Weekend Stories
I enjoy going exploring on weekends (mostly). Here is a collection of stories and photos I gather along the way. All posts are CC BY-NC-SA licensed unless otherwise stated. Feel free to share, remix, and adapt the content as long as you give appropriate credit and distribute your contributions under the same license.
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Keisei sanshiki: Dōgen’s account of non-human Dharma-preaching, perception, and relational awakening
In Keisei sanshiki, Dōgen presents valley sounds and mountain colors as expressions of the Buddha-Dharma. The fascicle does not treat nature as a symbolic backdrop or an automatic source of Buddhist awakening. Through accounts of Tōba, Kyōgen, and Reiun, three examples of awakening while engaged with average natural phenomena, it examines how the latter become occasions of realization within a wider field of study, teachers, failure, vow, confession, and the relinquishment of self-appropriation. In this post, we therefore reconstruct Dōgen’s account of non-human Dharma-preaching, perception, practice, and relational awakening.
Sansuikyō: Mountains, waters, and the living Dharma
In ‘Sansuikyō’, Dōgen uses mountains and waters as paradigmatic dharmas to challenge the assumption that the world simply stands still before an observing subject. Mountains move, waters see and practice themselves, and different beings inhabit different water-worlds. These statements do not turn nature into a poetic metaphor or attribute human consciousness to non-human things. They question whether categories such as ‘movement’ and ‘stillness’, ‘subject’ and ‘object’, ‘sentient’ and ‘insentient’ can adequately describe the activity of dharmas. In this post, we examine Dōgen’s account of perception, the living Dharma, and the non-anthropocentric scope of Buddhist practice.
Shinjin gakudō: Studying the Way with body and mind
In Shinjin gakudō, Eihei Dōgen examines how the Buddhist Way is studied with body and mind. Beginning from their familiar distinction, he transforms both terms: Mind is not merely private thought or inward consciousness, and body is not merely the biological organism. Both open onto the wider field of practice, world, action, time, and relation. The fascicle therefore develops an account of body and mind that cannot be treated as fixed possessions of an isolated self. In this post, we reconstruct that account and relate it to Dōgen’s broader concern with the practice of buddhas and ancestors in the Zen tradition.
Busshō: Dōgen and the problem of Buddha-nature
Busshō addresses the problem of Buddha-nature in Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō: How can Buddha-nature be universal without becoming a hidden soul, permanent essence, or spiritual substance within living beings? Dōgen rejects the premise that Buddha-nature is something beings possess and presents it instead as the whole of existence realized in practice. In this post, we examine his reinterpretation of Buddha-nature, his treatment of the claims that beings ‘have’ and are ‘without’ Buddha-nature, and the fascicle’s connections between Buddha-nature, time, body, practice, non-abiding, and concrete activity.
Fukan zazengi: Dōgen’s universal recommendation for zazen
Fukan zazengi (普勸坐禪儀), often translated as Universal recommendation for zazen or General guidelines for zazen, is one of the most important early texts by Eihei Dōgen. It presents zazen not only as a method of seated meditation, but as the central practice through which the Buddha-Dharma is enacted. Compared with more philosophically dense texts such as Genjō Kōan, Bendōwa, and Uji, which we discussed last year, Fukan zazengi is a more practical, direct, and instructional text. Yet it is not merely a meditation manual. It condenses several of Dōgen’s central ideas into the concrete form of sitting. In this post, we take a closer look at it to understand Dōgen’s vision of zazen and how it relates to his broader project of clarifying the authentic practice of the buddhas and ancestors and the Zen tradition.
Maria Laach: Romanesque monument and commercial pilgrimage site
The abbey of Maria Laach is one of the most important Romanesque monuments in the Rhineland. It is also a functioning Benedictine monastery surrounded by a highly developed commercial visitor infrastructure. In this post, I reflect on the ambivalent identity of the place, where sacred architecture, monastic history, and religious tourism now closely overlap.
Frankfurt Archaeological Museum
The permanent exhibition of the Archaeological Museum of the City of Frankfurt offers a fascinating overview of ancient material culture across the Mediterranean, Anatolia, and western Asia. From early Iron Age Italy to Etruria, from Attic and South Italian vase painting to the bronze cultures of western Iran, it provides a glimpse into the everyday lives of people in these regions. Here’s a short summary of my visit to the museum in October 2025.
The Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Frankfurt
Natural history museums are more than just collections of curiosities. They are public exhibition spaces built upon fieldwork, taxonomy, collecting, preparation, comparison, classification, and interpretation. The Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt is a prime example of this, showcasing the systematic study of nature through its halls filled with exhibits of animals, fossils, rocks, preserved bodies, reconstructed skeletons, models, and instruments. This post reflects on my visit to the museum last year, with a focus on its history, its role in scientific research, ethical considerations, and my personal impressions of its exhibitions.
Lucy, the early hominin
In October last year, I had some time during a conference stay to visit the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Frankfurt. I was lucky enough to see the replica of one of the most famous fossils in the world: The skeleton of Lucy, the early hominin. In this post, we explore the meaning and significance of this discovery, and what it tells us about human evolution.
Another visit to the Kolumba Museum
A brief photographic note from another visit to the Kolumba Museum in Cologne, with impressions of its rooms, light conditions, materials, and the calm setting it creates for viewing art.