By Moonflowers, A Fascinating Body Floats, Absently – Winter – Basho
Time
9 AM – 10:30 AM Pacific Time
11 AM – 12:30 AM Central Time
12 PM – 1:30 PM Eastern Time
Schedule
Nov The 30th Sunday
Venue
Location
107 S Fair Oaks Ave #021, Pasadena, CA 91105
Beloved one, this meditation is an invitation—a gentle turning inward toward the space where the eternal healer resides. It is said that the Blue Medicine Buddha, Bhaisajyaguru, shines with the light of lapis lazuli, a light so pure it reflects the sky of boundless awareness itself. But the secret, the beautiful cosmic joke, is that this Buddha is not somewhere out there in a distant heaven—he lives within the quiet chamber of your own heart.
When we sit in this practice, we are not trying to become anything. We are remembering what has always been. The Blue Medicine Buddha is the mirror of that remembering. His blue light is the vibration of healing, the pulse of compassion that hums beneath all forms. As you open to it, you begin to sense that healing is not fixing. Healing is seeing through the illusion that you were ever broken.
This lineage of practice—born in the luminous flowering of the Tang Dynasty around 700 CE—carries the fragrance of both devotion and awareness. It blends the mystical power of visualization with the tender art of surrender. You will be guided to imagine the Medicine Buddha before you, radiant and vast, and then to see that light dissolve into your heart until there is no separation—just spacious love, breathing itself through you.
In this meditation, the Medicine Buddha walks beside you as your inner guide and gentle reminder of that homecoming. Each breath, each visualization, each looking inward is a step closer to resting in that infinite compassion—the place where suffering softens, fear melts, and love becomes the only reality.
So come, beloved traveler. Set aside the stories of the day, the weight of your becoming, and let yourself be bathed in blue light. Let the Guru within and without merge in stillness. Allow this sacred medicine to move through you—not to change you, but to reveal you. For in the heart of the Blue Medicine Buddha, you are already whole, already healed, already home.
I will tell you a story, a zen story….
so simple, yet so utterly profound.
Yamaoka was a young seeker, full of borrowed wisdom — like most seekers are. He had read the scriptures, memorized the sutras, tasted a few intellectual delights of Zen, and now he was drunk on knowledge. You know that intoxication — when you think you have understood the universe, but in truth, you have not even understood yourself.
So he goes to the master, Dokuon. And he begins to show off his understanding: “The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings do not exist. The true nature of all things is emptiness. There is no realization, no delusion, no sage, no ordinary man…” — all the right words, all the right perfume of Zen.
But remember, truth does not live in words. It breathes in silence. And Dokuon, that beautiful old man, knows this. So he says nothing. He simply smokes his pipe.
And then suddenly — whack! — the bamboo stick comes down on poor Yamaoka’s head. And the young man becomes furious. Anger rises like fire.
Now the master asks, “If nothing exists, where does this anger come from?”
In that single question, the whole edifice of Yamaoka’s philosophy collapses. All the emptiness he spoke of, all the beautiful words, are gone — and only raw life remains.
Understand this: Dokuon’s blow was not violence. It was compassion. It was a hammer striking the false shell so that the pearl might be seen. Sometimes the master must shock you out of your dream, otherwise you will go on living in words and calling it wisdom.
Yamaoka was talking about emptiness, but he had never tasted it. He was talking about silence, but he had never been silent. He had a map of truth, but no journey.
Dokuon brought him to the moment — this moment — where no scripture can help, no philosophy can protect. Just awareness remains.
Zen is not about saying “everything is empty.” Zen is about seeing that everything is full — full of presence, full of this suchness, this here-ness, Is-ness. When you truly see that, even your anger becomes sacred, your confusion becomes part of the dance and everything becomes sacred
