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 Birth of the Buddha -- Or -- How Does A Buddha Get Born?
Recorded 04/12/2025.
"The legend of the Buddha’s birth, uses the language of myth to point beyond the literal. The birth of any child is totally ordinary and, at the same time, a total miracle. How do two cells become a living person? How do gastrula and blastula become a being with talents, interests, features and personality? Where does a child come from? The birth of any one child is a mystery that affects us all, whether we consciously know it or not. Myth gives imaginative space to the uncanny ordinary reality we are actually living.
How does a Buddha get born? Zen practice says by attending to this breath and counting from one to ten, by becoming fully aware of the breath, by sitting completely absorbed in the koan, or in the inquiry, or in “thinking not-thinking.” In short, it is by practicing that the self-centered is forgotten. And as that habitual obsessive focus fades, the world of 10,000 unique, individual, and specific things steps in and realizes itself. It is as if we are born anew. We find that we are home. This is how a Buddha is born.
Yet the Buddha’s historic/legendary birth is a mystery, and presenting it as miraculous offers its own legitimate truth. Where does a person who is the first to do what’s never been done, someone whose efforts ultimately influence millions of lives for the good, come from?"
Excerpt from "A Zen Life of Buddha" by Rafe Martin, Sumeru Books
Photo of Baby Buddha at Endless Path Zendo by Rafe Martin
- Books by Roshi Rafe Martin
- Talks on YouTube
- More information at endlesspathzen.org