Shows
Zen MindConstancy in Practice: Zazen, Views, RelationshipsThis talk was given as a closing talk for the 2025 Boulder Zen Center - Everyday Bodhisattva Practice Period. It reviews the basic ingredients of practice and summarizes them as (1) daily zazen, (2) working with views, and (3) cultivating relationships. In traditional Buddhist terms, this can be understood as a commitment to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. The talk then explores constancy in practice as the most important attitude for making our practice fruitful. Instead of viewing our practice as a struggle to permanently replace the state of suffering (samsara) with a state of liberation (nirvana), it suggests using each moment to establish...2025-05-0148 minZen MindFinding Your Energy Body - Sesshin Day 5This talk was given as part of a sesshin (7-day meditation intensive) at Boulder Zen Center. It begins by examining the limited view we have in our Western culture of the body as a material object and introduces an alternative view of the body as flow—material as well as energetic flow. The Western word 'energy' is often used to translate the Eastern concept of 'qi,' but this can lead to misunderstandings if energy is understood as the name for a 'quantifiable physical property' rather than a pointer to experiencing a 'dynamic relational vitality' through our very own bo...2025-04-1758 minZen MindUnfolding the Path of Practice: Zenki Roshi in Conversation with Nicky AntonellisThis is a special conversational episode. Zenki Roshi is interviewed by Nicky Antonellis, a co-founder of the nonprofit organization, Dharma Gates, which aims to connect young adults to deep meditation practices. One of their many offerings is a podcast which features different perspectives on the Buddhist path. You can find out more on the Dharma Gates website.In today’s conversation, Nicky asks Zenki Roshi about the background and motivation that eventually led to him to Soto Zen practice. They explore the roles of embodiment and concepts in meditation, as well as stages in practice and the cu...2025-04-031h 17Zen MindUndivided Activity (Guided Meditation): Life as It Appears Here NowThis talk is a guided meditation that is part of the commentary on Dogen's fascicle "Shobogenzo Zenki – Undivided Activity." Instead of continuing with the line-by-line commentary, it takes a step back and points to the mind, from which we need to listen to Dogen's writing if we don't want to get lost in its apparent contradictoriness and complications. The talk attempts to get everyone on a similar experiential page and to demonstrate that all of us are undivided from the mind of awakening. The meditation guides you through widening attentional spheres: from posture and breath to the sense fields, to...2025-03-2043 minZen MindUndivided Activity (Part 2): Liberation and ActualizationThis talk continues the line-by-line commentary on Dogen's fascicle "Shobogenzo Zenki – Undivided Activity." The talk takes a deep dive into how to understand and practice with the two central terms, "liberation" and "actualization," which Dogen presents as intimately linked to life and death. The talk unfolds five interpretive dimensions of life and death as: (1) existential states, (2) biological events, (3) momentary change (appearance/disappearance), (4) energetic states (feeling alive/dead), and (5) an example of any conceptual opposition to which preferences can attach.Welcome to Zen Mind!Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Be...2025-03-0658 minZen MindUndivided Activity (Part 1): The Buddha WayThis talk kicks off the line-by-line commentary on Dogen's fascicle "Shobogenzo Zenki – Undivided Activity," which participants in BZC's Everyday Bodhisattva Practice Period study together over the course of 3 month. The talk discusses the title and the first sentence, which together introduce four central ideas: (1) undivided activity (that everything is functioning together), (2) the buddha way (that practice means to engage this undivided totality), (3) liberation (that realizing undividedness is freedom), and (4) manifestation or actualization (that appearance experienced completely is reality).Welcome to Zen Mind!Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast su...2025-02-2048 minZen MindEverything Is Functioning Together to Create This MomentThis talk was given during a Boulder Zen Center Weekend Sitting. It contemplates the phrase "Everything is functioning together to create this moment." It suggests to understand "this moment" not as a time unit but as the infinite experiential space that presents itself here-now. We can approach the experience of "everything" by letting go of the focus on something and allowing the mind to be aware of everything all at once and nothing in particular. Dogen's phrase "forgetting the self is to be actualized by the 10,000 things" illustrates this approach. "Functioning together" can be understood not just as interdependence...2025-02-0648 minZen MindCommitted to Here (Practice Period Opening Talk)This talk was given as part of the Opening Ceremony for Boulder Zen Center's annual 3-month 'Everyday Bodhisattva Practice Period,' which intends to create a framework for householders (Everyday Bodhisattvas) to intensify their practice in a committed way. In a monastic 90-day Zen Practice Period, the main commitment is to stay on the premises and follow the schedule completely. If we don't have the support of a monastic setting, we need to ask what we need to be able to STAY in a place of practice-realization. The talk suggests that the "ultimate commitment" is to be fully committed...2025-01-2356 minZen MindEach Moment Is Material for Awakening (Everyday Bodhisattva Practice) - Sesshin Day 7This talk is the seventh and last talk given during Boulder Zen Center's seven-day December Sesshin. It raises questions about the relationship between being on retreat and practicing in the context of daily life. To address these questions, it shows how the Bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism goes beyond the idea of transcendence in Early Buddhism. To live as a Bodhisattva is to be committed to this world and its problems while continuously practicing non-grasping and non-resisting. The imperturbability, we cultivate through zazen doesn't mean we're never disturbed; it means we're not disturbed by being disturbed—time and again fo...2025-01-091h 01Zen MindHappiness, Contentment, and Attentional PresenceWe live in an "achievement society," in which we are encouraged to constantly improve our lives in search for happiness. This talk presents Zen practice as