Finding Your Buddha Smile - Part 8: How Do I Find Peace of Mind? Artwork

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

Finding Your Buddha Smile - Part 8: How Do I Find Peace of Mind?

March 07, 2026

0:00 | 51:42

Recorded March 7, 2026.

This teisho opens with a brief recounting of the legend of the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion and issues of failure, despair, and compassion in our own times. Then Roshi Martin moves on to the essence of Zen — realizing peace of mind. In the koan of “Bodhidharma and Peace of Mind,” (Gateless Barrier #41) Hui-k’o, climbs up to Bodhidharma’s cave on the mountain seeking peace of mind. Bodhidharma doesn’t make it easy, but insists on making it real. “Bring forth your troubled mind and I’ll pacify it for you,” he says. Simple, right? But there’s a hitch. And how does that hitch itself resolve the problem? But what IS peace of mind anyway?

Like John Lewis in our own time, these two old-worthies together made “good trouble,” revealing the Buddha Way to be intimate and open to all, rather than philosophical, far off, or reserved for a special few. At some point we all wake to life’s difficulties. It is our start. To then find peace of mind all we need do, as Bodhidharma insisted, is bring forth our troubled mind so it can be set to rest. Which shouldn’t be too hard to do, should it? Ha!

This dramatic teisho shows how it goes. Why not give a listen and see?

Read Roshi Rafe Martin's latest book: Finding Your Buddha Smile: Coming Home To What Zen is Really All About. Available from Amazon , Sumeru Books, and Barnes & Noble Online.

Photo of Smiling Buddha, Lung-men Caves, China, by Rafe Martin 2006