Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks
Zen Community of Oregon 842 episodes Nov 10, 2026
New episodes feature dharma talks from teachers associated with the Zen Community of Oregon, drawing on retreats and weekly practice at Great Vow Zen Monastery and Heart of Wisdom Zen Temple. The organization aims to make the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha’s teachings accessible through authentic lineage. It supports Zen Buddhist practice in everyday life. More information is available at zendust.org.
Episodes
Keeping the Flame Burning - Bansho Green, Sensei
Bansho explores bodhicitta—the awakening heart and the aspiration to awaken for the benefit of all beings—as the sustaining force of Zen practice. Through the interplay of wisdom and compassion, Bansho invites us to see through the illusion of separation and carry our practice into everyday life, meeting each moment and each person with an open, awakening heart.
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The Three Pillows of Zen - Shonin Ashton, Zen Teacher
Shonin explores three interconnected aspects of Zen practice through teachings from Maezumi Roshi: samadhi, forgetting the self, and actualization. With the image of three soft pillows, the talk offers an encouraging view of practice as a gradual process of settling the mind, becoming absorbed in life as it unfolds, and allowing the Dharma to express itself naturally in how we live.
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The World Is More Than We Imagine - Jomon Martin, Zen Teacher
Jomon explores the Diamond Sutra and its invitation to loosen our grip on fixed ideas about ourselves and the world. Through the simple example of a cup of tea, stories of Zen teachers, and reflections on habitual thought, Jomon invites us to meet life with curiosity, humility, and a willingness to let go of what we think we know.
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A Mind Open to Wonder - Jogen Salzberg, Sensei
Jogen explores how Zen practice can restore our capacity for wonder and gratitude, even amid life’s difficulties and disappointments. Through meditation and inquiry inspired by the Diamond Sutra, he introduces samadhi (steady, open awareness) and prajna (insight) as ways to loosen habitual patterns of thought and experience the world with fresh eyes.
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Chanting Our Way to Wholeness - Hogen Roshi
Hogen explores how chanting the Buddha’s name can loosen our sense of separation and help us reconnect with the fullness of our experience. Through wholehearted practice, we gradually awaken parts of ourselves that have been buried or excluded, finding greater clarity, compassion, and intimacy with the world around us.
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Awakening Is Already Here - Shonin Ashton, Zen Teacher
This talk explores stories of awakening from Japanese women Zen practitioners, showing how moments of insight can reveal the Buddha nature present in all of life. Through the koan Mu, the oxherding pictures, and Dogen’s teachings, Shonin reminds us that practice is not about chasing a special experience, but about returning to this moment again and again until our whole lives become the p
The Crucible of Practice - Bansho Green, Sensei
Bansho explores Zen practice through the image of fire, which can both destroy and transform, forging us through the challenges of being human. Drawing on Dogen’s teachings, he invites us to meet grief, anger, change, and uncertainty with intimacy rather than trying to escape them, and to listen for the Dharma within our own experience.
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The Teachings of Dipa Ma - Shonin Ashton, Zen Teacher
Dipa Ma’s life offers a powerful example of how meditation can transform suffering into concentration, loving-kindness, and peace. Drawing on her teachings, this talk explores the importance of committing to a practice, meeting difficulties with patience, letting go of the stories we tell ourselves, and discovering that awakening is possible in any circumstance. Her journey reminds us tha
Karma and Freedom - Jogen Salzberg, Sensei
Jogen continues his exploration of karma, focusing on how habitual actions and desires can shape our lives and lead us away from ultimate peace. He explores atonement, the cultivation of skillful actions, and ultimately the possibility of becoming free from karmic patterns by resting in awareness and responding from a deeper place of choice.
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Patience In Practice - Bansho Green, Sensei
Bansho explores patience as one of the six paramitas, a practice that helps us meet ourselves, others, and the changing circumstances of life with presence and curiosity. Through meditation and everyday relationships, patience becomes less about waiting for things to change and more about learning to respond with wisdom, compassion, and steadiness.
