I am delighted to share this conversation with Roshi Eve Myonen Marko about The Book of Householder Koans: Waking Up in the Land of Attachments, which she co-wrote with Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao. It was released in 2020 but I'm sure glad I finally found it! It's become one of my new favorite books and a real treasure as a practice tool. Roshi Eve Marko is a Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, with her late husband, the renowned Roshi Bernie Glassman. She is also the resident teacher at the Green River Zen Center in Massachusetts. Roshi has trained spiritually-based social activists and peacemakers in the US, Europe, and the Middle East, and has been a Spiritholder at retreats bearing witness to genocide at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Rwanda, and the Black Hills in South Dakota. Before that she worked at the Greyston Mandala, which provides housing, child care, jobs, and AIDS-related medical services in Yonkers, New York. Koans have always been a favorite practice of mine but I
Mount Jiuhua. From chinatouradvisor.wordpress.com
As livebloggers go, the Korean monk Kim Gyo-gak is far from typical. According to Wikipedia, he was born more than 1,000 years ago, encountered Buddhism on a trip to China, became a monk on his return to Korea, then returned to China in 719 to cultivate himself deep in the wilds of Mount Jiuhua, in Anhui Province. He took the name Jijang (Skt: Ksitigarbha) and lived there as a hermit until his death at 99 years old.
When the nobleman who owned the mountain where he practiced offered to build him a temple, Jijang convinced his aspiring benefactor with a magical gesture to cede the entire mountain to the Dharma, and thus his