The Challenge of Lay Zen Practice and the Essence of Renunciation or "Letting Go." Artwork

Endless Path Zendo | 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 Roshi’s 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 inka—recognition 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 master’s 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, Lion’s 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).

All Episodes

Endless Path Zendo | Roshi Rafe Martin

The Challenge of Lay Zen Practice and the Essence of Renunciation or "Letting Go."

June 08, 2024

Recorded June 8, 2024.

The first 18 minutes of this recording are the “teisho proper,” focusing on the essential worth — and challenge — of ongoing lay Zen practice.

If you stop there you’ll have a short and direct teisho. But the rest of the recording adds resonance. Roshi Martin then reads Kipling’s, “The Miracle of Purun Bhagat,” a tale that presents the essence of renunciation, the ancient traditional path of maturing beyond self-centeredness. We modern lay Zen practitioners must do the same, too BUT — and here lies our challenge —we must leave home without literally leaving home. For us, family, work, national and planetary citizenship are central to our path of maturing as whole human beings. Yet the fundamental awareness of what lies at the core are the same. The tale gives us a sense of that core.

In response to this teisho a senior Zen student wrote: ‘. . it is nice to leave the world of sesshin-style exhortation and just settle back into a good story whose connections with the first part are not explicit. The first part of the teisho is so forceful. The second part is like falling under a subtle mesmerizing spell.’