a series of simple instructions like sitting down, not moving, and attending to breath and body, which facilitate the discovery and cultivation of a breath-body-attentional-space that can flower into a presence that doesn't go anywhere in the midst of changing experiences. This always-there presence hosts all of our experiences—pleasant and unpleasant, good and bad. This attentional presence can become for each person, independent of particular circumstances, the timeless source of contentment....2024-12-2651 minZen MindOur Entanglement with Thinking- Sesshin Day 3This talk is the third talk given during the seven-day December Sesshin held at the Boulder Zen Center. It is a detailed investigation of why, despite our sincere mindfulness practice, it can be so difficult to disentangle our attention from the thinking process. It explores the hypothesis that thinking can be non-consciously used as a defense against the anxiety and disturbance we experience around existential facts like discontinuity, uncertainty, powerlessness, and pain. As a remedy, we can practice to invite our most disturbing existential feelings with gentle fearlessness. The stillness and stability of the physical zazen posture (discussed in...2024-12-1249 minZen MindStepping Back (and Back In)This talk asks what it means to be identified with thoughts, opinions, emotions, personal characteristics, roles, and positions. And then, what it means to dis-identify from those aspects. It explores Dogen's practice instruction "to take the backward step that turns the light around and inward." Dogen's stepping back is to first discover and then establish oneself in the 'field of mind' that is always present "behind" the many 'contents of mind' that are coming and going from moment to moment. This is the realization of non-attachment and freedom. However, there remains a dualism between field and content, self and...2024-11-2842 minZen MindTransforming Habits and the Rewards of Open AwarenessThis talk is plucked from the middle of the 6-week Practice Course 'Transforming Habits' which just concluded at the Boulder Zen Center. The talk provides a summary of some of the ground that has been covered during the course up until this point: the nature and purpose of habits; the structure of habits – cue, craving, behavior, reward; how habits can become dysfunctional; and the "gears" we can use to transform habits: (1) mapping, (2) disenchantment, (3) awareness, (4) transformation through untangling. The idea of gears is borrowed from research psychologist Judson Brewer (see book recommendation in the show notes). Using concrete examples, the ta...2024-11-1554 minZen MindWelcoming Beginner's Mind–A Conversation with Gaylon FergusonThis episode is a conversation with meditation teacher and author Gaylon Ferguson about his new book "Welcoming Beginner's Mind." The conversation touches on the main themes of the book and their importance in our practice and everyday life such as welcoming experience just as it is, spaciousness, control and grasping, stages of practice, and what is called our true nature or Buddha-nature.Welcome to Zen Mind!Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks...2024-10-3148 minZen MindExpressing Buddha Mind through the PreceptsThis talk was given in preparation for this year’s Lay Initiation Ceremony (Jukai). It explores the ethical dimension of Zen practice as expressed in the Sixteen Bodhisattva Precepts. On the one hand, the precepts don’t appear to be different from other religious moral codes. They formulate common sense behavioral guidelines. On the other hand, they can be interpreted from the point of view of emptiness. Then they become the description of how a Buddha functions in the world. They are inseparable from zazen practice. As we begin to use zazen to be intimate with the field of undi...2024-10-1742 minZen MindThe Craft of Habit TransformationThis talk was given to kick off this year's fall course on 'Transforming Habits.' It considers Ken Wilber's distinction between 'waking up' and 'growing up.' It then asks how being intimate with the field of mind (open awareness) can be used to facilitate the transformation of unwholesome habits, which is essential for the process of growing up. In contrast to popular self-help approaches to habit change, which aim for becoming our best selves, Buddhism emphasizes freedom (without dismissing self-improvement altogether). The talk considers and uses three mental postures derived from (slightly modified) statements made by Suzuki Roshi: (1...2024-10-0649 minZen MindHow to Mind Your ProblemsThis talk was given as part of a One-Day Intensive at Boulder Zen Center's new Mountain Zendo. It takes the following quote from Suzuki Roshi as its jumping-off point: "When you're sitting in the middle of your own problem, what is more real: your problem or you yourself? That you are here, right now, is the ultimate fact." Usually, the contents of our minds seem more real—objects of sense perceptions, emotions, problems. What does it take to shift into experiencing the medium of mind, in which these contents make their appearance, as more real? An important part of th...2024-09-2045 minZen MindAttention, Openness, and Pace in Daily LifeThis talk was given as part of a Weekend Sitting. It explores the question of how we enact practice-enlightenment (Dogen's concept) in our daily activities. It talks about the importance of pace for attuning to the field of undivided activity and specifies two requirements: (1) letting go of resistance or being truly open and (2) a change in worldview. To shift our view of the world not just intellectually but experientially, we need to notice and inhabit how attention works from moment to moment—as a simultaneity of focus and field. Our daily life is like swimming in the ocean waves wi...2024-09-0549 minZen MindAttention to Attention (Part 2)This talk continues to explore bringing attention to how attention functions in our lives. The distinction between focused consciousness (contents of mind) and nonfocused awareness (field of mind) is discussed as two different kinds of concentration. Learning to rest in and trust this nonconscious field, which is marked by interdependence and impermanence, is an essential part of the spiritual journey. While giving up control ("ungrasping") is difficult, we are rewarded with a sense of spontaneity and openness that will make our life feel more easeful and integrated. The four stages of this journey of bringing attention to attention can...2024-08-2247 minZen MindAttention to Attention (Part 1)Attention is our most precious resource. Where our attention goes, our life goes. The cultivation of attention is at the center of Zen practice. This talk points out that this cultivation is extra challenging under the conditions of what social scientists and critics have come to call the ‘attention economy’ and ‘surveillance capitalism.’ We’re not just dealing with the typical entanglement of attention with discursive thinking, we are now also facing algorithms that lead to ‘attention fragmentation’ because they have been carefully designed to maximize our screen time by getting us hooked to keep clicking. While one dimension of practice is...2024-08-0845 minZen MindWhat Would A Buddha Do?This talk is about habit change from a Buddhist perspective. In one sense, it is a preview of BZC‘s upcoming Practice Course “Transforming Habits” (Oct 4-Nov 9, 2024). However, it also stands on its own. It explores what happens when we bring the question “What would a Buddha do?” to every moment in which we feel a misalignment between our habituated actions and our inmost intentions. What kind of decisional map and directional guidance does our felt sense of what a Buddha is provide for our day-to-day living and our intention to transform dysfunctional habits?Welcome to Zen Mind!...2024-07-2546 minZen MindOn Community (Part 2)This talk continues the exploration of how to discover and develop a sense of community. It differentiates between intimacy as undividedness with all beings (the spiritual dimension of community) and intimacy as closeness (the conventional longing for being known and understood by others in our physicality, feelings, and thoughts). Regarding this longing for closeness, the talk examines the typical meditation instruction of LETTING GO of feelings and thoughts. This practice can engender the freedom of non-attachment but can also, when misused, generate spiritual bypassing and a more or less subtle sense of separation and loneliness. To counteract this tendency...2024-07-1146 minZen MindPause for the PauseThis talk was given as part of a Weekend Sitting at the Boulder Zen Center. It highlights the distinction between the contents of mind and the field of mind and its importance for practice. Dogen encouraged his students "to be continuously intimate with the field of mind." The talk presents two attentional practices to discover and establish oneself in the field of mind: (1) "To pause for the particular," a version of mindfulness practice that emphasizes the creation of a dharmic pulse within one's perceptual process, and (2) "to pause for the pause," which invites the stillness of the field to...2024-06-2739 minZen MindZen and Focusing as Personal Practice, an interview with Dr. Greg MadisonThis is a special conversational episode. Christian (Zenki Roshi) is interviewed by Dr. Greg Madison, a British psychologist and psychotherapist. More than usual, Christian connects the concepts and practices he teaches with his own biographical journey. In the beginning, the conversation centers around Christian's encounter of and interest in Gene Gendlin's philosophy and his psychotherapeutic method and social practice called Focusing. One of Gendlin's core concepts is 'Felt Sense," which plays a prominent role in Christian's life story and approach to Zen. Greg and Christian explore the differences and commonalities between Focusing practice and Zen (or spiritual practice in...2024-06-131h 28Zen MindOn Community (Part 1)This talk explores the experience of loneliness and the practice and views we might want to adopt to foster a sense of community: (1) share space instead of expecting to share beliefs or interests, (2) prioritize doing things together over talking, (3) practice mutual embodiment (notice how we interaffect each other in our sensations and movements). Along the way, the talk highlights reductionism and psychologism (body-mind dualism) as errors of Western culture and suggests ways to understand and employ situational knowing. Community arises when we allow our personal situation to be embedded in common situations.Welcome to Zen Mind!2024-05-2953 minZen MindEffortless Effort: Republished from 2022This episode was first published in February 2022. We are republishing this episode because in it, Zenki Roshi addresses the most common questions asked by beginners and the issue of discomfort sometimes experienced by practitioners of all levels during zazen. 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 are interrelated: (1) just sit, (2) think not-thinking, and (3) counting the breath.Welcome to Zen Mind!Love the dharma talks and w...2024-05-1641 minZen MindWhat's Love Got to Do With It? (Sesshin Day 1)This talk is the first of seven Sesshin talks. (A Sesshin is a 7-day Zen meditation intensive.) It starts with the question, 'What does it mean to love?' The word 'love' carries all kind of baggage. So much so that in American Zen it doesn't seem to have a whole lot of currency. Yet, we're all longing for the spiritual dimension of love. This wide-ranging talk explores the connections between love and unconditional acceptance, saying yes to life, sweetness, straightforwardness, meaning, self-improvement, buddha, big mind, warm-heartedness—and how all of that can only be practiced and embodied in th...2024-05-0148 minZen MindOn Formal and Daily PracticeThis talk was given as part of the closing ceremony of the 3-month Everyday Zen Practice Period. At the end of retreats and periods of intensified practice, many practitioners wonder how they can carry the renewed and invigorated sense of practice into their everyday lives. The answer is simple but not easy to implement: continue to stay fully present in each situation, each action, each gesture. The talk connects this challenge to the wisdom of Dogen's Genjo Koan, which was discussed throughout the Practice Period.We are excited to announce the self-paced course on Dogen’s Genjo Ko...2024-04-1945 minZen MindGenjo Koan (Part 9): Buddha-Nature in ActionThis talk concludes the line-by-line commentary on the Genjo Koan. Dogen has given us a clear (and maybe disappointing) vision of practice. We are never done with our practice. It's not like we are practicing in order to reach enlightenment, and once we have realized it, we're good. Instead, we are challenged to express enlightenment through our practice — one moment and one action at a time. From this emerges a revised understanding of Buddha-nature. Buddha-nature is not something we HAVE—like a jewel at the core of every being that can be uncovered by removing endless layers of dirt (affl...2024-04-031h 01Zen MindGenjo Koan (Part 8): Life Is a Bird, Life Is a FishThis talk is the eighth in