Issho Fujita is a Japanese zen monk who has been the resident teacher at Valley Zendo in Chariemont, Western Massachusetts since 1987. This article is extracted from a weekend workshop offered at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in March 2000. My interest in studying this Pali text is an attempt to go back to the Buddha himself. Of course, we don't know exactly what he said. But according to most scholars the Pali texts are the earliest available teachings of the Buddha. And the Sutta … [Read more...]
Issho Fujita
Zazen Is Not the Same as Meditation
These remarks are excerpted from course handouts given by Rev. Fujita at a workshop called “The Lived-Body Experience in Buddhist Meditation" he taught at BCBS in March, 2002. There seems to be a common misunderstanding about zazen, which some people think of as a technique for reaching a state of “no thought.” Such an understanding of zazen assumes that a certain state of mind can be reached by manipulation, technique or method. In the West, zazen is usually translated as “Zen meditation” … [Read more...]
A Tiny Dot in a Vast Universe
An interview with Issho Fujita For the last eighteen years, Reverend Issho Fujita has been the resident teacher at Pioneer Valley Zendo, a Soto Zen practice center in Charlemont, western Massachusetts. He has taught a weekend retreat on Dogen Studies at BCBS each year for the last ten years. He has recently decided to move his family back to Japan. The Insight Journal talked with him about his hopes and aspirations in such a move. Would you talk a little bit about what it was like growing … [Read more...]
