Ivan Richmond

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Zen

Here are some resources about Zen...

Instructions for Zen Meditation

For anyone interested in practicing Zen Meditation, here are some instructions, as I learned growing up in at the Zen Monastery (Green Gulch Farm). Zen meditation can be done by people of any religion, because it does not itself work with any particular Deity or spirit. It will help clear your mind and let your negative emotions go. Afterwards, you should feel less cluttered inside, you should have more insight about your life and you should feel at once invigorated and at the same time that you have just the amount of energy that you should have (unless you're sleep deprived, taking sleep inducing meditation, on drugs or been drinking, in which case I can't help you ;D )

Find a nice, tranquil place to meditate, free of distractions.
Choose the time you'll meditate for. I suggest starting out doing it for 15 minutes a few times a week.
Sit on a meditation cushion (in Japanese Zen this is called a zafu). Have a timer near by to go off after the time you chose to do it for in the last step.
Sit in full lotus position, with your right foot over your left thigh and your left foot over your right thigh. If you can't do that, do half lotus, with one foot over one thigh and the other foot in normal cross-legged position. If you can't do that, just sit cross-legged or Burmese style (sort of like cross-legged except with one foot in front of your knee and the other foot tucked in).
Put your left hand in your lap, palm up.
Put your right hand in your left hand, palm up.
Touch your thumbs together. This is the Zen meditation mudra (or hand position).
Begin breathing in slow, deep breaths.
Count your breaths from 1 to 10. Start over at 1 when you get to 10.
Continue until the time amount you chose is finished.

Although the goal, eventually, is to clear your mind of all thoughts and emotions, this should come naturally. Avoid forcing it. Instead, let your emotions and thoughts bubble through you consciousness. It's okay to have them. It's normal and natural. What's important is that we be ethical people regardless of our emotions and are darkest thoughts. The important thing is to just keep counting your breaths. One purpose of the exercise is to make you better at being ethical, because in order to be ethical, we must let go of our attachments to emotion. Yet, in order to do that, we must accept our emotions first and then let them float away. It is only when we have relinquished our attachment to our emotions that we can excercise the self-control to be good. If we're only being good when we feel like it, that's false goodness. True good must persist whether we feel good or bad and whether others are nice or nasty.

The Missing Suggested Reading List from Silence and Noise

When I wrote Silence and Noise, my publisher was originally going to include a Suggested Reading List, but unfortunately, the book printed without it and nobody caught it. So, here's the original suggested reading list I was going to use:

There are several books that I'd recommend for anybody who's interested in learning more about Buddhism, but I am also aware that different people learn differently and want to get different things, so I've tried to provide a list of books that approach Buddhism from a wide range of vantage points. If you'd like to learn more about Zen Buddhism, as it is taught at the San Francisco Zen Center, you should read the classic by Suzuki Roshi himself: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Suzuki, Shunryu, Trudy Dixon (ed), Weatherhill, 1997). Although Suzuki is deceased, some old lectures of his have been collected in the newly released book Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen (Suzuki, Shunryu, Edward Espe Brown (ed), Harper Collins, 2002).

If you'd like to learn about Buddhism from a more academic or intellectual perspective, Edward Conze is excellent. Buddhism: Its Essence and Development (Conze, Edward, Harper Torchbooks, 1959) is a good introduction to Buddhism. Buddhist Thought in India: Three Phases of Buddhist Philosophy (Ann Arbor Paperbacks) (Conze, Edward, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, 1967). Both books are typically offered in college courses on Buddhism.

If you want to learn about Buddhism from contemporary American Buddhist teachers, I'd recommend It's Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness (Boorstein, Sylvia,, Harper San Francisco, 1997), Awakening the Buddha Within : Eight Steps to Enlightenment: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World , (Das, Lama Surya, Broadway, New York, 1997) and A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life , (Kornfield, Jack, Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1993).

Robert Alan Mitchell has taken ancient Indian texts both of Buddhist philosophy and legendary accounts of the life of the Buddha and compiled a wonderful book called The Buddha: His Life Retold (Mitchell, Robert Alan, Paragon House, 1991), telling the story of the Buddha's life in contemporary language.

Finally, Nancy Wilson Ross has written a book about how to apply Buddhism to your every day life, called Buddhism: Way of Life & Thought (Ross, Nancy Wilson, Random House, 1981).

Heart Sutra MP3

Finally, I found this:

Heart Sutra Free MP3 Download