Magazine

Hakuin's Song of Zazen | with commentary by Michael Haggiag

Hakuin Ekaku, one of the most influential Rinzai Zen teachers, encapsulates Zen's most profound insights in just a few lines of poetry.

2025: A Year in View

Our annual look back at what has been happening on The Zen Gateway in 2025

The Selected Letters of Master Daie Soko with commentary by Ven Myokyo-ni

Book Review
Master Daie gives his lay students practical advise on how to apply Zen in ordinary life, in this invaluable collection of letters.

Easy by Nature by Lao Tsu | with commentary by Michael Haggiag

Poet's Corner
The virtues of being like water in spiritual training.

Yoka Daishi’s Realising the Way | Book Review by Lucy Spear

This book is a companion and a guide. The poem itself is not so much an instruction manual, rather it’s a distillation of what and how it is to be a pupil of the Way. 

Radical Scepticism: A Middle Way in a time of Ideological Labelling.

Culture has a significant impact on our beliefs. Rather than accepting or rejecting these beliefs, the middle way offers us an alternative.

Enthusiastic Awareness

By Katharine Haggiag
"When I started Zen training many years ago, I had no interest in learning how to clean properly. I would never have guessed that the physical act of cleaning, done wholeheartedly and with reverence, could lead to increased awareness in life."

Towards Wholeness by Venerable Myokyo Daiyu Zenji

Book Review
The title Towards Wholeness is telling. What is wholeness? In this context it is the full expression and life of each one of us and therefore a connectedness with all that is.

Extract Audio: The Zen Way

Life in a Japanese Zen Monastery by Irmgard Schloegl
This is an extract from The Zen Way by Irmgard Schloegl who spent 12 years training in Zen Buddhism at Daitokuji. In this extract Martin Goodson reads an extract from the book detailing the daily routine of the monks plus the ordeal of entrance begging undergone by all monks to gain entry to the monastery. 

Quality not Quantity

Blog
Discourse on the Inexhaustible Lamp continually reminds us that the amount of time we have been practicing means nothing; it is the quality of that practice which counts.

The Zen Garden: A Path towards 'Right Mind'

Sophie Walker takes us on a guided tour around the Zen Garden, an experience which can bring the heart to a state of rest

Hanshan's Poem | with commentary by Michael Haggiag

Poet's Corner 
Can there ever be beauty in pain and loss? The master poet Hanshan captures the bittersweet nature of impermanence in this poem.
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