A Temporary Affair

Talks on Awakening and Zen

David Radin

Paperback
978-1-948626-67-5
US $15.95
eBook available
August 2022

A Temporary Affair is a collection of talks given at Sunday morning sittings at the Ithaca Zen Center by Yoshin David Radin, abbot and founder of the Ithaca Zen Center for the past 40 years. The talks contained here were given at a time when Yoshin’s health was severely compromised by end stage renal failure. In February 2019, he received a kidney transplant from a member of Ithaca Zen Center, to whom the publication is dedicated.

The collection of 31 talks contains the insight of the individual dharma talks themselves, as well as the underlying story of how the dharma teachings helped the author cope, and even thrive, with his continuing loss of kidney function. The talks go right up to the days before he was admitted to the hospital. The comfort and guidance he received from the dharma during the times when he was most ill have been a great inspiration to all who know him, as they will to readers. In his own words, “How extraordinary, how blessed, how wonderful, to have met the teachings that free us from suffering when in difficult places.” Through these talks the reader can clearly see how he put that wisdom to use in his own life situation, and how they can do so as well.

Yoshin David Radin is abbot and founder of the Ithaca Zen Center where he has taught for the past forty years. Yoshin began Zen practice in 1976 with Joshu Sasaki Roshi. He was ordained a monk in 1983 and an Oshō in 1989. He leads regular sesshin at the Ithaca Zen Center as well as at Rinzai-ji Zen Center in Los Angeles. His writings have been turned into songs or spoken poems which were released in four collections, including Love Songs of a Zen Monk, he was the editor of two books by Zen Master Joshu Sasaki, including The Great Celebration, and he has been published in Tricycle magazine. He lives in Spencer, NY.

"These short discourses by an old Zen priest facing his possible imminent death are relaxed and friendly in tone, but not really casual. They speak directly to the heart of human suffering, the confusion that comes from not understanding what is clearly available for us to feel directly and be liberated. It is a book I keep on my bedside table, at close hand when I need a dose of encouragement." — Sylvia Boorstein, Co-founding teacher, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Author of Happiness is an Inside Job

"Life is amazing when we step out of our thoughts, our selves, and become the mystery alive to itself. With kindness and Zen directness, Yoshin opens the gate of simplicity and invites us to live here, awake, free. — Jack Kornfield, author of No Time Like the Present

“'You should find your salvation by becoming bored with your suffering...if you can be alone with yourself, you can be comfortable anywhere.' With such unexpected and unpretentious teachings, Yoshin David Radin makes Zen completely available. A Temporary Affair is a treasure house of casual (and comforting) wisdom. A book you'll go back to again and again to undo the tangles in your mind." — Norman Fischer, poet, Zen priest, author of The World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path

"This is a wonderful book. It is simple. It is clear. There are poetic moments. But, bottom line, Yoshin Radin speaks to us from the heart of the matter. Here is a Zen life as an authentic life. I highly recommend it." — James Ishmael Ford, author of Introduction to Zen Koans: Learning the Language of Dragons

"With warmth, humor and gentle authority, Zen master Yoshin David Radin shares the fruits of decades of intimacy with the mind to invite us home to the heart. His very real proximity to his own death charges these dharma talks with a kind of tender beauty that touched me to my core." — Mirabai Starr, author of Caravan of No Despair and Wild Mercy

"Do we really need another book on Buddhism? YES! But only if that book and collection of talks is Yoshin David Radin’s A Temporary Affair: Casual Talks on Zen Practice. Sitting with this book is like sitting with a roshi and having the wisdom within you mirrored back to you in a way that shatters everything that keeps you from knowing who you are and aren’t. Read this book slowly. The talks may be casual, but the truth is anything but." — Rabbi Rami Shapiro, author of The Tao of Solomon: Unlocking the Perennial Wisdom of Ecclesiastes