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The Shape of Karma - Jogen Salzberg, Sensei
Jogen explores karma as the ongoing relationship between our actions, habits, and experience, emphasizing that practice gives us freedom in how we respond to the results of past actions. Drawing on the Buddha’s teachings, including the Salt Crystal Sutta, he invites us to meet difficult patterns with greater awareness, spaciousness, and curiosity.
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Don't Expect Applause - Bansho Sensei
Threaded through this talk by Bansho Sensei is the tension between wanting recognition for helping others and the practice of "not expecting applause." It frames true generosity as releasing the need to be thanked or acknowledged. It distinguishes ordinary impatience (wanting the red light to change) from a deeper "Dharma patience" of truly being with others and with our own discomfort.
Give Life to Life - Hogen Roshi
Centered on the idea of "futuring" or craving, this talk by Hogen Roshi examines how the mind actively shapes an infinite, formless world into a narrow personal story through wanting. It suggests liberation comes from noticing this shaping process rather than being unconsciously driven by it.
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Slipping Beneath the Difficulty - Hogen Roshi
This talk by Hogen Roshi explores craving as the mind's habitual grasping — "I want, I want" — and how it quietly generates most of our dissatisfaction. It contrasts two retreat experiences, agony and freedom, to show that both can lead to the same insight once we stop resisting and sink beneath the thought.
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Avoiding Foolish Ways - Hogen Roshi
This talk by Hogen Roshi unpacks a traditional chant on "blessings" by redefining the word away from divine reward and toward human capacity. It centers on discernment — recognizing foolish paths to happiness versus wise ones — and treats association with wisdom as something actively built, not passively found.
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A Whole Forest Within You - Kisei Sensei
Using poetry, koans, and personal story, this talk paints practice as a slow accumulation of intimacy with the world — with fear, with joy, with the earth itself. It closes on the idea that these encounters don't disappear when we leave formal practice; they continue quietly shaping how we sit, dream, and live.
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Remembering How to Come Home - Kisei Sensei
This talk Kisei explores practice as homecoming — returning to a natural ease we knew as children but lost through striving and adulthood. A folk tale and the Buddha's own reflections before awakening sre explored forgetting and remembering as central to the spiritual path.
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Listen With Your Eyes - Kisei Sensei
This talk explores what it means to listen beyond the ears — to the earth, to silence, to a mind not bound by self and asks whether the boundary between "sentient" and "insentient" is one we've simply mistaken for the truth.
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Sipping From Many Flowers - Jogen Sensei
Reflecting on today's overwhelming availability of spiritual teachings from every tradition, this talk asks whether sampling freely across lineages creates confusion and explores how practice is a rhythm of deconstructing our misperceptions of self and world, and reconstructing ourselves toward compassion, embodiment, and ease.
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What the River Says: on Vocation and Calling- Hogen, Roshi
This talk explores vocation not as a career choice but as a calling that arises from deep within the heart. The speaker weaves in poetry from William Stafford, David Whyte and others to illustrate how a life of meaning flows from staying connected to an inner current rather than external trappings.
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I'm a Thing! : How Craving Dreams Us Into Lumps- Hogen, Roshi
The Tanha Sutta's core teaching, Hogen explains, is that craving turns the fluid, ever-changing experience of being alive into a fixed identity — "I am this," "I am that" — which then must be defended and reinforced. This talk explores this as an attempt to become a solid "thing" and how that goes against reality itself, making us smaller and more fearful rather than secure.
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The Weaver That Chokes the World: on Grasping Thoughts- Hogen, Roshi
This talk explores the observation that craving turns ordinary desire into compulsive thinking, creating a tangle of self-concepts — "I am a failure," "I am a success" — that we then mistake for fixed truths.