the series on Dogen's Genjo Koan. Dogen views realization not as an experience of oneness or a discovery of the ground of being but as an endless and groundless path of engaging the mystery and challenge of the present moment. In comparing our human life on this earth to the life of a bird in the sky and a fish in the ocean, he shows that each person in each moment is the expression of the totality of interdependent being (the 10,000 dharmas). This expression takes place here-now, and it is from this here-now...2024-03-2056 minZen MindGenjo Koan (Part 2): Flowers Fall, Weeds SpreadThis talk is the second in the series on Dogen's Genjo Koan. It is a close reading of the first four sentences. First, it provides an understanding of dharmas as momentary experiential units. Then it discusses Dogen's seemingly contradictory presentation of the dharma (the teaching of liberation) in light of the classic path of awakening, the teaching of emptiness, and an approach that doesn't get caught in one or the other. The talk ends with a threefold reading of the famous line, "In attachment flowers fall, and in aversion weeds spread." One important lesson is that Zen doesn't aim...2024-03-0658 minZen MindGenjo Koan (Part 1): To Complete That Which AppearsThis talk kicks off a lecture series on Dogen's most celebrated writing, the Genjo Koan. It explores the meaning of the title phrase, which informs the entire text. GEN means to appear, JO means to complete. KO can be understood as the universal, while AN points to what is particular and unique. So GENJO KOAN means: to complete what appears as simultaneously universal and unique. As a practice, the Genjo Koan asks us to realize in our everyday actions how each appearance is an expression of the two truths: always already complete (an emergent product of the interdependent whole...2024-02-2146 minZen MindAn Appropriate Way of Life (Everyday Bodhisattva Practice)This talk was given as an opening talk for the 2024 Boulder Zen Center - Everyday Zen Practice Period (Jan 20 - April 13). It discusses the concept and tradition of 'Three-Month Practice Periods' and explores how to go beyond the value judgments implicit in the Lay/Monastic distinction. At the root of all transformative practice is the sincere, committed search for an appropriate way of life. This is the Bodhisattva Way. However, there is no universal recipe; what's truly appropriate is unique to each practitioner. Therefore, we must each find our own way. Rather than adopting a fixed pattern of practice...2024-02-0744 minZen MindContinuous OpeningThis talk explores how in times of crisis we can feel shaken by an experiences of groundlessness, and how we try to maintain and hold onto a sense of self as a defense against such groundlessness. We also employ language and understanding for that purpose of illusory grounding. Zen is not about perfecting our sense of self or our conceptual understanding; it is a practice of continuous opening to change and disturbance. The world is not a constellation of separate things. The many things are one inter-activity. This interactive complexity shows up in our bodyminds as an experiential, felt...2024-01-2446 minZen MindBeginning AnewThe philosopher Hannah Arendt considered the "capacity to begin anew" the essence of being human. This talk, given on the day before New Year's Eve, weaves our longing for new beginnings together with Buddhist notions of continuous birth and beginner's mind, and with practices of forgetting and forgiving. The talk ends with a reflection of how renewed intentions, purpose, and meaning can appear in our lives when we forget preconceived ideas and learn to attend to those aspects of our lived contexts that call on us to respond.Welcome to Zen Mind!Love the dharma...2024-01-1051 minZen MindWhat is Being Authentic?This talk is a wide-ranging exploration of seemingly disparate topics such as 'a life lived authentically," subjectivity vs. objectivity, truth, spiritual awakening, transcendence, and the postmodern condition. It starts with a statement by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, "When you become you, Zen becomes Zen. When you are you, you see things as they are, and you become one with your surroundings." It explores notions of small self vs. True Self, conceptual thought vs. pure awareness, contents of mind vs. field of mind. Finally, it proposes that it is the "bodily felt sense of a situation" that guides us in carrying...2023-12-271h 06Zen MindThorough Practice of the Great WayThis talk was given as part of a weekend zazen intensive. Based on the opening paragraphs of Dogen's fascicle 'Zenki' (Undivided Activity), the talk explores the Buddhist views of interdependence and field of mind and gives pointers for how to verify them in one's own experience.Welcome to Zen Mind!Please consider donating to our annual fundraiser.Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your...2023-12-1347 minZen MindOn GratitudeGiven during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, this talk explores the experience and practice of gratitude. Gratitude is the appreciation of that which nourishes and sustains us. Bowing is an expression of such gratitude. We can practice bowing to our parents and ancestors acknowledging the gift of life that has come to us through them. As we bow to the Buddha, we bow to the matrix of interdependence that brings forth this very moment. Gratitude is a gateway to the joy of being alive for no other reason than being alive. As we practice appreciating how we are supported by...2023-11-2947 minZen MindZen EthicsThis talk introduces the 16 Bodhisattva Precepts ahead of an annual Precepts Initiation Ceremony at Boulder Zen Center. It presents the precepts as a pragmatic approach to practicing an ethical life that avoids the extremes of universalism and relativism. The precepts can be understood and practiced on three levels: (1) guarding against self-centeredness, (2) balancing the needs of self and other, and (3) realizing intimacy.Welcome to Zen Mind!Please consider donating to our annual fundraiser.Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q...2023-11-1353 minZen MindNo Inside, No OutsideThis talk explores how to make use of the turning phrase "No inside, no outside." A turning phrase is a verbal expression that can transform our sense of self and being in the world. The phrase is held in mind as an antidote to culturally or personally ingrained views. When we investigate common sense distinctions such as internal/external and self/other, we come face to face with our tendency to objectify what is perceived to be outside and the resulting sense of alienation. The talk provides embodied practices for entering a space of intimacy so that sight and...2023-09-2744 minZen MindDon't Worry, Stay PresentThis talk is about one of the most common questions among practitioners — "How do I bring practice into my everyday life?" The answer is simple but the practice is not easy — "Stay present.” It starts out with an example that presents anxiety and worrying as a habit that is rooted in a defense against anxiety. Physical, emotional, and mental behaviors can all become habits with addictive qualities when they are employed to mask or medicate disturbing feelings for the short-term reward of feeling distracted or a little bit better. But the price can be minor or major harm in our da...2023-09-2045 minZen MindAn Appropriate ResponseThis talk was given as an introduction to a Weekend Seminar titled "An Appropriate Response," which is a well-known Zen phrase Master Yunmen gave as an answer to a question about the teachings the Buddha offered over the course of his lifetime. The talk explores how Yunmen could have answered by explaining Buddhism through its main views, its core practices, or its expected fruits. Instead, Yunmen bypasses all forms of explanation and points us directly to this very moment. How are you responding to the situation here now? How is this responding appropriate or inappropriate?Welcome to...2023-09-0648 minZen MindAsk Me Anything with Zenki RoshiThis bonus episode is our first Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Zenki Roshi. Each month, Zenki Roshi will answer 3 questions that have been submitted by our listeners. You may submit your questions via email at office@boulderzen.org.Future AMA episodes will be published as a part of our Premium Podcast. If you would like to support the podcast and gain access to these monthly AMA episodes, as well as recordings of the Q&A sessions that follow each of the dharma talks and the talks and practice instructions given at intensives such as Weekend Sittings and 7...2023-08-3133 minZen MindThe Every Day Dance of Form and Emptiness (Meaning and Meaninglessness)Traditional Buddhism doesn't explicitly address the topic of meaning. But for us contemporary Westerners, meaning is an important topic. Living a meaningful life includes such things as purpose, values, ethics, and the significance of life events. An important insight is that meaning is not be found within the "self," which from a Buddhist point of view doesn't exist in an individualized, permanent fashion. Rather meaning emerges from moment to moment in the interaction between you and your circumstances as a response to what is asked of you by the 10,000 things. A fruitful way to address the topic of meaning...2023-08-2353 minZen MindThe Everyday Dance of Form and Emptiness (Birth and Death)This talk explores birth and death as a practice of moment-to-moment change—in addition to birth and death as biological events. While it appears situations come and go and beings are born and die, things ultimately don't come into and go out of existence. Instead, everything is a continually changing expression of what Dogen calls "undivided activity"—everything-all-at-once coming together and manifesting as this moment. Our practice is to stop defending against the groundlessness of this here-now-presence and to entrust ourselves to being the always-changing form that expresses it.Welcome to Zen Mind!Please consider dona...2023-08-0943 minZen MindThe Everyday Dance of Form and Emptiness (Order and Chaos)This talk continues the exploration of everyday life practice as a dance of form and emptiness. The focus is on the contradiction yet undividedness of order and chaos in work activities (such as sweeping), in the mind (as clarity and discursiveness), and in how we organize time (schedule and spontaneity).Welcome to Zen Mind!Please consider donating to our annual fundraiser.Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even...2023-07-2648 minZen MindThe Everyday Dance of Form and Emptiness (Introduction)What if we stopped trying to dispel disturbance, confusion, and crisis from our experience and, instead, made use of these unwanted mind states as gates to appreciating our lives as a continual dance of form (fixations) and emptiness (radical openness)? This talk provides an initial conceptual understanding of emptiness as change, interdependence, and non-self. As always, intellectual study is not enough. So how can we use everyday circumstances—such as having opinions, going through a crisis, being creative, or having one's expectations disappointed—to realize freedom? Moment by moment, our challenge is to accept life as a process that can...2023-07-1249 minZen MindDoing No HarmThis talk was given as the public portion of a Weekend Workshop, during which a number of Boulder Zen Center practitioners came together to prepare for a Bodhisattva Precepts Initiation Ceremony. The Bodhisattva precepts are a practice of investigating one's ethical conduct based on the principle of doing no harm. In the midst of our everyday activity, what does it mean to vow to do no harm? And what is the relationship between our meditation practice and our commitment to ethical conduct?Welcome to Zen Mind!Please consider donating to our annual fundraiser....2023-06-2854 minZen MindA Culture of Transformation (in the Age of Ecological Crisis)This talk explores the relevance of a practice and culture of transformation in the face of an ecological crisis that will more likely than not lead to a severe degradation of living conditions, especially for future generations. How will we respond pragmatically, compassionately, and responsibly to this crisis? And how will we maintain self-respect and dignity in the midst of our actions? The talk highlights the pivotal importance of practicing and realizing what Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen in Japan, calls "being constantly intimate with the field of mind." The practice of intimacy with the field of mind...2023-06-1442 minZen MindEvery Day Is a Good DayThe freedom we can realize through Zen practice (or any existentially honest spiritual practice) manifests not so much through THE CONTENT of our experience but through HOW WE RELATE to our experience. This HOW is a fundamental attitude—an attitude that expresses itself throughout our lives. This talk uses Master Yunmen's teaching phrase" Every Day is a Good Day" as well as a couple of expressions by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi to explore this fundamental attitude. Finally, the talk asks how zazen (or meditation in general) is a practice and expression of this attitude.Welcome to Zen Mind!2023-05-3138 minZen MindGiving Aliveness to LifeThis talk explores the distinction between two perspectives on our human existence: aliveness and life. Aliveness is this here-now moment unfolding as ever-changing sensorial contents within a field of mind. Our life, in contrast, can be understood as the result of a weaving of past and future into a life story. The unsatisfactory nature of our life presents us with the question and task of how to give aliveness to our life. In other words, how can we unfold our life from the perspective of aliveness? This also brings up the question of what makes our lives meaningful or...2023-05-1759 minZen MindWhy Bodyfulness?