Profile

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Madoka Chase Onizuka

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Madoka has been practicing zazen under the instruction of Jisho Matsumoto since 2015, and is now working with him to provide zazen instruction in English.

 

She has worked in politics, education, human rights and environmental advocacy, and yoga therapy. She began meditation in 1996 as a practice to develop compassion and peace of mind. Her interest in enlightenment was sparked when a meditation teacher defined it as "liberation from suffering." She studied yoga, meditation, and zen under several teachers, thinking they were all different paths to the same mountain top. But after attending zazenkai with Kando Inoue Roshi and then Jisho Matsumoto, she realized that what they taught was radically different from anything she had heard before. She knows now that she has found her path.

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Madoka's first year of zazen practice with Jisho included hours of intense questioning and struggling to understand...in spite of being told repeatedly that enlightenment would never happen through intellectual understanding! Thus, Madoka knows from personal experience all the mental blocks that Zen practitioners often trip over, and how easy it can be to confuse Zen with meditation and other spiritual practices. These experiences and her skills as an interpreter put her in a good position to convey Jisho's instructions in ways that help English speakers avoid some of the same pitfalls that Madoka fell into (and overcame). She is also able to give recommendations to Jisho regarding the kinds of explanations that are more effective for English speakers. 

Hoping to someday be able to instruct zazen herself, until then she is happy to be a linguistic bridge so that English speakers can also learn to sit without doing anything, and become free from the illusion of self.

 

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