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Endless Path Zendo | Roshi Rafe MartinAuthor: Roshi Rafe Martin
Endless Path Zendo, is a lay Zen Buddhist community. Intimate and non-institutional in atmosphere, we are dedicated to realizing the Buddha Way in the midst of our own ordinary lives, finding our center of gravity in the creativity of Zen, and the Way of the Bodhisattva.Zen teacher (roshi) Rafe Jnan Martin began traditional Zen practice in 1970, becoming a personal disciple of Roshi Philip Kapleau, author of The Three Pillars of Zen. After Kapleau Roshis retirement, he practiced with Robert Aitken Roshi, founder of the Diamond Sangha, then from 2002-2016 worked intensively with Danan Henry Roshi, founding teacher of the Zen Center of Denver and a Kapleau Roshi Dharma Heir as well as a Diamond Sangha Dharma Master.Rafe received full lay ordination in 2009, and in 2012 received inkarecognition of his successful completion of the Diamond Sangha/ Harada-Yasutani koan curriculum, along with authorization to begin teaching. In 2016 he received full Dharma Transmission as an independent Zen teacher.An award-winning author and storyteller whose work has been cited in Time, Newsweek, The NY Times, and USA Today, Rafe has a masters degree in English literature and literary criticism and is a recipient of both national and state awards, including the Empire State Award for the body of his work. His writing has appeared in Tricycle, Lions Roar, Parabola, The Sun, and Inquiring Mind, among other journals of religion and myth. He has given talks at Zen and Dharma Centers around the US and Canada, as well as such venues as the American Museum of Natural History, Zuni Pueblo, and The Joseph Campbell Festival of Myth and Story. His most recent books are A Zen Life of Buddha (Sumeru 2022), The Brave Little Parrot (Wisdom Publications, 2023) and A Zen Life of Bodhisattvas (Sumeru, 2023). Language: en-us Genres: Buddhism, Religion & Spirituality Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Finding Your Buddha Smile - Part 4
Saturday, 24 January, 2026
Recorded January 24, 2026.In this teisho, we move on from the Buddha himself, to see how Zen tradition views the ordinary person’s journey from ignorance to maturity. To show this, Roshi Martin arranges three koans, each drawn from the life of the Chinese Zen master, Te-shan (J. Tokusan, 780–865), in their chronological order—which is not how we find them in our actual koan curriculum. In actual practice we face these koans totally out of sequence. His purpose with this chronological reorganization is to show the underlying story these koans actually reveal.To start us off — he begins with a note about koans in general by quoting Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, environmentalist, Zen elder, and cultural icon, Gary Snyder, who in 2008, in an interview with the Poetry Foundation, Gary Snyder, spoke about koans. Let’s see what he had to say.Photo of smiling Buddha, Lung-Men Caves, China taken by Rafe MartinRead Roshi Rafe Martin's latest book: Finding Your Buddha Smile: Coming Home To What Zen is Really All About. Available from Amazon and Sumeru Books. Books by Roshi Rafe Martin Talks on YouTube More information at endlesspathzen.org
