A Zen Life of Buddha

<p>Zen Buddhism begins with the Buddha's enlightenment. While the word enlightenment suggests there is something you get and that once have it you are enlightened intimacy comes closer to the truth. We gain nothing. Rather through attention to counting the breath experiencing the breath or putting our attention into a koan we become of less interest to ourselves and in this losing is finding. The world steps in - trees mountains bugs rivers people - and we rediscover our original undiminished intimacy with all things. No longer strangers to this Earth to others or to ourselves such intimacy has healing power. This is to live our own Zen life of Buddha.</p><p><br></p><p>Drawing on ancient myth on Zen koans on stories and on his own over fifty years of formal Zen practice and more than ten years of active Zen teaching Roshi Rafe Martin reveals the life of the Buddha as our own actual life. Using his skills as an award-winning author and storyteller he organizes the life of the Buddha into five archetypal chapters - Birth Leaving Home Enlightenment Teaching and Death and reveals how at every point the historic/legendary/mythic life of the Buddha is our own lived life. The end result is transformative helping us to potentially live each day more consciously skillfully and gratefully - whatever comes.</p>