Recently on May 2, 2026, the Clear Way Zen Sangha held it’s first Agency General Meeting with 16 founding members present, and decided together to register the organization’s legal status as a Canadian Non-Profit Organization and Registered Charity. The first 8 members of the Board of Directors were elected, tasked with drafting the Vision, Mission and By-law of the Community.

Shortly after the AGM, on May 16, 2026, The sangha welcomed two people onto our Senior Member list with the taking of the 3-Gems and Precepts Ceremony for Michael Walker and Dan Radovanovic. We welcome brother Michael and Dan on taking their Zen Vows, the 3-Gems and Precepts.

On June 22, 2026, the Clear Way Zen Board had it’s first Board Meeting and the following board members officer’s roles were decided as follows:

1. President: John Agnew
2. Vice President: Patricia Boska
3. Treasurer: Marie Olinik
4. Secretary: Elizabeth Fournier
5. Special Events Director: Chrystal Norman
6. Communication Director: Dan Radovanovic
7. Asistant Communication Director: Michal Helbin
8. Our teacher Lotus Vu serves on the Board of Director as Ex-officio member.

Michael Walker was designated as the fundraiser committe chair at the AGM.

Our Sangha decided at the AGM that on Saturday, June 27, 2026, we will have our last Saturday Sitting in-person before a summer break from in-person meeting for the summer and enjoy a Potluck with each other at Knox-Met Church in Regina.

July Forest Retreat at Arrow River Forest Hermitage

On July 18 to August 1, 2026, a group of our sangha members with our teacher will be doing a retreat at Arrow River Forest Hermitage in Ontario, about an hour outside of Thunder Bay. Arrow River Forest Hermitage is a center with individual cabins spread throughout on a remote off-grid 92 acres forest. This retreat will give the sangha members a chance to practice living in the forest while practicing Zen in an environment that mirrors what the old forest Zen masters likely have lived in Vietnam or China. Vietnam has a rich tradition of forest dweling Zen practitioners in solitary retreats. Our members will have a chance to experience this practice this summer.

On the last day of the retreat Lotus gave a Dharma talk which was recorded for the benefit of those that weren’t able to make it.

Early Buddhism and Theravada – 1^st Turning

• Dependent Origination – 12 links of cyclic existence forming a chain of causality, all dharmas (things that can be known) radically impermanent and casually produced by preceding dharmas (knowable things)
• Momentary Dharmas (things perceived in the present) are real (Atomic events) and are fundamental constituents of everything.

Mahāyāna’s Mādhyamika – 2^nd Turning

• All things are empty of intrinsic existence, having two truths: Conceptual or conventional, but no absolute truth. Dharmas (things) would have to be independent and permanent to have their own autonomous defining characteristics; however, nothing has this – all dependently originate – have causes and are constructed from other kinds of stuff
• Ultimate truth = the ways things are
  • All things, including emptiness itself, are empty of intrinsic existence. Put another way, emptiness is the ultimate truth that nothing, including emptiness itself, is ultimately real. This is the true nature of things.
  • Name Only = all entities are simple conventions = conceptually labelled ideas of something no real reality needs cognitive process/ mental creation to exist. Nothing is an exception, including the concept of emptiness itself.
• How the world exists in itself is beyond our comprehension because we experience it from behind the veil of conceptuality. Madhyamikas rejects all conventional conceptual knowledge and views.
• Madhyamikas challenges us to move beyond the foundations of early Buddhism, which always assumes there are some basic building blocks of reality: independent origination and other myths of Vedic teachings that assume the basic building components of the world (“Brahma”, God, etc.) = the nature of reality is dreamlike, insubstantial… there isn’t any ontological bedrock.
• Even views are empty = which warns against the theoretical understanding of emptiness.
• GOAL: A direct meditation to transform knowledge of the conventional into seeing things by their true nature = Madhayamikas are not doing ontology or philosophy; they are practical! It’s the for end of suffering!!!

Yogacara – 3^rd Turning

• Asanga, Vasubandhu and Maitreya (founder) – 4^th Century
• Yogcara translates to “practitioner of meditation”
• Further develops on Madhamyamikas foundations
• Emptiness = dependently originating stream of consciousness
  • Emptiness of duality of grasping of subject-object
  • Consciousness cannot lack intrinsic existence because consciousness is the agency that fabricates the conventional world of external things – our awareness creates the illusion of reality and knowledge.
• Vasubandhu declares that the external world is only a process of perception, cognition, and consciousness manifest as nonexistent objects. When we dream, what part of the dream is real? The dreamer constructs the dream. There are no material divisible entities or indivisible atoms that can be known.

