Ian C. Adams

Zen likes to say there is nothing to attain. Just sit. Just this. And yet, anyone who has actually tried to practice knows how quickly…

Indra’s Net is one of those images that, once it really lands, you start seeing it everywhere. It comes to us from the great Mahayana…

This is a transcript of the Dharma talk I delivered at the Amherst Zendo Nehan-e Sesshin on Saturday, February 21, 2026. Tonight, on Nehan-e, we…

Right Livelihood is one of those teachings that sounds simple until you actually try to live it. Most of us spend more of our waking…

Hate is a strange kind of fire. It feels like power, like clarity, like certainty. It can even feel like righteousness. But it is not…

Nehan-e is one of those quiet, sober days on the Zen calendar that doesn’t try to inspire us with brightness. It doesn’t lift us up…

In Zen, death is not treated as a special case that requires special beliefs. It is treated as the clearest case. A funeral is not…

The Avatamsaka Sutra, often called the Flower Garland Sutra, is one of the great visionary texts of Mahayana Buddhism. It is not written like a…

There is a moment that comes for most of us, sooner or later, when practice stops being something we do on a cushion and starts…