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 Is Caught by Desire! Mistakes are Us!
Recorded April 26, 2025
In this teisho, Roshi Martin looks at an oddly sci-fi (with UFO!) past life tale of the Buddha, our own life, a Grimm’s “fairy tale,” and the Way of the Bodhisattva.
“Everything – beings, worlds, galaxies, universes — Buddhist teachings tell us — come and go, with neither beginning nor end. Aryasura, author of the influential 5th century CE Jatakamala, however, states that something does persist. He writes: ‘Earth with its forests, noble mountains and seas may perish a hundred times by fire, water, and wind, as each eon comes to an end, but the great compassion of a Bodhisattva, never.’ (From the “Great Ape Jataka” in, Once The Buddha Was a Monkey; trans. Peter Khoroche.)
“According to Buddhist tradition, the aspiration to awaken and live so as to benefit all beings is woven into the nature of reality, is the nature of Original, un-self-centered Mind. Given this, the effort we put into trying to satisfy a small, self-centered, fundamentally illusory habitual narrative of isolated selfness with which we identify as “myself,” must meet with defeat. With this little jataka, the Buddha reveals that he himself had trod that selfish trail to its necessary end. And, having gone the route, at trail’s end he's put up a marker for all to see: ‘Warning! You can never satisfy desire.’” Or, as the Rolling Stones classically complained about satisfaction, “I can’t get no.”
“Once we really get this, we are freed to begin looking for genuine happiness. “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” (William Blake, “Proverbs of Hell,” The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.)
_________
Roshi Martin adds this correction to a Zen verse that he quotes near the start of the teisho. Recalling it on the spur of the moment he regrets he didn't quote it correctly. It should go like this:
Last year’s poverty was not true poverty.
This year’s poverty is absolute.
In last year’s poverty there was room for the point of a gimlet.
In this year’s poverty even the gimlet is gone.
- Master Hsiang-yen; China, d. 898
Unknown object: Photo courtesy US Navy
- Books by Roshi Rafe Martin
- Talks on YouTube
- More information at endlesspathzen.org