• 3 Aspects of Nature:
• Constructed/conceptual or conventional world – the subject-object duality of unawakened people, imagined, people wrongly think that everything exists, but it’s a fabrication of the mind’s processes.
•  Dependent origination – dependent stream of consciousness cognitive events, the intrinsically existing part. If the constructed dependent aspect is removed, only the non-dual element remains.
• Perfected thusness—What is realized when awakening occurs, when all consciously constructed aspects are emptied = Yogacara’s version of emptiness w/ understanding that all cognitive events are devoid of reality, which is conceptual fabrication superimposed on the non-dual stream of knowing. The awakened person sees the absence of the imagined aspect in the dependent aspects.
• Emptiness = emptiness of duality, grasping of subject-object consciousness
• No object exists outside of consciousness as the dream doesn’t exist outside the dreamer.
• Is this the same as Berkeley’s Philosophy?
  • Berkeley = mind is a thinking substance with ideas (thoughts and sensory images) as its quality
  • Yogacara = casually conditioned series of mental events (perception/cognition/consciousness)
• Is it Ontological Ideology? NO. Shared experiences result from the maturation of seeds in the subconscious level of the mind that influence conscious experiences.
  • The result of maturation of similar seeds in their individual consciousness = shared hallucination
• Is it Ontological realism with a common-sense assumption that there is an external world? No, we don’t really know the external world because everything we know is constructed by seeds in storehouse consciousness. The building blocks are processes of mental perception, cognition, and consciousness (knowing) that animate/hallucinate reality.

Problem with other minds

• No first-hand experience w/ other minds – it’s all inference by appearance of body & verbal actions.
• Yogacarins are not doing ontology = they do not say that external world doesn’t exist, but that we cannot know them with the unawaked mind that projects our mind and hallucinates everything = it’s more epistemology.  Before awakening, we cannot distinguish our mental construction and interpretation of the world from the world itself as THUSNESS.

How is the world known? = Through 8 Consciousnesses (8 modalities of knowing):

1. Eye Consciousness (knowing through sight) = Sensory Organ + Consciousness (knowing nature) + Visual Input = Sight Knowing

• Ear Consciousness (knowing through hearing) = Sensory Organ + Consciousness (knowing nature) + Sounds Input = Hearing Knowing

• Nose Consciousness (knowing through smelling) = Sensory Organ + Consciousness (knowing nature) + Scent Input = Smelling Knowing

• Tongue Consciousness (knowing through tasting) = Sensory Organ + Consciousness (knowing nature) + Taste Input = Taste Knowing
• Body Consciousness (knowing through hearing) = Sensory Organ + Consciousness (knowing nature) + Texture Input = Sensation Knowing

• Thought Consciousness (knowing through thinking) = Cognitive Process of Thinking + Consciousness (knowing nature) + 5 Consciousness Input turned into Concept/Language/Interpretation/Labelling = Conceptualization Knowing

• Manas: Egoic Essence or Self-Consciousness (Knowing through discrimination of separation) = Perceptual process of Identity and Separation + Consciousness (knowing nature) + Preceding 6 processes = Perception of Self Knowing (Dualistic Experience)

• ālaya-vijñāna: Storehouse Consciousness or Buddhism’s Unconscious (knowing through storage of mental seeds/conditioning) = The knowing nature that’s neutral but knows everything and stores everything. It is the basis for Karma to function; whatever is experienced through the 7 preceding consciousnesses is stored or brought to resurface by external conditions. When resurfaced, it is either reinforced by desires/resistance or an unawakened mind, then reinforced seeds stored again. The very nature of the preceding 7 consciousnesses is a seed of functional karma, stored and constructed by storehouse consciousness.

Zen Meditation is a Process of Transformation of the Above Consciousnesses – Post Kensho, one transforms the seeds of Karma (conditionings) or processes of the mind into Four Ways of Knowing:

1. Alaya-vijnana storehouse consciousness converts to knowing of the perfected mirror (reflecting things as they are = Thusness)

• Manas-vijnana consciousness (Egoic Essence/Perception) converts to knowing of equanimity (All is Equal in Nature/Wisdom of Non-discrimination = Emptiness)

• Thinking/ discriminating mind converts to knowing of clear observation (Refined Rational Mind with basis in Facts and Reality without Mental Obstruction)

• Five other consciousnesses transform to knowing of perfected action (or the perfected mirror knowing in the sense-consciousness)

To transform 8 consciousnesses into 4 wisdoms, the meditation practitioner (Yogi) using mindfulness (sati) to refine observation in understanding all aspects or phenomenology of mind, to see the manifestations of the first 6 consciousness (consciously can be observed) and understand the 7^th and 8^th workings (unconsciously working) imposed on them, to be free of delusions through perpetual mindfulness practice to experientially understand and gain insights into this working mechanism. By deepening insights, the practitioner gained freedom from attachment to this process and its mechanism, thereby experiences liberation from sufferings.

