Recordings

Western psychology tells us that our personal needs for safety must be met before we can do much with our instinct towards spiritual transformation. This seems to be true, but that ‘seems’ encompasses a lot of territory that’s worth exploring: What is the source of the sense of danger that often arises as we push against our edges of practice? How does a sense of danger interfere with our practice? How can we discern between real and imagined danger? Can fear even assist our spiritual journey? How do the three refuges help? How can we practice with this? We will explore these and other questions together. Please bring your aspiration and fear.

Categories: Dharma Talks

As the stream of life flows through awareness, some moments stand out as being more meaningful, impactful, or important. We may assume that it’s because of the content of what we’re aware of, but usually, it’s not. How do we cultivate experiences of awe, insight and immediacy in our daily life?

Categories: Dharma Talks

On Sunday, February 4, we celebrated our annual Nehan ceremony, commemorating the Buddha’s passing into parinirvana. Jyoshin’s talk reflected on the teachings of the death of the Buddha and explored its significance for those of us practicing the Buddha’s path 2600 years later. How do we relate to these teachings? What is applicable for modern Zen students in a culture where death is often hidden away out of sight?

Categories: Dharma Talks

Beyond the karmic mirror, we find that enlightenment is communal. Kakumyo speaks of preference and renunciation in a spiritual community

Categories: Dharma Talks

As he swallowed the cup of poison hemlock, Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. Our practice encourages us to know the self, but also to drop the self. When is self-examination self-indulgence? When is dropping the self avoiding the facts?

Categories: Dharma Talks

What is Justice, and how does it relate to Mercy? Both are kind of old-fashioned words, old-fashioned virtues, and both are interpreted in a variety of ways. Genko talks about Dharma Rain’s prison program, social justice, and how all of this relates to the Dharma.

Categories: Dharma Talks

How we engage in the tasks before us is both a spur for and a measure of our path. As we install a new shuso and enter a new term of practice, we consider what it means to work with the mind of practice.

Categories: Dharma Talks

In the ordination ceremony, we say, ‘I have changed my form, but kept my wish.’ What does this mean? We carry many wishes into our practice, and the innermost wish is revealed only over time. We each have a gift as well as a wish, and central to our practice is finding a way for these to meet.

Categories: Dharma Talks

As we prepare to begin Rohatsu sesshin, Jyoshin examines what we are celebrating this week and why we do what we do.

Categories: Dharma Talks

Categories: Dharma Talks

Bukkai plans to take another look at a poem by Dainin Katagiri that she first presented a long time ago and is still considering. The last section reads:

If I were not to agree with your teaching,
Believe it or not,
My life would be drifting in space,
Like an astronaut separate from her ship
without any connections.
Now I’m aware that I alone am in the vast openness of the sea,
And cause the sea to be the sea.

Just swim.
Just swim.
Go on with your story.

Categories: Dharma Talks

The Buddha, in the first sermon following his enlightenment, instructed us to practice Right Speech as part of the Eightfold Path. One version of the criteria he used for determining if speech is right is: Is is factual? is it true? Is it helpful? Is it endearing? Is it timely? Right Speech can be a challenging practice at any time, much less in times of social, political, and economic tumult. Lay Disciple Thomas Bruner explores the case for Buddhists speaking up about the issues of the day, and speaking up using the principles of Right Speech.

Categories: Dharma Talks

Gratitude for the past. Generosity to the future. After the all-night vigil beginning Saturday evening, November 4, at 7pm, Gyokuko puts this celebration into context.

Categories: Dharma Talks

As we struggle to get by and overcome obstacles, we can get confused, angry, and sad. As we develop our practice and self-awareness, subtle changes in outlook have the capacity to transform our view of life and suffering in radical ways.

Categories: Dharma Talks

We often put karmic themes and their resolution in a vague category that adds lots of extra noise and opinion and dilutes the teaching about how to affect change. This Sunday the talk will focus on some specifics about seeing through our afflicted habit patterns.

Categories: Dharma Talks

This Sunday we celebrate the Two Ancestors Memorial, honoring Eihei Dogen and Keizan Jokin. As part of that, we chant the “Life Span Chapter” of the Lotus Sutra, which describes the Buddha enlightened since the remote past, or the eternal Buddha. As the seasons change, time passes, people are born, sicken, and die, and yet … To what extent do our ancestors continue to teach us? To what extent are we all eternal Buddhas? What does that mean? On Sunday Genko wrestles with some of these questions.

