Junden.com is a journal shared with close friends only. It includes some very vulnerable writing. It is a gift to hear if you have any thoughts about it.

“Junden” is my dharma name, given to me as part of my Soto Zen practice. The translation is “pure-hearted field”. A dharma name is private, but not secret. It’s usually picked by the teacher as an expression of something about that person…usually something they need to work on. When it was given to me, my teacher said, “Jun is pure or pure heart and Den is a field. So it’s the pure-hearted field. The field of cultivation that never loses its pure heart. Through all your digging and weeding, and in fact, the more you dig and the more you weed, the clearer its purity becomes. Junden.”

This journal is one place where I do the digging and weeding to try to get closer to the truth of my life.

If you’d like to read, just click “Continue Reading” on any post, and scroll down to where it says “New Users Registration”. Tell me how you heard of junden.com. I’ll get an email and then will approve your account the next time I have a chance to get online. (Your email and how you heard of junden.com will be private; only your user name will be visible on the site and only then if you post a comment.)