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What's the Hurry? - Bansho Sensei
This talk explores patience (kshanti), one of the six Paramitas in Mahayana Buddhism, as an essential practice in a culture built for instant gratification and constant phone-driven distraction. Bansho distinguishes true patience from mere "waiting," framing it instead as fully meeting the present moment without needing it to be different.
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Not Personal, Permanent, or Perfect: The Three Dharma Seals- Zen Teacher Jomon
This talk on reflects on the Five Remembrances — that we are of the nature to age, get sick, die, and be separated from loved ones — as a practice for living wisely rather than in denial. Rather than being purely somber, these reflections are offered as a way to "sweeten the deal," deepening appreciation for the present moment and one's relationships.
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Good in the Beginning, Good in the Middle, Good in the End -Zen Teacher Jomon
This talk explores how the ups and downs of a single sitting period mirror the larger arc of a retreat or an entire life of practice. Drawing on the image of a snake in a bamboo tube, a long marriage and retreat as a modern rite of passage, they explore how difficulty, doubt, and disillusionment aren't failures but essential parts of deepening commitment.
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Courage To Be Afraid- Working Our Edges- Jogen Sensei
Drawing on the eleventh-century yogini Machig Labdron's uncompromising slogans—confess your hidden faults, approach what repels you, help those you think you cannot help—this talk explores how genuine spiritual growth requires more than acceptance.
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The Timeless in Direct Experience- Hogen Roshi
This talk is a teaching on the ageless, ever-present awareness beneath our changing thoughts and circumstances. Drawing on the Mangala Sutta, this talk explores how recognizing (not manufacturing) this ground allows the mind to remain unshaken "beyond all sorrow."
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Our Inseparability From The Natural World- Zen Teacher Jomon
Drawing from an annual outdoor meditation retreat , this talk explores how sitting in silence among deer, mosquitoes, and fallen apples can reveal our inseparability from the natural world
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Making Peace with Your Inner Critic - Zen Teacher Jomon
This talk explores the inner critic as a habitual pattern of thought, emotion, and body sensation—not a fixed truth- as well as offering practices of self-compassion.
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This Heart is Mirrored Everywhere- Jogen Sensei
By stepping out and seeing the noisy marketplace of endless consumption and self-fixation, we align with a source that never loses its luster. Living from this allows us to begin meeting every person and situation as our family, and embody the true spirit of the Bodhisattva Vow in everyday life.
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The World Lies To Us- Jogen Sensei
This talk emphasizes that by alertly seeing through life's illusions—rather than chasing temporary worldly comforts or getting caught in abstract spiritual concepts—we step into a grounded, unshakeable presence that is free from grasping.
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Serenity Is a Stance Not a State- Jogen Sensei
When you sit and look for the self you never find it — just thoughts, feelings, space and energy — and this talk traces how that discovery becomes practical liberation, how being your own primary witness dissolves the hunger for others' approval, and how the vast flexible awareness Hongzhi calls empty wide open mind turns out to be the most dignified place a human being can stand.
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Looking for Something Dependable - Hogen Roshi
The Buddha said he kept looking for real stability and kept reaching for things that couldn't provide it — and this talk uses a dying biohacker, the nature of vow, and the frank reality that we will all die before we finish everything we wanted to do, to point toward the only ground that doesn't shift: settled acceptance of this particular karmic bundle, right here, right now.
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Joyful Mind, Grandmother Mind, Magnanimous Mind: Dogen's Three Hearts of Practice - Bansho Sensei
Drawing on Dogen's instructions for the monastery cook, this talk unpacks three orientations that Dogen considered essential to wholeheartedly engaging the way — the happy heart that finds joy in vacuum lines and borrowed victories, the fierce nurturing love of grandmother mind, and the vast unbiased ocean of magnanimous mind that meets every turn of fortune with "we'll see."
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This Is Not Mine- Not-Self and Thoughts That Moved In Without Paying Rent- Bansho Sensei
Walking through the Buddha's discourse on the five aggregates — form, feeling, perception, thought, consciousness — this sesshin talk asks a deceptively simple question: if you can't command your knee to stop hurting or choose tomorrow's mood, in what sense is any of this really yours, and what becomes possible when you stop taking it personally?
