Rev. Kongo Langolis Roshi

[This text was first published in The Diamond Sword, a collection of talks by Kongo Roshi, Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago, first edition 1987, second edition 1992, pp 19-23.]

Although this is the observance of Obon, time when we pay our respects to our ancestors, friends, and relatives who have passed away, it should not be a time of sorrow. We owe much to our ancestors - for our relationship with them, and for all that we have learned from them.

When I opened the ceremony this morning, I opened with a poem by a Chinese lay practitioner, Layman P'ang:

I. EGOLESSNESS

The essence of the Heart Sutra, as well as of Mahayana Zen Buddhism, is egolessness: no ego. As the Heart Sutra points out, it is the combination of the five aggregates of form, sensation, thought, will and consciousness - these empty perceptions - that we mistakenly recognize as ourselves, as our ego. When we are drawn by the eye we are eye. When we are drawn by the nose we are nose. We smell something delicious and feed ourselves even through we aren't hungry. Tossed from here to there, from left to right, we just barely regain our poise when we are drawn again.

[This text was first published in The Diamond Sword, a collection of talks by Kongo Roshi, Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago, first edition 1987, second edition 1992, pp 49-52.]

[This text was first published in The Diamond Sword, a collection of talks by Kongo Roshi, Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago, first edition 1987, second edition 1992, pp 61-65.]

[This text was first published in The Diamond Sword, a collection of talks by Kongo Roshi, Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago, first edition 1987, second edition 1992, pp 7-10.]

This text was first published in The Diamond Sword, a collection of talks by Kongo Roshi, Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago, first edition 1987, second edition 1992, pp 1-4