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) in this? This talk explores the fruits of learning to locate ourselves in and through the body: (1) transforming the NOW of the present moment into a HERE that covers the whole of the sphere of experience; (2) deepening the ability to sustain concentration (samadhi); (3) developing the body as the medium of true compassion; (4) finding joy in being alive for no other reason than being alive; and (5...2023-05-0348 minZen MindPresent, Spacious, AliveThis 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 practice is recognizing suffering (our desire for life to be other than it is) and committing to a path of liberation (allowing our experience to be exactly what it is). The talk reframes our deep wish to be happy and recommends four simple but profound practices: returning to one's immediate experience, becoming bodyful, committing to kindness, and resting in presence. Finally, it asks h...2023-04-1939 minZen MindOpen to ComplexityZen 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 overwhelmed by complexity and frustrated that it cannot be reduced to black-and-white concepts. This talk continues the discussion of the teaching of the Five Skandhas (see March 8, "Empty of Separate Self"). By becoming familiar with the non-thinking experiential domains of perception and feeling, a new way of living with and from complexity can emerge. This is called wisdom.We...2023-04-0551 minZen MindThe Moment-to-Moment Path to Being PresentThis 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 mindfulness practices is to allow one's experience to be exactly what it is at this very moment. However, to be able to be present to the present in this all-encompassing way, we need a path to cultivate our attentional skills.Welcome to Zen Mind!Learn more about our upcoming Weekend Seminar, An Appropriate Response — The Essence of the Buddhist Path...2023-03-2243 minZen MindEmpty of a Separate SelfThe 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 liberate ourselves from this kind of suffering. It asks us to practice the realization that the five skandhas—the experiential domains of form, feeling, perception, conditioning, and consciousness—are empty of a permanent, independent self. When we empty these domains of our desire for permanence and separateness, they reveal themselves to be "full" of change and interdependence. This talk is about how to explore this...2023-03-0848 minZen MindContinuous PracticeThis 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 finding a way to maintain the presence of the FIELD of mind in the midst of the ever-changing CONTENTS of our lived life.Welcome to Zen Mind!Learn more about our upcoming Weekend Seminar, An Appropriate Response — The Essence of the Buddhist Path. Available online and in person.Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is no...2023-02-2245 minZen MindGood For NothingIn 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 to an existential question or a solution to a deep-seated problem, and yet the teaching tells us to just sit and allow our moment-to-moment experiencing to be exactly what it is—not expecting any improvement, not even enlightenment. This talk explores how this good-for-nothing approach to zazen helps us have confidence in our true nature. Rooted in this confidence, we can begin to...2023-02-0839 minZen MindWhat Am I?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 culture—not functionally, but fundamentally? Instead of trying to define our identity, we can practice being intimate with the basic ingredients of our existential activity (attention, sensation, intention, and cognition) and learn to use and mix them differently. What does that have to do with becoming a buddha?Welcome to Zen Mind!Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENES...2023-01-2549 minZen MindOn Intent and HopeAround 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 which intentions arise. What makes them stick or not stick? It explores the wisdom phrase 'If it's your intent, it's not pure intent," and asks about the role of the wider field, in which our individual lives are embedded. Finally, it looks at the role of hope and how different types of hope shape our relationship with the future differently.Welcome to Ze...2023-01-1152 minZen MindLonging for ResonanceThis 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 with experience as it is, not as we desire it to be. Our modern culture of control conditions us to relate to the world more and more as a "point of aggression" (Hartmut Rosa's term). Zazen can help us to rediscover the world as a partner of resonance—and it is resonance that we truly long for, not control. Control makes resonance impo...2022-12-2845 minZen MindDon't Try to ControlThis 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 aspects of our daily lives under control and therefore implicitly, as well as explicitly, expects us to participate in that dynamic. Paradoxically, the more we live in a controlled world, the less alive we feel and the more we are prone to experience anxiety and depression. So what's the antidote? Deliberately give up the desire for control and cultivate the ability to resonate. This means to...2022-12-1448 minZen MindLiberation and AlivenessWelcome 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, we tend to interpret freedom from suffering as personal happiness (feeling good) and, on a societal level, as a world, in which big problems such as poverty, inequality, war, and the climate crisis are solved. Buddhism is more pessimistic, or shall we say realistic. It assumes that there will always be problems. Does this mean we don't care about improving our situation...2022-11-3053 minZen MindThe Inmost RequestThis 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 the inmost request. The inmost request is what we truly want in life. It's not our calling, not our purpose; it's not about WHAT we are doing in our life but HOW we are doing it moment by moment. What we truly want is not exactly happiness, but to feel fully alive. While happiness is about feeling BETTER, aliveness is about FEELING better. Practicing meditation can...2022-11-1641 minZen MindParticipating in the Great MysteryThis 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 step, we need to understand how the human mind produces delusion through ordinary mental activities like sense perception, naming, discrimination, and story-telling. In other words, the mind creates a sensorial and conceptual map that it then mistakes for reality. Based on that understanding, we can then interrupt this process with "right knowledge" and develop a feeling for suchness, the ungraspable mystery of reality, in which each...2022-11-0454 minZen MindWhat is Wisdom?