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Right Now It's Like This: Practicing Honestly with Heat, Sweat, and a Wandering Mind- Bansho Sensei
Borrowing Ajahn Sumedho's simple phrase as its anchor, this sesshin talk invites practitioners to stop arguing with their experience — the drowsiness, the pain, the restless commentary — and instead meet each moment with the complete honesty Hongzhi calls straightforwardly abandoning stratagems, which turns out to be both harder and simpler than any technique.
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The Diamond Sutra, a Tea Lady, and the Freedom of Not Knowing - Zen Teacher Jomon
The Diamond Sutra says there is no such thing as x, it is only called x — and this talk traces what that teaching looks like when it stops being a concept and starts being a way of actually meeting your brother, your assumptions, your most cherished ideas about who you are and how the world works.
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Dharma Travels: Meeting the Extended Family of Western Zen- Zen Teacher Jomon
From a Gen X teachers conference in Virginia to a White Plum Asanga gathering in the Dutch wheat fields, this talk traces a month of encounters with the living, ever-expanding family of Western Buddhism — Theravadan monks from Guadalajara, Tendai priests in Springfield, Chan teachers from Dublin — and brings back the felt sense that our practice is part of something vastly larger than any
Dancing and Singing with Shakyamuni- Zen Teacher Jomon
Starting from Maezumi Roshi's question — what prevents you from seeing yourself as constantly dancing and singing with the Buddha? — this talk uses the koan of Mu and the practice of breathing in the whole universe to suggest that what we're looking for isn't somewhere else, isn't achievable through cleverness, and can only be lived directly.
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The Eternal Child, The Old Man and Spiritual Commitment - Jogen Sensei
Using the Jungian archetypes of the eternal child and the wise elder, this talk maps the tension between following inspiration wherever it leads and committing deeply enough to actually cook — arguing that neither without the other is anything but a different kind of neurosis, and that real spiritual commitment somehow needs both.
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How To Be A Mystic In The City- Jogen Sensei
Jogen offers five categories for living a mystical life right in the middle of it — microdosing stillness, staying connected to the tender fleetingness of existence, liquefying your fixity through play, following whatever opens your heart, and finding the skeletal principles that guide you without making your life tight.
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According to Me: Opinions About Reality Keep Us From Living It- Hogen Roshi
Drawing on the Mangala Sutta's teaching on gratefulness and a recent pilgrimage to 400-year-old Soto Zen monasteries in Japan, this talk by Hogen Roshi traces how the abiding belief that "the world should work according to me" cuts us off from the very life we're trying to improve.
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Trusting Your Sense of the Divine - Jogen Sensei
This talk addresses people who know or have known a natural sense of the sacred — and who may have set it aside when they entered a formal tradition — arguing that what you already know is not less valid than what any lama, priest, or roshi says, and that the meeting of inborn spirituality with a tradition can be the most potent combination of all.
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Yes, Yes, Yes - Hogen Roshi
In this talk onn self-sufficiency, impossible decisions, and turning failure into wisdom, Hogen Roshi argues that true liberation isn't a state we achieve and protect but a responsive openness that meets whatever comes with curiosity rather than fear.
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Free From What? - Hogen Roshi
Sparked by a Fourth of July celebration, this talk cuts through the cultural fantasy that freedom means getting what you want — and points instead toward the Buddhist understanding of freedom as release from greed, anger, and delusion, discoverable not by chasing carrots but by simply stopping, sitting, and breathing.
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There Is No Better You Somewhere Else: Respect, Humility, and the Mangala Sutta- Hogen, Roshi
Contrasting a book of philosophy where every page offers a new way to think about reality with the Buddha Dharma's insistence on direct verification, Hogen argues that contentment and gratitude aren't ideas to adopt but discoveries that arise naturally when we stop managing our experience and simply look closely.
