Hello! Read this first

My main goal with this blog is to make Soto Zen accessible to new practitioners, as well as to deepen my own understanding.

I will try to keep each lesson to be highly ‘snackable’ so that it can be read in only a few minutes, although I would encourage you to read slowly and take some time for reflection during or after each lesson.

I’ve grouped lessons (blog posts) together in themes (Zen Forms, Chants, Key Concepts etc.) and it is best to read the lessons in each group in order as they often build on each other, but feel free to jump between the lesson groups in any order to find what you need or what catches your interest.

On every topic that I write about there are much, much more detailed commentaries and explanations available, which I will sometimes link to at the bottom of the blog post. However, I am going to keep my actual blog posts deliberately short and simple as this is the type of explanation I found most helpful when I was starting practicing Zen.

When terms are in a non-English languages I will italicize them so that you can tell they are non-English words, and in places I may include the Chinese or Japanese characters for names or places.

I will try not to use non-English words for the sake of it and only include where they are likely to be useful to you in that you will hear them used if you go to a Zen center. For example someone will likely talk about the Zendo (meditation hall) and zafu (cushion) so it is good to know what these words mean.