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).

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Endless Path Zendo | Roshi Rafe Martin

Oak Tree in the Front Garden

March 01, 2025

Recorded March 1, 2025

If wisdom is real, it should be popping up all over — in life, in folklore, in songs and movies emerging from popular culture. Real wisdom should be common knowledge, not hidden, or secret, or esoteric. “You’ll find your happiness lies right under your eyes/Back in your own backyard” sounds such a chord. And to quote Dorothy, “There’s no place like home.” Still, why do such fundamental insights keep having to pop up? Why don’t we just “get it”? The great, Chao-chou (J. Joshu; 778–897), perhaps the most mature of all Chinese Zen masters, was once asked, “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the West?” Or what is the highest teaching of the Buddhadharma. He answered, “The oak tree in the front yard.” What did he mean?

Aitken Roshi once told me that the whole point of Zen was happiness. Actually what he said was “Many people in this world are happy. Absorbed in their work, or family, or hobbies, no longer caught up in themselves, they’re happy. But if impermanence has bitten too deeply, and a yearning for something more, a way to be at peace in the face of impermanence has taken root, then Zen can show you the way to happiness.”

Is it happiness, then, that resides at the core of Zen? Did gruff old Bodhidharma have a soft heart and make that risky journey because he wanted us to be happy?
But, then, what about that oak tree? Let’s find out?!

Photo: Tree by Rafe Martin