Category Archives: Jukai / Precepts

Jukai at Hayes, Kent, 14 January 2023 – Shinro Sensei

I was very happy to be able to give the precepts to Sheila Seijo (Active Samadhi) Hoare, Roisin Seiryu (Becoming like Willow) Barry, Mark Sekishin (Sincere Heart) Thynne and Ted Joshin (Pure Heart) Allpress at the zendo of Tim Zenki Steel, on 14 January 2023. Sheila is a long term Zen student with StoneWater Zen […]

My Jukai – Rosie Shishin Dembski

In the first year I came to StoneWater, I attended a couple of Jukai ceremonies. I found them quite beautiful and a bit strange, and I guess it opened up a small part of my curiosity. Like the form of Zen, it was a bit of mystery that I allowed to soak into me over […]

Jukai: my rakusu – Guro Shoshin Huby

I received the precepts from Maezumi Roshi in London sometime in the early 1980s. Sumi Komo took a photograph as I was given my rakusu. Isshin is in the picture! I look very serious, and very young. And I had very little idea what it all meant. I am sure you never do with occasions […]

Why I took Jukai and Tokedo – Jo Doshin Riordan

About 40 years ago, a teacher in the Transcendental Meditation or TM organization introduced me to a meditation technique. She gave me a mantra. It cost a fiver, not cheap for the time, however after a week, it felt like I’d had my money’s worth! Instructions were to use the mantra for 20 minutes twice […]

Rough Surface, Hazy Mirror – Tetsugen

Here we have another piece on the question of “If you have received Jukai or Shukke Tokudo, how did you experience that commitment at the time and how do you experience it now?”. The author is Tetsugen, a long time sangha member and monk. I received the precepts after my first retreat. I felt I […]

Sarah Kokai Thwaites – Jukai, Shukke Tokudo and Shoken

I’m not sure I can explain well in words why I chose to receive jukai or tokudo because I don’t think I knew why I was doing it. I just felt that I would. There was a pull to do both that I didn’t understand but which felt important to honour. There was a jukai […]

Miranda Wayu Forward – Jukai and Tokudo, then and now

When I told my mum I was receiving Jukai, she said, “You always were a joiner”. At the time, I felt hurt, although I knew on one level she was right. I’ve always been looking for tribes of like-minded people following some path, sharing an understanding of the world, working together for a common cause. […]

‘Reflections on Rohatsu and Jukai’ by Clive Tenryu Lindley-Jones

Early on in George Eliot’s seminal Novel, Middlemarch, Dorothea says to her would-be husband, the dried-up scholar Mr. Casaubon: “I have longed for some great purpose in my life that would give it shape and meaning.” Looking at the sad struggles of our world and reflecting on this desire to have meaning in our lives, […]

Why I became a Buddhist

Stuart Hollyoak was one of the four sangha members who received Jukai from Keizan Sensei on 14 November in Liverpool. Here, he offers his reflections on his decision to receive the Precepts and what this means for him: “In Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art there’s a quote by W.H. Murray that goes: Until one […]

Futatsu and the Ten Grave Precepts

Sounds like a fairy tale title doesn’t it – like Snow White and Seven Dwarfs? But no, with a Jukai ceremony coming up on the April Retreat at Crosby, here’s a thoughtful piece by Eido on the Ten Grave Precepts. Tanzan “I was recently intrigued by a talk that Sensei gave on the Fusatsu Ceremony, […]