About the Author
Sylvia Young Chu
&
Testimonials

About Sylvia Young Chu

Sylvia Young Chu is trained in the Sanbo Zen lineage, based in Kamakura, Japan.  This tradition, through koan studies and direct experience, clarifies our essential nature so that we can live our daily life in a moment to moment dynamism of freedom and responsibility.  

Sylvia has her training under Nantes Pineda Roshi, Ruben Habito Roshi, Joan Riech Roshi, and Ryoun Yamada Roshi, the present Sanbo Zen Abbot, her core teacher, who has officially appointed her to teach.  She also studies with Gil Fronstal, a Vipassana teacher.  Sylvia facilitates meditation, retreat, and koan studies at Ocean Mountain Zen in Burlingame, CA.  She has also facilitated meditation in her prison ministry and is a recognized educator, accomplished piano teacher, poet, floral designer, spiritual director, supervisor of spiritual directors, and certified Healing Touch practitioner. 

Her six published books are Zen Essence: Fountains, Lanterns, and Paths of :
Wisdom, Book 1;
Enlightenment, Book 2;
Freedom, Book 3
Hidden Treasures, Book 4,
Happiness, Book 5,
Returning Home & Luminescence, Book 6.

She lives with her husband, Norman, and is the mother of three grown children.

Testimonials:

Thank you Sylvia for the OMZ Village meditation gathering on Monday. I especially enjoyed the exercise of stating what we are grateful for in one sentence and then moving on. I was in a group with two other OMZ members for that exercise. At first, I thought it would be difficult to keep finding things to be grateful for, especially when the other two would say what I was going to say. But part of the lesson was how easy it is to just keep going, keep easily uncovering things to be grateful for. We kept going for ten minutes and it seemed like it was over too soon.

I am also grateful for your poem, especially the insight to be thankful for imperfection and impermanence, two things that on their surface can be seen as negative. They guide us to deeper understanding and compassion and make space for flowering in ways we could
JE

Thank you for the poems: Desire to Exist and Gaza-Israel Conflict. For me, it was a good reminder of how Zen can be applied to the biggest, most intractable problem, as Buddha intended. Others in the groups were emotionally moved by the poem. I love to see that. Well done!
JE 

I really liked your sincere stories about parenting; humility, humor, and perspective; the examples you show us of your love and respect you have for one another with Norman,
The insights about the relationship with the teacher and life;
All the insights with the wolves and how to attend to suffering, dirty laundry, unheard voices
The hope...The nice crispy citrus fragrance will come ...
You actually gave a conclusion when you talked about nonduality
I do think it’s ok to have 2 wolves of different colors: it’s symbolic, like night and day; it’s not literal.
LN

Thank you.  That was a beautiful session.  I loved the poem so full and rich in describing our inner wolf struggles of a lifetime, yet reassuring at the same time.

So good that I can attend the group meditation and your talks!  I find so much spiritual sustenance in your talks and with the group. 

I enjoy your Chinese poem translations and accompanying walk-throughs, uncoding Zen references and Koans I would never get on my own.  Your talks and the lessons of meditation have helped and continue to help me release into a better place.

Thank you so much!

C 

Thanks so much for your poem on darkness and unknowing.  It resonated for me on many levels.  A few months ago, I came across the line below from John of the Cross:

“Accept the bewilderment of not-knowing what you are or where to find yourself.”  

I wrote the following reflection on them:

“Accept the bewilderment” speaks to something deep in me.  It seems to me to be saying something similar in reflections on the dim voices inside you that whispered, "Embrace me."  In fact, you even use the word "bewilderment" when you write

Every moment,

the new and naked, 

arise from unknowing, 

now becoming,

sustaining, and

returning back

to bewilderment.

Like many people, I have assumed bewilderment shouldn’t be there! "For God’s sake, I’m seventy-two years old and I still “don’t know what I am”?  John seems to be saying, “Exactly, why would you think it could be otherwise?”  And it’s not just knowing what I am, but not knowing where to find myself.  He writes elsewhere that to travel to an unknown land we have to take unknown roads.  We’ve got to give up our assumptions about what the destination is and the path to it.  Perhaps this is what most characterizes this time in my life. 

Not long before he died Jung wrote the following in the last two pages of his Autobiography, Memories, Dreams and Reflections.  His words capture for me something of how bewilderment actually feels:

The older I have become, the less I have understood or had insight into or known about myself. I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous.  I am all these things at once and can’t add up the sum.  I am incapable of determining ultimate worth or worthlessness; I have no judgment about myself and my life. There is nothing I am quite sure about.  I have no definite convictions—not about anything really…. Yet there is so much that fills me: plants, animals, clouds, day and night, and the eternal in man.  The more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things…

His last line highlighted above reminds me of your words:

In spaciousness,

I am the rich fullness of

flowers, trees, 

birds, rivers, and

what other names

now nameless without

definition and distinction.

...this one taste now

being all things.

You call it the "interintimacy of one love and one existence."  That is such a beautiful way of expressing it!

