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
The Buddha's Enlightenment and Our Own Zen Practice
Recorded December 8, 2024
In this teisho Roshi Rafe Martin tells the dramatic story of the Buddha’s great enlightenment then comments on it (using his recent book A Zen Life of Buddha as his source), from the ground of ongoing Zen practice:
“Zen Buddhism reveres the story of the Buddha’s enlightenment because it so dramatically reveals our own potential, even as it reveals the determined, dedicated work that “even as it reveals the determined, dedicated work that underlies all milestone experiences. ”
“Buddhist tradition says that we all have the nature of Buddha, have exactly the same, vast, empty nature of endlessly creative and compassionate potential as Shakyamuni and all previous and future Buddhas. From the first we are each fully and equally endowed with limitless wisdom and virtue. And because it is already who we are, if we practice, if we make sincere efforts then we, too, can to one degree or another, awake to this same Original Mind.
“. . . After a long night of focused zazen, the Buddha-About-To-Be glanced up and saw the morning star. And suddenly, AHA! “Gone, gone, entirely gone!” That’s IT! A morning star sat beneath the Bodhi tree: “Star! No “me”, just Star!”
It need not be so dramatic. A poem of Li Po’s from ancient China titled, “Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain,” goes like this:
The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.
– Trans. by Sam Hamill, from Crossing the Yellow
River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese
Books cited:
- A Zen Life of Buddha (Sumeru Press 2023) by Rafe Martin
- Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese, Sam Hamill
Photo: Seated Buddha and standing Buddha (after enlightenment) at Endless Path Zendo by Rafe Martin
- Books by Roshi Rafe Martin
- Talks on YouTube
- More information at endlesspathzen.org