"This is a collection of genuine teachings from the heart that resonate with an authenticity that comes from Yoshin's many years of practice. It is both profound and practical, a fine line that few Zen teachers are able to walk." — Hal Roth, Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Contemplative Studies Initiative at Brown University

"Reading these talks by Yoshin is sharing one’s life with a wise and kind old friend. With his gentle words he dissolves the ridges of the boundaries we presume in our life. With simple words and common images Yoshin shares his experience of dissolving distracted mind, and thereby reveals the boundless heart that is our common unity." — Seiju Bob Mammoser, Senior Teacher at the Albuquerque Zen Center

"Yoshin monk shares with all of us his deep insight. He knows what it means to take up the study and practice of Zen. He offers a way to live life through the clear lens of reality, and his words reflect those of Huang Po: 'the ignorant reject what they see, not what they think; the wise reject what they think, not what they see.' Yoshin has a poignant insider’s view. It should open many a wayfarer’s eyes." — Hwalson Sunim, abbot of the Detroit Zen Center

"I love this book! My whole being recognizes the truth of Yoshin’s generous teaching with gratitude and joy. Yoshin’s simple, elegant Zen will resonate deep in your heart." — Trudy Goodman, founding teacher at InsightLA

"In this very clear, straightforward and helpful guide to Zen meditation, Yoshin is generous and welcoming in his approach to the dharma. He is also so strong in insisting on the temporary nature of this reality and non-permanent self. Dharma practice is seen by Yoshin as a spiritual path to uncover our own true nature which is profoundly good and unified with all that exists.
     "While not religious, this view echoes mystical teachings in many traditions. I was especially moved by the healing of Yoshin's relationship with his orthodox Jewish mother on her deathbed when she says to him, 'You've been living in heaven these past few years, haven't you?' This is a poignant moment and testimony to the dharma practice." — Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg, author of God Loves the Stranger

"In this book those who are investigating the human condition will find a cornucopia of food for thought and heartwarming expression shared by a fellow human, well versed in living and equally adept in dying. Yoshin’s students collected these talks and made them available to us with his help. Great hearts sharing: Wonderful!" — Dokurō R. Jaeckel, Resident Osho, Charles River Zen Center

"If you’re reading this, you’ve found something very special. There are many individuals who, from the generosity and wisdom of their insights, attempt to share their hard-won understanding with others. The challenge is that Zen insights don’t pack easily into language and the results often read like cliché. I recommend that you keep this book by your bedside and savor a few pages each night. You will experience the delight of finding something very subtle captured in words. The articulation found in this collection is a humble gift." — Jerry Mirskin, poet and Professor at Ithaca College, author of Crepuscular Non Driveway

"Yoshin David Radin was experiencing life-threatening health issues while working on A Temporary Affair, which adds great poignancy to his words, as if to say: 'This is real; I’m not kidding around.' Yet despite his stark confrontation with mortality, he conveys dharma wisdom with a lightness of heart and gentle humor that is astounding, and extremely useful for any of us who plan to die at some point.
     "Yoshin's singular teaching is that every one of us is binge-listening to our “thinking activity,” and mistakenly naming it 'I,' the one for whom life is an impermanent ordeal of suffering, and the same one who is frenetically making heroic efforts to find fulfillment before the clock runs out.
What goes unnoticed is the vast awareness we share, the presence that has no individual body or mind, no history or plans, yet illuminates and forms the backdrop for the whole catastrophe. We need only to adjust our radio frequency away from the 'I'-station that constantly grabs our attention with perpetual thought, and recover the joyful, innate ability to relax into the profound silence and stillness of being, where our true nature quietly resides at all times.
     "As someone who thought he was possibly approaching the end of life, this is not merely a nice, spiritual idea; it was Yoshi David’s potentially final offering of love and compassion, a much-needed reminder that there is a way out for all of us." — Eliezer Sobel, author of Minyan: Ten Jewish Men in a World That Is Heartbroken, and the memoir The 99th Monkey: A Spiritual Journalist's Misadventures