One River Zen

08/15/2025

Saturday Morning Zen at ORZ 🌅

8:00 AM · Buddhist Service
9:00 AM · Meditation
9:45 AM · Dharma Talk

Join us for the full morning or any part that fits your schedule.
All are welcome—no experience needed. Cushions and chairs provided.

📍 One River Zen · 121 E. Prospect Ave · Ottawa, IL

08/09/2025

🧘‍♂️ Ready to Begin? Enter the Way!

Join us for a four-week journey into the heart of Zen meditation and mindfulness. Whether you're brand new or returning to practice, Entering the Way offers a grounded, welcoming path into stillness, clarity, and compassionate awareness.

📅 Starts Wednesday, August 13th | 7:00–8:30 PM CST
📍 Join in person at One River Zen in Ottawa, IL — or online from anywhere
Register at: https://oneriverzen.org/zen-basecamp-1

We’ll explore the core teachings of Zen, build a sustainable meditation practice, and begin to wake up to the richness of each moment.

✨ Come as you are. Leave with a flourishing practice.

ENTERING THE WAY Begin your meditation & mindfulness journey today @ One River Zen… Meditation has many benefits, including stress reduction, mental resilience, and increased focus. But, for many of us, the question is: “How do I begin?”Entering the Way | Fundamentals of Zen Practice is a fou...

08/08/2025

LOOK PAST WHAT YOU EXPECT TO SEE

It can be tempting to think of karma as some kind of cosmic retribution—like there’s a Buddha in the sky with an abacus, keeping track of who deserves what. But karma’s not about settling scores. It’s more helpful to see it as conditioned consciousness.

This universe is wide open—boundless, really. But we collapse it into something very narrow based on our habits, our conditioning, our expectations. We wake up in the morning already sure of how the day’s going to go. And then—surprise, surprise—we mostly see what we expect to see.

And honestly, that’s kind of sad. Because there’s so much more available in each moment than what we’ve decided is there.

So today, when you find yourself in a familiar place, pause. Take a breath. Open your eyes and really look. Let go of what you think is there. See what’s actually there. But to do that, you first have to notice how your conditioning shapes the way you see.

08/07/2025

Keep the Gift Flowing

There are many different realms that we can find ourselves in on our practice journey. Among them is the realm of the hungry ghost. I think in today’s materialistic culture, we find ourselves here fairly often—in a place where we’re all very, very hungry, constantly trying to seize onto something to satisfy that hunger, but never actually being able to appreciate what we’ve captured. Never actually being able to satisfy the hunger that we have. And so we keep trying to get more, and more, and more.

This is not our practice.

Today, take a few moments to appreciate the very small and subtle things that nourish you. The miracle of going to the sink, pouring yourself a glass of water, and drinking it. When you get in your car—just to feel the key in the ignition, turn it, and you’re off. You can go wherever you want.

So much magic out there. So many small things that support us that we’re not appreciative of. Today, make a conscious effort to recognize those things. But not just that—make a conscious effort to support others in their practice by uplifting them in very small and subtle ways. Keep the gift flowing.

Keep all of these small things you have at your disposal moving. Just give them away as gifts. Help other people appreciate all the nourishment that’s around them. And in so doing, you’ll find your true nature. You’ll find that it’s not outside of you. And we all become whole in this practice.

08/06/2025

Don’t Harden Your Heart

We as humans sometimes have a difficult relationship with our emotions. There are some emotions we want to feel, and some we don’t want to feel. And so there’s a strong temptation in our practice to harden our heart—to keep some things, some feelings, some emotions out. We think that by doing this, we’re regulating our emotions. And by regulating our emotions, we’re somehow advancing our practice.

But this isn’t our way.

If you want to have your emotions in perfect balance, then it’s important that when you’re sad, you cry. And that when you’re happy, you laugh. And when something arises that brings discomfort, you don’t block it out. When we open the field of awareness in such a way that everything is included, then the senses come into balance. The emotions come into balance.

But the moment we begin picking and choosing which emotions we want to feel, that dysregulation creates a karmic catastrophe. Our emotions flatten into frustration and anger. It leaves us unavailable to meet the suffering that’s right in front of us.

So watch today where you’ve hardened your heart. Peel back the layers of callous and make sure you’re free and available—to meet life as it is, and to respond to suffering as you find it.

08/05/2025

Call for Artists:
A Fall Residency at One River Zen

One River Zen is pleased to announce an open call for submissions to our upcoming Fall Artist Residency, offered in proud partnership with the Arts of Starved Rock Country Fund.

This eight-week, non-residential residency invites artists of all disciplines to explore the intersection of contemplative practice and creative expression.

Located in Ottawa, Illinois—near the confluence of the Fox and Illinois Rivers—One River Zen is a Sōtō Zen Buddhist community rooted in traditional practice and committed to contemporary engagement.

Artists selected for the residency will have the opportunity to deepen their creative work through meditation, connect with our sangha (spiritual community), and contribute to building meaningful bridges between the temple and the wider Ottawa community. The program includes a public presentation and a closing reception to showcase the artist’s work.

