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
A Dream Within A Dream
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Recorded July 25, 2026.
Case no. 25, Gateless Barrier: “Yang-shan’s Sermon From the Third Seat” is as follows:
Yang-shan dreamed he went to Maitreya’s realm and was led to the third seat. A senior monk struck the stand with a gavel and announced, “Today the monk in the third seat will preach.”
Yang-shan rose, struck the stand with the gavel, and said, “The Dharma of the Mahayana is beyond the Four Propositions and transcends the Hundred Negations. Listen, listen.”
Why does Master Wu-men, creator of the Gateless Barrier, use a story of an old teacher’s dream as a koan? Koans present actual words and doings. But this is just a dream. What value could it have?
Roshi Kapleau used to say that enlightenment is a dream. After all, enlightenment is simply the realization of our own Mind, the selfless Mind that’s been ours from the beginning. What are we going to get with enlightenment that we don't already have? The problem is that we don't know it. So, while lost in dreams, we should not discount the dream’s value. Bob Dylan says “I’ll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours.” (“Talking World War III Blues.” Dreams within dreams. Within a dream.
Roshi Kapleau used to relate how, not long after he’d arrived at Hosshinji Monastery a monk asked him, “Kapleau-san. Do you believe in dreams?” He told us that it took many years of Zen practice before he grasped what that monk was getting at. Do you believe in dreams? Who is it that believes in dreams? There is a dream dreaming dreams. Is it wrong that our life is a dream? With this dream scenario, Yang-shan and Wu-men have found a way to pull the wool not over, but off our eyes. This is a pretty good trick, wouldn’t you say?
Book: Zen Life of Bodhisattvas by Rafe Martin
Photo of Hotei at Endless Path Zendo by Rafe Martin
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