The nature of knowing (Citta) (Essence of mind) is wisdom (Functions of mind). When it doesn’t know itself, it is deluded by phenomena of consciousness deluded with its factors, it is knowing in a dualistic manner. When knowing knows itself and is liberated from attachments to all phenomena of itself, it is transformed into wisdom.

The essence of knowing nature (Essence) is the absolute reality of unmoving stillness amidst all the busy activities (Functions) of everyday life. This Mind (Citta) has two aspects – the Mind as Suchness or Thusness, that is, Absolute Reality itself, and the Mind as phenomena, a collection of the eight- consciousness described in the Yogacara. Between them, these two aspects embrace all there is… The essential nature of the knowing mind is unborn, imperishable, and beyond language. It neither grasp or move or is differentiated from all that is observed.

Zen meditation focuses on realizing the absolute nature of the mind or non-dual way of knowing. But it cannot do so without observing and understanding the functions and phenomenology of mind: the Yogacara’s consciousnesses.

Hui Neng’s on the Transformation of Consciousnesses

The way of knowing of the great reflecting mirror –mind clears 

The way of knowing equality – mind without afflictions 

The way of knowing of clear observation – absent of efforts 

The way of knowing perfected action – all is alright 

Five, six, seven, eight: the resulting fruits of planted seeds movements 

It only uses labels, not the true nature of reality 

If knowing moves without attachments 

Amidst bustling activities, stillness liberates. 

• By Hui Neing, 6th Patriarch of Chan/Zen China

Suggested Readings on the Yogacara

1. Living Yogacara: An Introduction to Consciousness Only by Tagawa Shun’ei (Author), Charles Muller (Translator).
2. Understanding Our Mind: 50 Verses on Buddhist Psychology by Thich Nhat Hanh
3. Making Sense of Mind Only: Why Yogacara Buddhism Matters by William S. Waldron
4. Inside Vasubandhu’s Yogacara: A Practitioner’s Guide by Ben Conelly
5. Haikuin on Kensho: The Four Ways of Knowing by Albert Low

The course can be attended in-person at the Knox-Metropolitan United Church (Regina, SK, Canada) or online via Zoom.

To register for the event click here.

Notes from Lotus’ Dharma Talk on October 28, 2023

The way of knowing of the great reflecting mirror –mind clears 

The way of knowing equality – mind without afflictions 

The way of knowing of clear observation – absent of efforts 

The way of knowing perfected action – all is ok 

Five, six, seven, eight: the resulting fruits of planted seeds movements 

It only uses labels, not the true nature of reality 

If knowing moves without attachments 

Amidst bustling activities, stillness liberates. 

• By Hui Neing, 6th Patriarch of Chan/Zen China

Alaya-vijnana storehouse consciousness converts to knowing of the perfected mirror. 

Manas-vijnana consciousness (discriminating ego) converts to knowing of 
equanimity 

Thinking/ discriminating mind converts to knowing of clear observation 

Five other consciousness transforms to knowing of perfected action (or the 
perfected mirror knowing in the sense-consciousness) 

The nature of knowing (Citta) (thức) is wisdom (trí). When it doesn’t know itself, it is 
deluded by phenomena of consciousness deluded with its factors, it is knowing in 

a dualistic manner. When knowing knows itself and is liberated from attachments 
to all phenomena of itself, it is transformed into wisdom. 

The essence of knowing nature (thể) is the absolute reality of unmoving stillness 
amidst all the busy activities or functions (dụng) of everyday life. 

This Mind (Citta) has two aspects – the Mind as Suchness or Thusness, that is, 
Absolute Reality itself, and the Mind as phenomena, a collection of the eight- 
consciousness described in the Yogacara. Between them, these two aspects 

embrace all there is… The essential nature of the knowing mind is unborn, 

imperishable, and beyond language. 

Zen meditation focuses on realizing the absolute nature of the mind or non-dual 
way of knowing. But it cannot do so without observing and understanding its 
functions and phenomenon, the Yogacara’s consciousnesses.