The Jizo-an Zen Community Podcast

Historically it is said that after his elightenment experience, The Buddha's first discourse was defined as the First Turning of the Wheel of Dharma. He offered the first teaching of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path to five fellow seekers, who at first denied him an audience...but after noticing something different in him, sat and listened. They became the first Sangha; the commu...

Vasubandhu was a 5th century Buddhist monk who, along with his brother Asanga formulated the teaching called Yogacara. It arose as means of finding balance between the two major paths of the Early Buddhist teachings and The Mahayana teachings. Vasubandhu and Asanga sought to bring harmony to the vast differences in these two practices, showing that both of them have very important roles in freeing...

Sensei Emyo considers environmental responsibility from a Buddhist perspective, emphasizing interdependence and our intimate relationship with the natural world. Earth care is not limited to a single observance; it becomes an everyday practice expressed through awareness, gratitude, and responsible choices.

Donen explores the Zen admonition to "kill the Buddha" as an invitation to release attachments to fixed ideas, beliefs, and even cherished images of Buddhism itself. Practice asks us to see through the mind's illusions and meet reality directly rather than clinging to concepts about awakening.

Genjo uses the familiar imagery of angels, devils, heaven, and hell to examine the dualistic judgments through which we divide experience into good and bad, pointing instead toward the innate wisdom and Buddha nature underlying those distinctions.

Donen reflects on enlightenment not as a perfected state free from suffering or emotion, but as an unfolding realization of our inherent Buddha nature and an increasingly embodied wisdom for meeting suffering as it arises.

Sensei Emyo explores how liturgy, ritual, prayer, and a home altar can extend Zen beyond formal meditation, transforming ordinary activities and spaces into opportunities for sacred practice.

This teaching introduces Right View as the foundation of the Noble Eightfold Path, emphasizing that spiritual practice requires examining the assumptions, conditioning, and attachments through which we interpret our lives. Through meditation and self-inquiry, we can learn to see more clearly, respond skillfully to changing circumstances, and choose actions that lessen suffering and foster greater...

CLIP: You Have to Come in to Win (Community) by Jizo-an Zen Community

From Saturday, June 15th, 2019

Genjo reflects on perception, immersion, pain, love, and the way direct experience can exceed the boxes we use to organize reality. Through personal and everyday examples, the talk invites us to become more fully immersed in what is happening, allowing even difficult experience to reveal dimensions that are missed when we remain confined to our usual interpretations.

Chimon explores spirituality and religion through Jewish tradition, including Moses, Hanukkah, and recurring patterns within religious life. The talk considers how traditions and rituals can point beyond themselves, inviting us to distinguish living spiritual experience from the conceptual structures we build around it.

Seijaku Roshi explores compassion, openness, and the Zen Peacemakers' practices of not knowing, bearing witness, and taking action. By resisting premature conclusions and learning to remain present with suffering, we create the conditions for compassionate action that responds to circumstances rather than to our assumptions about them.

More Together Than Alone by Jizo-an Zen Community

A Passover and Easter Minute to Change the World by Jizo-an Zen Community

Seijaku Roshi examines the survival-driven patterns, language, and conditioning that shape the ego and influence our behavior. Zen practice helps us recognize these inherited and habitual codes without being ruled by them, creating the possibility of living from a deeper sense of purpose and Buddha nature.

This brief talk during liturgy service reflects on silence, compassion, and the bodhisattva aspiration to respond to the suffering of sentient beings. Seijaku Roshi points toward a compassionate power that emerges not from constant activity or explanation, but from becoming quiet enough to meet suffering directly.

Seijaku Roshi reflects on the apparent opposites of light and darkness, love and hate, openness and boundaries. Practice does not require choosing one side and rejecting the other; instead, it asks us to discover a balanced way of living that can remain openhearted while still recognizing limits and responding wisely to difficult realities.

Chimon explores Buddha nature, intention, silence, and the mystery approached by different religious traditions through words such as soul, God, and emptiness. Rather than settling for concepts, the talk points toward the silent ground of experience and asks what becomes possible when our actions arise from an awakened intention.

Getting Beyond Fear & The Illusion of Differences initiative arises directly from the Great Bodhisattva Vows: to alleviate the suffering of every human being; to put an end to all self-serving desires; to profoundly study and realize the Dharma; and to perfectly manifest this real truth in every aspect of our lives. Tonight we will examine how the Dharma can illuminate the persistent forms of bias...

"And the simple fact that by being attentive, by learning to listen (or recovering the natural capacity to listen which cannot be learned any more than breathing), we can find ourself engulfed in such happiness that it cannot be explained: the happiness of being at one with everything in that hidden ground of Love for which there can be no explanations." - Thomas Merton To "Hold Space" for ourselv...

Creating Clarity Through Morality & Mindfulness by Jizo-an Zen Community

This practical Dharma talk focuses on the physical and attentional foundations of zazen: posture, breathing, the abdomen, centering, and the development of samadhi. Chimon  offers guidance for sitting without unnecessary strain and for using breath and body awareness to settle into a stable, unified practice.

Seijaku Roshi explores transformation, uncertainty, illness, and our desire to know what the future holds. Genuine practice gradually strips away the demand for certainty, allowing us to meet life's unpredictability more directly and discover freedom in admitting that we simply do not know.

As Spiritual and Religious Americans how do we respond to increasing violence, and the current rise of injustice, discrimination, racism, anti-semitism and hatred we are witnessing in our Country and around the World today? What would the Buddha do? What would Jesus do? What does the Torah teach us to do? Join Seijaku Roshi, Rabbi Simon, and Deacon Jim Casa for this most Inspiring, Educational, an...