Categories: Dharma Talks

How do we carry our deepest intentions with us as we move through our daily life, including when at work? Last week, many in the sangha participated in the Heart of Work retreat. Each day, the retreat started and ended with meditation in the zendo, but the main venue for the retreat was our individual work places, wherever they may be. This week’s Dharma talk is about this practice of finding support for remembering our intention wherever we are.

Categories: Dharma Talks

We want to be “more” aware, but doing so is not actually a process of becoming aware of more. It’s more a matter of lessening the obstacles to awareness. As we clarify mind, the play of arising phenomena includes some that were previously submerged. On Sunday we explore this dynamic, and see how it might inform our relation to floods and fire.

Categories: Dharma Talks

As a lay person, sometimes it is a challenge to integrate practice into our lives. How do we practice with what is? How do we allow the unique experiences of our lives to unfold with the awareness and attention of practice? Carrie Schulz offers a student talk exploring this.

Categories: Dharma Talks

The Sun Face Buddha lives for 1,800 years. The Moon Face Buddha lives for one day. But the length of the life is not what makes either a Buddha.

Categories: Dharma Talks

The source of respect is the unlimited heart of Buddha Nature. Jealousy and envy arise when we entertain the anxiety that there is not enough of something for us. Starting from the Buddha’s generous predictions of Buddhahood for his disciples, Gyokuko will explore our practice of giving and receiving respect.

Categories: Dharma Talks

Memory is unpredictable. Certain events remain vivid; others fade away. Many of us will lose memories as we age. What is it in our practice that is remembered, no matter what? How do we retain wisdom even in forgetfulness?

Categories: Dharma Talks

Genko tackles the topic of Time: what is it? how do we work with it? some of the many aspects of time as something that exists, or maybe not. Are we moving forward? What about developmental stages? What about how much time we’ve had in practice? And of course, Dogen’s fascicle, “Uji,” addressing existence-time, has to be considered.

Categories: Dharma Talks

Drawing upon Dogen’s “Teachings of the Inanimate,” Seido talked about Buddhism’s approach to our conflicted relationship with the natural world and how the nondual leaps beyond false divisions. Where does nature begin and end? Where does sentience begin and end? This subject welcomes our direct experience in the natural world, our heartfelt concern for the environment, and ways we bring this awareness in our daily practice.

Categories: Dharma Talks

Three of the aspects of the Enlightened Mind are not achieved through will, intention and rational thought, and yet they are not achieved without good will, good intentions and clear reasoning. Gyokuko will play with the interplay during her Dharma Talk this Sunday.

Categories: Dharma Talks

A question we often get asked is “what is enlightenment,” followed closely by “how do I get it?” Kakumyo explores this realm in his Sunday talk. Come see whether he actually answers these perennial questions.

Categories: Dharma Talks

What happens when Indra, King of the Gods, sees a line of ants marching across the floor? A little storytelling about Indra leads us to contemplation of how we all fit together in the big scheme of things.

Categories: Dharma Talks

While many sangha members headed out to the Pride Parade, Jyoshin presented a talk on manifesting fearlessness in life and in practice. In Buddhism, the gift of fearlessness is one of the highest gifts. She unpacks this idea to see where it shows up in our lives and in the lives of those around us.

Categories: Dharma Talks

Our list of grave Precepts begins, like those of most religions, with Do Not Kill. The commentary says “holding no thought of killing is the Precept of Not Killing.” What are these thoughts, and what does it mean to hold them? Genko explores some of the ways this Precept applies to us all.

Categories: Dharma Talks

Kakumyo will talk about the closing of term, the power of intention, and the fraility of intention and how they might relate to each other.

Categories: Dharma Talks

At the center of this Sunday’s Dharma Talk will be a twentieth century Korean koan from The Hidden Lamp collection entitled “Manseong’s No Cultivation.” Bukkai will respond to the material and offer her thoughts on related teachings.

One day a nun asked Manseong Sunim, “How do I cultivate the Way of the Buddha?”

“No cultivation,” answered Manseong.

The nun persevered: “How, then, can I obtain release from birth and death?”

“Who chains you to birth and death?” Manseong asked in return.

Categories: Dharma Talks

When we begin to practice, we feel a sense of hope and promise. In time, this fades and we feel disappointment again. What does it mean to let go of our expectations and hopes, and really fall into this disappointment? How do we practice when our supports are taken away, one by one?

Categories: Dharma Talks