Zen Mind

When it comes to big issues like the war in Ukraine or the climate crisis, we can feel unnervingly powerless. This talk presents a simple practice of listing all of our concerns, everything that is o…

This bonus episode is the introductory talk to a recent Weekend Sitting retreat. It offers detailed instructions for how to hold the body-mind in sitting meditation (zazen) with an emphasis on energe…

What exactly are we doing in zazen meditation? What kind of effort is necessary? This talk addresses the shift we are inviting when we sit still, and it explores three zazen instructions and how they…

Being excited or disillusioned about the promise of meditation are both signs that we expect meditation to fix our problems. But while meditation doesn't necessarily solve our problems, it can help u…

It's a new year and many people make New Year's Resolutions to make changes in their lives. Why do these resolutions often not work? This talk explores a Buddhist way to think about intention. Instea…

This is the last talk of this podcast season! Thank you so much for listening. We would be so appreciative if you took a moment to leave a rating or short review! This talk continues the exploration …

The goal of Zen practice is not to become a better, enhanced person; the goal is an open, flexible mind. Openness may sound attractive, but it actually means we allow the teaching to undermine our ha…

This talk continues to explore Dogen's statement, "To study the Buddha Way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self, to forget the self is to be actualized by the 10,000 things."…

Studying the Buddha Way depends on studying the felt body. When we study the felt body by bringing attention to sensations of breathing and the body, our sense of space can change. We can realize tha…

This is a short talk given by Zenki Roshi prior to a recent Weekend Sitting retreat. He gives instructions for zazen, which is Zen meditatiton. I hope that you find these instructions helpful in your…

This talk is the first in a series of talks on study. How do we study the Buddha Way? Often we bring ideas about study that are rooted in our experience with being in high school or college. But to s…

It's worth building a regular and diligent practice of disentangling sensation from interpretation/thinking. This is true for the sense perceptions of the phenomenal world and for the proprioceptive …

In the first half, this talk continues the exploration of the "Modalities of Mind" from last week. The mind (our sentient presence) is like an orchestra with different instruments. We can learn to li…

This talk describes five modalities of mind that we can learn to distinguish when we commit to a path of meditation and mindfulness: (1) discursive thinking (2) applied thinking (3) attentional consc…

This talk is about how to put a regular zazen practice together in one's daily life. It starts out with a look at the two sicknesses of meditation: Treating meditation as a means to an end. Using med…

Discipline is not a popular word. To most people, it feels like something imposed from the outside, an expectation others have of us or one we have internalized. This talk is about reframing the conc…