Special consideration will be given to applicants interested in enhancing their artistic practice through contemplative experience and community connection.
For more information or to submit your application, please contact René Parks Wendinger at rene@srccf.org.

08/04/2025

Don’t Let Practice Become Decoration

It’s funny—when we walk into people’s homes, we often see how things are arranged to project identity. Books that are never read. A piano in the corner that’s never played. Chairs positioned for guests that never come. These things aren’t functional—they’re symbolic. They represent who we want to be seen as, rather than how we actually live.

Don’t let your meditation practice become that.

Don’t let it become another decorative symbol of virtue—something that looks impressive from the outside, but never gets played. This practice isn’t about presentation. It’s not for show. It’s not meant to make anyone think you’re spiritual, wise, or disciplined.

It’s meant to be used.

When practice is real, when it’s alive, it touches everything. It moves through your speech, your actions, the way you hold silence, the way you meet the world. It doesn’t just sit on the cushion—it walks with you.
So today, I encourage you: don’t just collect your Samadhi like a possession. Don’t store it like a piano in the corner. Use it.

Use it to meet what’s hard. Use it to see the suffering around you. Use it to stay steadfast, present, and responsive—wherever you are.

07/25/2025

📵 Watch Where You’re Going 🧘‍♂️

We’ve all seen the memes: someone so absorbed in their phone that they wander into traffic... or the tourist chasing the perfect selfie, only to fall from a cliff.

But it’s not just a meme. It’s us.

We get so caught up in the story about our lives—the drama, the roles, the imagined outcomes—that we forget to actually live it. We miss what’s right in front of us.

So stop.
Take a breath.
Look where you’re going.

There’s a life to be lived—step by step, breath by breath. But that only happens when you’re centered, when you allow yourself to be moved by what is here and now.
That’s how you meet your true self—reflected in the eyes of those you encounter. That’s how you stop missing your life.

So today, pay special attention:
Watch where you’re going!

07/24/2025

🪷 Whistle While You Work 🪷

It’s important in our practice to examine our attitudes and intentions very carefully. We often divide our day into things we like to do and things we have to do. Work can feel toilsome, burdensome.

But every activity—if we meet it fully and with the right intention—is a gateway to awakening.

So today, whether you’re headed to work or cleaning the house, whistle while you work. Sincerely appreciate the great task before you. Know that when you show up with the correct heart, attitude, and intention, you are liberating all suffering beings.

07/23/2025

Word by Word

It’s becoming more and more common for us to turn on media and hear an expletive-laden rant about what’s going on or the affairs of the world. And we sometimes celebrate these for their unbridled rawness.
It’s important for us to remember that that’s not our practice.

Certainly, there’s a place for emotion to be expressed, but we should ensure that what we’re putting out into the world is something that can actually work to instill empowerment and centeredness in the present moment. That takes a lot of precision and intention.

If we’re sending out any poison—particularly anger—through our speech, those fires are not easy to contain, and we can wind up inadvertently burning both the hearer and the heard.

There’s a place and a season for every word in the pantheon of our language, but ensure that if you’re pointing out poison, that within the same sentence, you’re also pointing out the antidote.

Watch what you say today—word by word.

It’s more important than you think.

07/22/2025

Return to Intention

We often say we’re trying to get in touch with our true self—our essence.
And regularly, when we’re looking for that bedrock, we’re told to “trust our feelings.”
But I’m here to tell you this morning:
Your feelings are fickle.

They come and go.
They arise in the gap between your lived experience and your intention.
They’re shaped by memory, conditioning, fear, desire.

And yet we say things like:
    •    “I have to tell the truth about my feelings.”
    •    “I can only speak from my feelings.”
    •    “I can’t help how I feel.”

None of that is really true.

When you find yourself looping—caught in the gravity of your emotions—pause.
Return to your intention.

Intention is something you truly have a say in.
You can choose how you want to show up.
When your intention is clear and aligned, your feelings will eventually follow.

So today, state your intention.
Return to it often—especially when your feelings start to pull you off center.
When you live from intention, you’ll find you always have what’s required to manifest as compassion…
and to mend the illusion of difference and separation.

07/21/2025

Go Outside and Play

We often sit around and walk in circles—ruminating, journaling, coalescing around every thought and feeling that passes through consciousness.
And before long, we’ve woven these sensations into a coherent narrative.
We say, “This is I. This is how I am feeling.”
And then we treat that “I”—the one who feels—with a kind of reverence.

But here’s the issue:
Yes, there are feelings. I don’t doubt that.
But it’s the “I” that gets sticky.
If you truly want to see who you are, you’ve got to shut the journal.
Stop ruminating.
Get up.
Go outside and play.

Engage what’s actually here.
Interact with the living world around you.
Move, breathe, laugh, create—function freely.
And then, something shifts.
The feelings are still there, but they’re no longer at the center of a collapsed, self-reinforcing narrative.
They don’t define you.

So today, just put that “I” aside.
The ruminating and the journaling only help if they point beyond them. Burn them up if you have to.
Go outside and play.
And you’ll begin to realize the boundless, living essence of who you truly are.