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 our lived situations. This orientation toward appropriateness requires us to shift from knowing (our accumulated concepts and habits) to not-knowing (a non-conceptual, non-habitual openness to how things present themselves in this very moment).Welcome to Zen Mind!There's still time to join the Oct 21–23 Weekend Seminar "Navigating Self and Non-Self".Click here for information on th...2022-10-1850 minZen MindThe Practice of BodyfulnessThis 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 attending TO the body to attending WITH the body. By first joining breath and attention into breath-attention and then bringing breath-attention to the parts of the body, we discover our bodymind as a “sphere of attention” that is in resonance—a constant felt dialogue—with objects and other people. This resonance is our original connection with the world and the source of compassion.Welcome t...2022-09-3042 minZen MindThe Four Gates of MindfulnessThis 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 as a passage through specific gates—an unfolding of mental spaces that transform how we relate to ourselves, others, and the phenomenal world.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 as a passage through specific gates—an unfolding of mental spaces that transform how we relate to ourselves, othe...2022-09-1649 minZen MindExistential Darkness and Everyday PracticeIn 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 vulnerability. In this darkness, we encounter the groundless joy of being alive as well as our mortality, existential aloneness, and fundamental insecurity regarding our safety, livability, and worthiness. In it, we also come face to face with ungraspability and meaninglessness. This talk presents and considers five basic patterns with which we try to not feel the disturbing and threatening feelings we are inevitably feeling as long as...2022-08-2458 minZen MindThe Dharma Gate of Ease and JoyThis 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 and the eyes are horizontal" and about zazen being "the dharma gate of ease and joy." The purpose of zazen is neither to torture us nor to make us feel good. Zazen is about becoming aware of the truth of our experience at this very moment.Welcome to Zen Mind!THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!2022-08-1858 minZen MindEnlightenment, Practice, AlivenessThis 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 hope for something other than life being as it is" and unfolds practice as the effortless effort to allow one's experience to be exactly what it is at this time—that is, to fully commit to the present moment. Feeling unconditionally alive instead of chasing happy feelings is the fruit of this practice.Welcome to Zen Mind!THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is no...2022-08-0550 minZen MindTaking Your Seat in EmptinessThis talk explores the freedom that opens up when we put ourselves at a distance from the structures within which we live on a daily basis. Freedom has two directions: (1) freedom FROM structures and (2) freedom TO deliberately live within specific structures. To be free from constraints can be liberating and feel exciting, but often it's also anxiety-provoking because we enter into a space of infinite possibilities, uncertainty, and fundamental groundlessness. Our attachments to structures and concepts serve a purpose: they help to avoid and mask the existential anxiety that comes with freedom. Zazen is a practice of taking our...2022-07-1436 minZen MindThe Body and Mind of the PreceptsThis talk was given in the context of a "rakusu" sewing seminar. Rakusu is the name for the small robe given to a Zen practitioner in a lay ordination ceremony. Part of the ceremony is the giving and receiving of the Bodhisattva precepts. This talk presents the precepts as both common sense ethical guidelines and an expression of Buddha mind.Welcome to Zen Mind!THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!Become a Boulder Zen Center Member! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi...2022-06-0550 minZen MindBig Mind and the Real Purpose of BuddhismThis talk explores practice along the lines of Big Mind and small mind and how Big Mind has to include small mind to be truly Big Mind. It also touches on Suzuki Roshi's remark that "the real purpose of Buddhism is to bring about the right human life where there is no Buddhism, but if you think that without any training you can have that kind of life, … you are either a great fool or a very selfish person.Welcome to Zen Mind!THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale! Us...2022-05-2241 minZen MindWhat is Buddha?In Zen practice, we are instructed to view each activity as an expression of our true nature or buddha mind. We cannot find buddha mind in the past or in the future—only in the present. Master Mazu famously answered the question ‘What is buddha?’ with the iconic phrase ‘This mind here now is buddha.” This talk considers two common misinterpretations of this statement—naturalness and essentialism—and suggests practices for establishing here-now-presence.Welcome to Zen Mind!Become a Boulder Zen Center Member! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the...2022-04-1140 minZen MindAcknowledging All Your Concerns (incl. the War)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 on our minds and weighing on our bodies. Through Zazen we can know that we are simultaneous very small and very large. We are capable of resonating with everything in this globalized world. The way this largeness and smallness comes together is through the actions we take—one step at a time.2022-03-1741 minZen MindStudying the Way (Part 5)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 of studying the Buddha Way by studying the self and forgetting the self. Dogen says one's body and mind and the body and mind of the external world fall away when we allow ourselves to be actualized by the 10,000 things. To practice this means to take on the view and to form the intention that our own bodymind is not separate from...2021-09-3048 minZen MindStudying the Way (Part 4)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 habit and personality structures. This can be a bit scary. To study "the Way" is to study ourselves not as a fixed thing that needs improvement here and there but as an open-ended process of unfolding. This talk investigates five interrelated dimensions of how to study this unfolding: (1) psychological, (2) behavioral, (3) energetic, (4) attentional, and (5) conceptual. It shows how we need to navigate within and between...2021-09-1050 minZen MindStudying the Way (Part 2)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 that what we feel in the region of the physical body is an open, connective space that includes the sense perception that we typically interpret as the outside world. This talk brings this experience, which we can practice in meditation, in relationship to Dogen's famous statement from the Genjo Koan: "To study the Buddha Way is to study the self, to study the self...2021-08-1350 minZen MindInstructions for ZazenThis 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 own meditation practice. Boulder Zen Center is hosting four Weekend Sitting throughout the year. They are silent, 1.5 day retreats with a lot of meditation, a shared meal practice, and dharma talks. It's a great introduction to Zen practice and anyone can join. Follow this link to find out about the next Weekend Sitting. I hope you'll join! —Bryant Welcome to Zen Mind! New talks wi...2021-08-0536 minZen MindStudying the Way (Part 1)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 study Buddhism isn't just a conceptual endeavor; we need to start with our own inmost request. Are the tenets of Buddhism—transformation, liberation from suffering, wisdom, and compassion— truly expressions of what it means for us to be fully alive or fully ourselves? Zen writings supply us with images and views. One aspect of study is to bring these imag...2021-07-2143 minZen MindAwareness is the Ultimate FactIt'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 intensities that arise within us as we live our life. When thinking is disentangled from sensation with some stability, the structures of the discursive and narrative self collapse. We can begin to discover the field of awareness as the ultimate fact of our aliveness and a source of intimacy and joy. Welcome to Zen Mind! New talks will be published bi-weekly on Wednesdays throughout the summer. See all events and...2021-07-0947 minZen MindConducting the Orchestra of MindIn 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 listen to and conduct these instruments in the service of our deepest intentions. In the second half, the talk presents examples and practices for distinguishing the modalities of “sensation” and “interpretation.” Making a commitment to our sensations (pleasant, unpleasant or neutral) decreases our investment in interpretations as real and increases our freedom for alternative interpretations. Welcome to a NEW SEASON of Zen Mind! New talks will be publi...2021-06-2346 minZen MindModalities of MindThis 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 consciousness (4) felt sense (5) awareness We encounter the modality of discursive thinking when we first sit down in meditation. We begin to see that it obscures, blocks, obstructs the other modalities. By learning to be less invested in discursiveness, over time, we can become more and more familiar with each of the other modalities and see their value, interrelatedness, and limitations. This increasing granularity allows us to employ our minds more and...2021-06-1145 minZen MindDaily ZazenThis 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 meditation as a way to escape difficulty. The antidote to the two sicknesses is seeing zazen as the repeated gesture of "opening up around" our experience as it is from moment to moment. By committing to this gesture as the essential enactment of zazen, we can discover zazen as an expression of buddha mind. The talk concludes with some very basic and...2021-05-1952 minZen MindRacism and the Resonant BodyThis talk, originally given to a Zoom audience of white people, acknowledges the intensity of this moment in American history: a convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic collapse with 40 million unemployed, and now global protests against racism in America. Zenki Christian Dillo, a white immigrant born in Germany, reflects on his personal experience with the collective trauma of the Holocaust. He offers the view that, as part of a path of liberation, the crime of slavery and continuing racism need to be recognized as a collective trauma, even by those who do not experience it themselves as victims, because...2020-06-0442 minZen MindThe Two TruthsThis talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.2019-10-2343 minZen MindThe Five DharmasThis talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.2019-10-1651 minZen MindThree Bodies of BuddhaThis talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.2019-09-2546 minZen MindNon-Self – Inter|IndependenceThis talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.2019-09-1135 minZen MindNon-Self – Dis|IdentityThis talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.2019-09-0443 minZen MindNon-Self – Dis|ContinuityThis talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.2019-09-0442 minZen MindNon-Self – Forgetting The SelfThis talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.2019-08-2840 minZen MindThe Five SkandhasThis talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.2019-08-211h 01Zen MindZazen – Four Gates of Breath PracticeThis talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.2019-08-1442 minZen MindZazen – Uncorrected MindThis talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.2019-08-0147 minZen MindThe Four Noble TruthsThis talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.2019-07-2447 minZen MindThe Bodhisattva IdealThis talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.2019-07-1839 minZen MindHow Things (Don’t) ExistThis talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.2019-05-2243 minZen MindHarmony With Nature?This talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.2019-05-0150 min