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).
Endless Path Zendo | Roshi Rafe Martin
Manjusri Fails to Awaken the Young Woman. Is failure "wonderful indeed"?
Recorded November 16, 2024.
With this teisho Roshi Martin looks into the nature of painful failure: “Is it wonderful indeed” as the koan of “Manjusri and the Young Woman” (“Gateless Barrier” 35) proclaims? If so, how? Roshi Martin begins with the opening lines of "The Odyssey” pointing out how they reveal that it is Odysseus’s failure that sets the epic of a man overcoming difficulties and temptations to return to his true home, in motion. Then he reads and comments on Chapter 5 of his recent book “A Zen Life of Bodhisattvas,” which explores the koan of how the great Bodhisattva of Wisdom fails to awaken a young woman. The koan’s conclusion that “the failure is wonderful indeed” merits special exploration. What does it mean?!
Books referenced:
- “A Zen Life of Bodhisattvas” by Rafe Martin
- “The Gateless Barrier: The Wu-Men Kuan (Mumonkan)”, Translated and with a Commentary by Robert Aitken
- “The Odyssey,” Robert Fitzgerald translation
Photo: Manjusri and students at Endless Path Zendo by Rafe Martin
- Books by Roshi Rafe Martin
- Talks on YouTube
- More information at endlesspathzen.org