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Sacred Lamp Of Awareness- Jogen, Sensei
Rather than talking about awareness, this talk by Jogem invites listeners to taste it directly — through guided exhalations, the image of a hollow vessel lit from within, and the Dzogchen teaching of the Nine Amazing Things — pointing to the primordial light that exists in everyone.
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How To Not Waste Time- Jogen Sensei
This talk from Jogen offers a multilayered Zen framework for not wasting time — from daily contemplation of death to touching the bedrock desires beneath our surface wants — and ends by questioning whether time can even be wasted at all.
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Carrying the Baton: Leadership, Loss, and the Long Arc of Practice-Jomon, Zen Teacher
In this talk Jomon asks what it really means to belong to a spiritual tradition — and finds that the answer has less to do with personal achievement than with gratitude, flow, and showing up to pass something precious forward.
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I Can Be Right or I Can Have Peace: Impermanence, Identity, and Caring for Aging Parents- Jomon, Zen Teacher
Using the Heart Sutra's teaching on the emptiness of the five aggregates as a guide, Jomin weaves together a daughter's struggle to let her mother make her own choices, a charged encounter at a farmers market, and the liberating practice of simply saying "I don't know."
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Difficult, Easy, Both and Neither- Kisei, Sensei
Using the koan of Bodhidharma's transmission and the Pang family's teachings on difficulty and ease, Kisei closes sesshin by pointing practitioners toward the vows and confidence that have sustained them through every hard sitting — and toward the Buddha that their teachers have been holding up a mirror to all along.
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Ancestral Wakefulness- Kisei, Sensei
Weaving together the koan anecdotes, the awakening poems of early Buddhist women, and the living support of sangha, in this talk Kisei invites practitioners who feel stuck or afraid to ask for help — from the ancestors, from each other, and from the mystery itself.
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Don't Give Up, Don't Be So Sure! - Bansho, Zen Teacher
In this talk, Bansho explores two traps that derail even experienced sitters — premature conclusions and comfortable coasting — and points toward the three essentials of trust, persistence, and great question as the way to move forward.
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Zazen Is Alive- Bansho, Zen Teacher
Drawing on Dogen's meditation manual, Rumi's "Guest House," and the playful wisdom of Zen ancestor Joshu, Bansho explores how zazen is an embodied practice of patient absorption — not a mental project — where welcoming whatever arises with steadiness and lightheartedness reveals that the ordinary mind itself is the way.
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A Buddha Weighs Less Than A Feather- Bansho, Zen Teacher
How is it a Buddha weighs less than a feather? In this talk, Bansho shares about the generosity, mystery and richness of his time training in Japan.
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Mind Abiding No Where - Kisei Costenbader, Sensei
In this talk, Kisei explores the Buddha's teaching on how we should practice if we truly seek liberation, as offered in the Diamond Sutra.
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Celebrating The Poetry Of Zen - Kisei Costenbader, Sensei
Poetry has a way of cutting to the heart of our lives, and expressing the inexpressible. In this talk Kisei explores the styles of poetry used in the Zen tradition, from poems of enlightenment, to death poems, to capping phrases and poems of deep intimacy--poetry invites us into this living moment, and graces our lives with the mystery.
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Encounters with the Stone Woman - Kisei Costenbader, Sensei
During this talk Kisei explores the line from the Mountains and Rivers sutra, "a stone woman gives birth to a child at night", and entertain our own encounters with the stone woman, and what she may have to teach us.