You and Jung seems to be saying that letting go of attachment to certainty, conceptualization and judgments about ourselves and others is replaced by “a feeling of kinship with all things,” a sense of connection to the whole that is deeper than the divisions and separations our minds are constantly manufacturing.  

Learning to live with uncertainty and with acceptance allows us to embrace “kinship with all things.”  A sense of wonder, unconditional gratitude, compassion, and love wells up inside from our deepest nature.
JN

Your poems are very beautiful pieces of mature spirituality.
PR

Last night's reading and discussion was a rare event: a moment of raw reckoning with life as it is, which you brought to us with your 3 am unleashing. Later you put in the work to form it into a sharp piece of writing to share with us. Thank you!!

The poem presents a clear-eyed acceptance of life (the result of a long and deep Zen practice) that gives the listener a way forward in their own life through Zen practice. The honesty of it: beginnings, endings, growth, darkness, joy, regret, was rich fodder for discussion. I liked being able to hear your voice and also read the poem. During the discussion after the poem, I was grateful for Cynthia's emotional reaction, because I felt the same way, but am less able to let it out.

What I got most out of the meeting and from your poem was a clear reminder of the ways "darkness" is used in Zen. Specifically, your poem moved around the five different kinds of darkness. These uses of darkness, you reminded us in our discussion, map to the same spiritual journey revealed in Ten Pictures of an Ox Herder.

 In your poem you referred to...

Darkness 1: Lack of a spiritual path. Being totally immersed in your delusions with no clue and no effort to see past them.

Darkness 2: Settling into a spiritual path of religious dogma that closes your mind and heart instead of setting you free.

Darkness 3: Embracing a Buddhist path but not yet able to experience Mu.
Darkness 4: Experiencing Kensho and continuing to crack open the door of insight, little by little, with effort and concentration. With each step, your own darkness is shown to you, painfully, even as your sight becomes clearer and your load lighter.

Darkness 5: Blind from a flash of pure insight. Dropping from the ten foot pole of spiritual practice you had built and landing in the marketplace. Smelling the plumbs, feeling the ground beneath you. Feeling the corners of your mouth rise and the crinkle of your eyes as your smile radiates to all. Stubbing your toe on a cart and feeling the pain.

Thank you for OMZ, Sylvia! 

All my love,

JE

Thank you for explaining your poems during the first reading; that’s very helpful, and it makes them much more meaningful to me.

I don’t remember the exact wording at the beginning of the poem but I remember feeling troubled.  You were expressing being in darkness, which, at the time seemed disturbing.  I remember thinking “As enlightened as Sylvia is, how could she feel lost in darkness????"  Now that you have explained “darkness” more, I have a slightly better understanding.  

As the poem went on, it felt very personal, and it felt somewhat like a love poem, in a way.  

But there is still one part that I want to ask you about….you said something about fighting and defending…..and I’d like you to talk more about that, please.  Thank you.

SD

I don't remember the actual words of the poem. What I do remember is the feeling that you poured a lot more of your personality and current struggles into this particular poem.

I think of many of your poems as having a point to get across or a lesson to be learned - this poem felt like the primary purpose was to share your experience.

The lesson was still there but it came secondary and showed us how you are navigating your existing experience with grace and balance - almost like you were learning the lesson right in front of us.

Thank you for sharing it with me.

KK

Your latest poem spoke volumes to me.

This latest approach of preparing us with context for each line beforehand was extremely helpful. Maybe that's why Cynthia seemed to have an overwhelming response to it. I was feeling her response. She had conflict and turmoil that I often experience. I know that I was raised to suppress overwhelming emotions. My innate habit is to crush the feelings that are unacceptable. To swallow it.

"Shoulds" and "oughts"  of our mind tell us to deny parts of us causing conflict. In embracing those parts can we see our true essence.

It is only in observing, accepting all aspects of our being. All emotions are important. You recently told me: "That you are watching and not get on the train is great. That you are watching you are not what you are watching! Experience just watching, detached!"

Watch and let go. Experience it. No judgement.

Empty. No "mind", no "I", no fear.

Darkness does not mean there is no light. The light is there but we are blind to it. We may stare into the sun and not see it. Yet it is there right in front of us. Maybe the warmth is the first glimpse. Observe it. Experience it. Let go. 

HF


When We Listen to The Voice Within


Turns out your talk tonight highlighting “kill the thinking” is actually perfect timing.

Your talks over the years and meditation guidance are helping me immensely.  I have been using the skills of which we talked about tonight which help keep me centered and calm.  I will take your words of wisdom with me and do my best to focus on silence and the “music of spaciousness.” Thank you.

 C 

As I Walk Silently in Darkness,

When you overwhelmingly and viscerally feel the emotional impact of a poem, you know it has succeeded.  “As I Walk Silently in Darkness” is an evocative and intimate love poem to life and personal path to spirituality.  As I listened to you read experiences and insights from your life, I was completely swept away — chills up my spine.

C