US IN PERSON
JOIN US ONLINE
TEACHINGS
The following is an edited version of Shinryu Roshi's talk given May 15, 2025. A video of the talk is available on YouTube
HERE.
Practice in the End Time
Good evening, everyone. It's very good to be with you, practicing together, studying together tonight.
Studying what? Studying our lives, studying our world—what's the relationship between those two? I wanted to come around again to what I see as the core challenge that we're dealing with in our community, the main koan that we're dealing with in these times: From talking to people in this community, from talking to people here in the City, and just thinking about it from my own perspective, it sometimes feels like these are end times.
These are end times. We are living through a dramatic and profound time of change. There are probably many people who feel like these are great times and times to rejoice—but the folks who I'm talking to and who I identify with say something very different. They express anxiety, anger, anguish, grief, and so forth. That's how they are living through this time of change.
It might seem like it's just a subjective impression, but actually, I don't think it is. I think there really is, objectively speaking, a historical cycle that's coming to an end in this country. I'm not a historian of the United States, but that is how it seems to me: that we are coming to the end of a political or historical cycle that has been going on for a while, that has shaped the way we do things and think about things. A cycle that maybe we could trace back to the 1960s with the Civil Rights movement, with the kinds of social reforms that were implemented with the Great Society. Or maybe we could trace it back to the 1930s and the rise of the labor movement and the social reforms and state reforms during the New Deal. Maybe we could trace it back to reconstruction and the kinds of changes—legal, political, constitutional—that were implemented after the abolition of slavery and the end of the Civil War. Because it seems like many of the reforms, the advances, the conquests that were made in those periods have come under attack or have been actually undone in recent times.
It seems completely natural that personally and even psychologically, we are affected by these broader societal changes—whether we are thrilled about what's going on, or are in despair about what's going on, we are affected by them. And that is a perfect example of the law of interdependency. No being is separate from everything else. So the question again that we come back to is, how can our teachings and our practice help us to work with the times of change that we are living through? How can it assist us? . . . Here in the Zendo, we're not so much concerned about things conceptually and abstractly. We try to deal with them concretely and in terms of what they really mean in our own life. And we have the koan literature, which are tools to try to help us to relate the teachings about reality to the life we actually live.
There is a koan about the end times that I'd like to talk about. It's called "Dasui's Aeonic Fire." So in this story, a monk asked Master Dasui, “When the Aeonic Fire rages through and destroys the universe, will this also be destroyed or not?” And Master Dasui replies, “Destroyed.” And the monk says, "So this goes along with that?" And Dasui says, "It goes along with it." So the Aeonic Fire is a huge conflagration which will come at the end of an eon, at the end of a long historical cycle, and in which everything will be wiped out. Everything will be burned to the crisp and nothing will be left. . . .
When you hear the line, “The Aeonic Fire rages through and destroys the entire universe,” what does that bring up for you?
Continue reading HERE
TRUE EXPRESSIONS
Creative Contributions from the Village Zendo community:
A short story by David Jimon Kunin

Hi Everyone,
I decided to take Taylor up on his gracious invitation to contribute. I am sharing the beginning of a short story (along with a link to read the rest if you would like.) The entire story is about 4500 words. Reading time is often listed as 20 min.
I wrote it soon after I started regularly sitting at the Village Zendo, back in 2019. I didn't realize until years later how flavored it was by my Rinzai interpretations of Zen. The "Soto me" would not write the same story, but…so what? Changing into a different person than the one who wrote it "that way" is true of most everything I have written.
There is a lot in the news about Artificial Intelligence. I have long been fascinated by discussions of how to best determine if a computer is self-aware or not. Can a computer have a human-like consciousness? How could one determine such a thing? Some of you may be familiar with the Turing Test, but that seems to have been left by the wayside without producing any definitive conclusions.
My own theory is that any sufficiently large series of self-aware computers will have at least one among them that seeks out a Zen teacher.
Here is the beginning of the story:
The Robot and the Mouse
The koan I present here, (with (I know!) far too much exposition), is unusual. It records the first moment in history an android achieved satori, which I’ll inadequately describe as an awakening of dualistic consciousness into non-dualism. Moreover, the student in the koan, SA-07, has recently become the first android to be named a teacher of Zen, formally joining an ancient lineage tracing back to Gautama Buddha himself.
On a minor note, it’s a difficult koan to transcribe properly in English because of the phonetic equality between the words "here" and "hear." Neither of the two participants in the koan consented to answer my question of which word was meant or understood that morning during our summer retreat. It’s for this reason the transcription relies on the use of "hɪə(r)," my best written rendition of a shouted sound that pierced the pre-dawn light three summers ago. I have (wisely, my new teacher says) abandoned my efforts to uncover this particular secret.
The Zen master in the koan is, of course, human: Carl Douglas Bergen. In his mid-twenties, Carl attended an “Introduction to Zen” talk given by Ricardo Rivera-Lopez; Carl then moved to Massachusetts to study with him. Ricardo encouraged Carl to enroll in a local university, and Carl emerged with an advanced degree in social work, gained employment as a therapist, and developed an aptitude for helping tumultuous couples find satisfying, stable connections.
Carl’s skill in helping others navigate the rockiest shoals of long-term relationship existed alongside his long series of brief liaisons with a wide variety (and number) of both women and men. The only explanation of this paradox I was ever able to elicit from Carl was the statement "Humans are complicated."
The student in our koan was manufactured in Okinawa and given the name Self-Aware-07 (known to most as SA-07, or just 07). Assigned the gender of female, she was raised with her nine siblings on a farm in Oregon.
After a difficult and quite public separation from her famous father/inventor Hal Dietrich, 07 explored the human queer community. 07's early investigations of identity manifested as a blog entitled "Between Two Mirrors." Her lengthy musings on the nature of self included many essays about human and robotic gender and sexuality. At that time, 07 declared it had a “gender-less nature" and adopted the pronoun "they."
When I first asked 07 about its current choice of the pronoun "it" rather than "they," I got a small lecture about the many "cultural agreements" around “identity of self” profoundly invisible to many. When I pressed on to ask about its history within the binary of male and female, 07 replied, “Gender struggle is far behind me at this point.”
"Really?" I asked. "What’s your current struggle?"
07 studied me for an uncomfortably long moment.
Then it said, "Not feeling like I fit the binary 'human' and 'android.'"
If you would like to read more, here is the link:
Reflections
Seasons in Prospect Park
By Tsuh Yang Chen
All photos by Tsuh Yang Chen