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Nuts and Bolts of Meditation- Jogen, Sensei
In this talk, Jogen frames the entire practice — regardless of specific method — as the conscious, intentional use of attention. The core of the talk breaks meditation down into two complementary skills: staying, which is the ability to keep attention where you want it and non-clinging, which is recognizing that body, mind, and experience are largely just happening on their own without ne
Emotional Avoidance in Zen - Jogen, Sensei
In this talk, Jogen Sensei makes a distinction between detachment (checking out), non-attachment (neither clinging nor pulling away), and fearless intimacy (meeting experience without any strategy at all), arguing that the ideal of the serene, unruffled practitioner can seduce people into using practice to avoid their emotions rather than meet them. The talk closes by noting that psycholo
Practicing Honestly- On the Mangala Sutta Pt 2 - Hogen, Roshi
This talk on the Mangala Sutta includes the importance of responding to life's circumstances with a calm, clear mind; the idea that each person has a unique set of skills and talents worth developing with intention and integrity; and the value of staying open to learning rather than assuming you already know. It closes with a distinction between speech that flatters people's existing beli
Compulsion Could Arise In Wisdom - Jomon Martin, Zen Teacher
Jomon contemplates the teachings of Dogen Zenji's Eight Realizations Of a Great Being. She touches on how our minds give us a surprisingly inaccurate picture of reality and how paying honest attention — rather than chasing, clinging, or arguing — is the actual practice.
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The Way We Do This Thing We Do- Perfection of Effort - Jogen Salzberg, Sensei
In this informal talk, Jogen Sensei explores the Buddhist “perfection of effort” (virya) as a subtle, deeply personal process of aligning one’s life with what the heart genuinely longs for, rather than forcing oneself through rigid discipline or external standards. He argues that all effort is already “perfect” because effort learns from itself over time, and that true practice is less ab
Abundant Blessings- On The Mangala Sutta Pt 1 - Hogen Bays, Roshi
In this informal talk,. Hogen Roshi explores the the Mangala Sutta, tracing its origins in the Pali Canon and reflecting on how its wisdom remains deeply relevant today. Roshi invites listeners to consider the blessings already present in their lives — from love, community, and curiosity to inner peace and spiritual practice — and how gratitude can transform suffering and fear into clarit
The Mind's Filter - Chozen, Roshi
This talk explores the Four Immeasurables—loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity—as practical trainings for transforming how we relate to ourselves and others. Through traditional Buddhist framing, Chozen Roshi highlights the near and far enemies of each quality and how subtle distortions like pity, indifference, or conditional love can quietly shape our experience.
The Perfection of Wisdom - Jogen Salzberg, Sensei
In this talk, Jogen continues a series on the six perfections, focusing on prajñāpāramitā—the perfection of wisdom. Rather than conceptual knowledge, this wisdom points beyond thought into direct experience, where reality cannot be fully captured in language. Using the framework of four “binds” of reality—ineffability, timelessness/spontaneity, non-separation, and openness—the talk explor
The Root of Faith - Hogen, Roshi
In this talk, Hogen Roshi reflects on spring as a living expression of faith—an ever-present renewal that arises regardless of conditions. He points to the “root” of our being: the simple, undeniable aliveness that remains constant beneath changing circumstances. As we lose touch with this root, we grasp outwardly and create conflict; practice is a return to what is already here. A ground
Prayer and Zen -Chozen, Roshi
In this talk, Chozen Roshi explores the role of prayer in Zen practice—something rarely discussed, yet deeply present. Rather than asking for control over life, prayer becomes an expression of gratitude, intention, and connection within the flow of cause and effect. From loving-kindness and mantra to silent listening, she reframes prayer as a way to open the heart and gently influence our
Meditation and Wisdom: Being With What Is - Jomon Martin, Zen Teacher
This talk explores the paramitas of meditation (samadhi) and wisdom (prajna) as deeply interconnected aspects of practice. Meditation is presented not as self-improvement, but as a gentle, dignified act of befriending whatever is present, while wisdom points beyond concepts to the living reality beneath distinctions. Through teachings and stories, the talk invites a direct encounter with
The Pillars of Zen Practice - Jogen Salzberg, Sensei
