Zen Mind

The ability to deal with our manifold problems is rooted in the craft of being present with what is happening in our life. What is the importance of cultivating mindfulness of the body (bodyfulness) …

This talk introduces some of the main themes of Zenki Roshi’s book “The Path of Aliveness.” It was given to an audience largely new to Buddhism at the Aspen Chapel. At the core of all Buddhist practi…

Zen practice can be thought of as a craft of opening our minds to complexity—to the complexity of our lived lives that cannot be conclusively grasped by our thinking minds. It is common to feel overw…

This talk was given at the beginning of a weekend intensive. It provides a framework for how to cultivate attentiveness—on an off the cushion. The fundamental mental posture in meditation and mindful…

The dis-ease with our existence often manifests as a lingering feeling that there is something wrong with us and/or the world. The first sentence of the Heart Sutra gives an instruction for how to li…

This talk explores the relationship between zazen mind, awakening, and everyday activity. In Zen, we use bodily markers and shifts to create a sense of continuous practice. Essentially, this is about…

In Soto Zen practice we say, "Zazen is good for nothing." Or we say, "You should sit without any gaining idea?" There is a disturbing paradox here: We all start to practice because we want an answer …

What if we (like Bodhidharma) refrain from answering the question ‘Who am I?’ with the concepts and categories our culture provides and expects? What if we allowed ourselves to exist outside of the c…

Around the transition from one year to the next, many people engage in the practice of year-end reflection and new-year resolutions. This talk, given on New Year's Eve, asks about the source from whi…

This talk was given during a Weekend Meditation Intensive. It begins by exploring zazen as a way of noticing layers of inner bracing and discovering a willingness to soften, accept, and be intimate w…

This talk relates the details of a particular koan story ("Don't try to control the 10,000 things") to the societal conditions of late modernity. Our culture has the means to bring more and more aspe…

Welcome to Zen Mind!

This talk was given in October 2021 to kick-off the second 8-week practice course in the Foundational Zen Teachings Series called "Liberation from Suffering".

Generally speaking, w…

This talk was given in January 2021 to kick off an 8-week practice course called "Transformative Practice". It reflects on the nature of transformation and shows how it is grounded in what Zen calls …

This talk continues the inquiry into wisdom. It introduces the Five Dharmas (an ancient teaching from the Lankavatara Sutra) and makes it available as a practice for our everyday lives. In a first st…

This talk was given as the opening talk to the third course in the Foundational Zen Teachings series. It presents wisdom as the ability to respond appropriately to the ever-changing circumstances of …

This talk explores the importance of the body in mindfulness practice—not just as a target of attention but as a way to be attentive. Practicing mindfulness as bodyfulness means to shift from attendi…

This talk addresses the craft of mindfulness practice. Even though the Zen tradition doesn't explicitly teach stages of mindfulness meditation, it is useful to describe the cultivation of attention a…

In our meditation, as we drop out of discursive mentalness and into bodyfulness, what do we find? A kind of existential darkness. This darkness is simultaneously our basic aliveness and our core vuln…

This talk was part of a Weekend Sitting at the Boulder Zen Center and addresses how to approach zazen practice. It explores Dogen's famous statements about his realization that "the nose is vertical …

This talk explores the relationship between sitting meditation (zazen) and attentiveness in everyday life. It's starts with Joko Beck's definition of enlightenment as the "ending in yourself of that …