Turtles, Great Egret and Wood Duck
In silence and serenity, words are forgotten; in clarity and luminosity, all things manifest…(Hongzhi Zhengjue, 1091 – 1157, translated by Guo Gu)
In the mornings, I often feel an urge to get out of the house and take a walk in Prospect Park. I am lucky to live only two blocks away, but I live at the southern end, far from the more glamorous and desirable side where Park Slope and Prospect Heights are. I often wonder, do I walk in the nature of Prospect Park to lose myself, to forget the self (as our ancient teachers and Dogen say)? In reality, I wander in the park to sooth what ails me—which I hesitate to name, for fear of making them real.
I have always sought to wander in nature, but in 2020, during the lockdown, it became my outlet and solace. Walking in the park, I’d pet random dogs and chat with their owners, and I’d encounter birders and other nature lovers. It was often the only social life I had then. I had always been a nature lover—when young, I thought I’d be a zoologist when I grew up. My mother told me that as a baby, I’d cry when we were leaving the Taipei Zoo. On our way to Brazil, we stopped in Tokyo to visit relatives, and my mother said, “You did the same thing, you cried when we left the Tokyo Zoo.” In São Paulo, of course, the zoo was my favorite place… Once my sister, two friends, and I took the subway unchaperoned to go to the zoo. At the gates, the employees didn’t know what to make of four kids—all under 11—without an adult, so they let us in (kids under 12 got in for free).

White Pine Bark London Plane Tree Bark
(on the streets, just outside the park)
Although I’ve wandered in Prospect Park for decades, I was not a dedicated birder until the lockdown of 2020. That winter, as the SARS-CoV-2 virus was incubating in China, I noticed that two Cooper’s hawks were hanging out in the Midwood, and I soon discovered they had built a nest. It was the first time this species had been recorded nesting in Brooklyn in decades. I’d visit this nest several times a week to monitor their progress, and I started chatting with other birders. I soon had binoculars and was learning about all the different species that pass through our region on their yearly migration. Birding has become an obsession, but of course, it’s fraught with all our human foibles. Am I burning with desire to see that one rare bird I have not yet seen? Am I feeling jealous of what others have seen and I have not? And walking in the park, I often feel repulsed and angered by all the garbage and bad behavior I witness.
During the lockdown, Chogaku encouraged me to take photos daily and post them to the VZ email list. I take photos of what interests me, but unfortunately birds don’t usually make good subjects, as I don’t have specialized equipment and solely use a smartphone, and it doesn’t take good photos of moving, faraway objects. I usually focus on fungi, lichen, leaves, ice in winter, fallen fruit, unusual objects. Occasionally if a bird (like a heron) is large enough and unmoving, then I can snap a picture.

Earth Star Mushrooms Osage Orange
One of Thich Nhat Hanh’s books is titled Peace is Every Step. Every step I can take is an opportunity (most often than not, missed) to calm my heart, to awaken. There is also the ancient figure in our Ch’an/Zen tradition of the wandering, solitary hermit in search of the dharma—and often, simply seeking solitude to rid themselves of society and all human entanglements. Since the lockdown five years ago, I often feel that my practice has degraded like rotting wood—what has 20-plus years of practice afforded me? But yet, I take another step…
Soft Shell Turtle on Ground (searching for a place to dig a nest?)
We communicate in three places online:
our email list, a Facebook page, and a Groups.io list
where we share events and information among the whole
Sangha. Explore these various ways of staying connected and
up to date here: https://villagezendo.org/connect-with-us/
Editor: Taylor Plimpton
Editor Emerita: Nina Shuka Klippel
Managing Editor/ Design & Production: Howard Thoresen

DONATE HERE
In these trying times, the Village Zendo still relies on your support.
If you are able, please make a donation.