This talk explores the three essential qualities of Zen practice—great faith, great doubt, and great determination—as living forces rooted in direct experience. Jogen emphasizes trusting the glimpses of clarity and freedom we’ve already tasted, while continually questioning the habits and beliefs that obscure them. With steady devotion and a long-view commitment, practice becomes a dynami
Resting in Is-ness - Hogen, Roshi
In this 2026 Sound Sesshin talk, Hogen explores the profound immediacy of our lived experience, showing how attention to the present moment reveals the mind’s intimate connection with the world. Drawing on Zen teachings and stories of historical practitioners, he emphasizes that awareness, gratitude, and surrender to what is allow us to see our true nature and respond to life with clarity
The Power To Stay - Jogen Salzberg, Sensei
Jogen explores concentration as the essential force that allows us to stay aligned with what matters in a world full of distraction. He reframes it as both a trainable skill and a deeper surrender, requiring us to return the mind again and again while also learning to face discomfort and let go of mental habits. Beyond meditation, concentration becomes a way of living—bringing full attent
The Body of Wisdom - Hogen, Roshi
This talk explores how grounding in present-moment awareness—especially through the body—becomes the foundation for transforming life’s challenges into wisdom. By cultivating integrity, ethical living, and alignment with a deeper aspiration, we learn to respond skillfully rather than react habitually. Hogen emphasizes that even our past mistakes and suffering can become sources of insight
From Forbearance to Joy - Jomon Martin, Zen Teacher
In this talk, Jomon explores the paired Paramitas of patience (kshanti) and joyful effort (virya), showing how they support and balance one another on the path of practice. Patience becomes a willingness to fully meet life as it is, even in discomfort, while joyful effort offers the energy and curiosity to keep going. Drawing on teachings from Shantideva and real-life examples, the talk h
Awareness in Everyday Life - Hogen, Roshi
Hogen explores how awareness and direct experience form the foundation of spiritual practice, inviting us to look closely at our own minds rather than relying on secondhand beliefs. He emphasizes grounding in the body and present moment as a way to uncover what is truly real and alive. Through this lens, challenges and problems become opportunities to expand perspective, cultivate wisdom,
Rethinking Impatience - Jogen Salzberg, Sensei
In this talk on the paramita of patience (kshanti), impatience is explored as the tension between our desires and reality. Rather than something to resist, it becomes a doorway to awareness when we learn to let experiences arise and pass without reacting. This practice reveals a deeper sense of spaciousness and reduces our dependence on external conditions for fulfillment. Patience, in th
The Paramitas: Generosity and Ethical Living - Jomon Martin, Zen Teacher
Jomon introduces the paramitas, core qualities in Buddhist practice that guide the path toward awakening, focusing on generosity and ethical conduct. She explores the meaning of paramita as both “perfection” and “the other shore,” emphasizing that these virtues are not goals to achieve but ways of being to continually embody. Through teachings, stories, and real-life examples, she highlig
Practice is About Direct Experience - Hogen, Roshi
Hogen explores the central role of direct experience in practice, emphasizing that true understanding arises from living and sensing life, not just intellectual knowledge. He reflects on how retreats and meditation provide opportunities to experience clarity, presence, and insight, and why these experiences can fade when we return to habitual patterns. Hogen discusses the balance between
Pilgrimage, Death, and the Compassion of Jizo - Jomon Martin, Zen Teacher
In this talk, Jomon continues the February exploration of parinirvana and the teachings of death, weaving together reflections from Frank Ostaseski’s The Five Invitations with the story and symbolism of Jizo Bodhisattva. Known as a protector of travelers, children, and those navigating difficult realms, Jizo represents compassionate presence amid life’s uncertainty. Through stories, Buddh
How to Outgrow our Flakiness - Jogen Salzberg, Sensei
In this talk, Jogen explores why it has become so difficult to show up for one another in a culture of endless options and easy canceling. Through the lens of Zen practice, he examines social anxiety, the tendency to overextend ourselves, and the role of the critical mind in undermining commitment. By clarifying our obligations and affinities, learning to sit with discomfort, and ultimate
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