Angel City Zen Center - Beginners Only Podcast

“Capitalism does suck, but you shouldn’t let that make you a bad worker” - Helena Harvilicz   Helena tells stories of Zen, parenting, multitasking, and a history of being half assed at work until a job came along where failure was no longer an option. Along the way we get choice selections from Dogen about the Three Minds of a good cook. Does our work need purpose to be worthwhile? And what is tha...

“Never think you’re better than the show. It’s not pleasant to work with, and it doesn’t make the work any easier.” - Emily Eslami   Emily gets brass tacks practical with a walk through Dogen’s best advice for all the working stiffs out there on not only how to get through your work day, but maybe even finding the joyful, nurturing, magnanimous mind of everything by building temples from ordinary...

“I came to this because I'm a disillusioned person, and they said that's okay. That's the point. But now they’re saying that there is something that doesn’t die, something that stays. And they’re teaching it through their own skepticism and doubt. And that is something I trust.” - Dave Cuomo   Dave dives back in to Dogen’s enigmatic Mountains and Rivers Sutra while looking at what  America might b...

“When I found out that we're in the degenerate dharma ending age where nobody can get enlightened, I thought, ‘That sucks. Why am I even doing this then?’ And then I decided that's a great place to practice. If we don’t have to worry about getting anywhere with it, we can just sit.” - Jason Dodge   Jason skillfully navigates us through the perfect paradoxes of the Diamond Sutra, and we all get a l...

“It's brave of them to let people just step in and screw up. But it's not about how well you do, or whether you want to do it - we have a task and each person embodies it. If we’re getting anything here, it’s that authenticity.” - Gyokei Yokoyama   They say you don’t choose your family, and in Zen we don’t pick our sanghas. Gyokei discusses what it means to practice with a sangha, why it can be th...

“If you watch a movie where somebody's having a bad day, you laugh along and empathize and think ‘Well that's a good movie about a guy having a bad day.’ And that's what zazen is, just watching a guy maybe having a bad day. And then I empathize with that guy. And you know what? I usually have a better day after that.” - Dave Cuomo   Dave delves into Keizan’s Three Levels of Zazen and tries to figu...

“The cornerstone of non dualism is that you can’t even hold onto non dualism - that non dualism is itself dualistic.” - Emily Eslami   Emily unpacks the perfection of paradox that is Non Dualism, Zen’s crowning ideal that it will never live up to no matter how hard it tries. How is it possible to stop our mind if it’s impossible to stop our mind? Is it true that everything we do is ultimately zaze...

“Plants are actually great meditation teachers. They really know how to stay put even in the face of danger.” - Helena Harvilicz   Crowd favorite Helena returns with all the dharma she dug up in her time as ACZC’s gardener, along with some words of wisdom from Dogen’s “Insentient Preach the Dharma. Are our plants and inanimate objects really whispering sweet truths to us like they did to Buddha un...

“To really do this practice is to let go of the wheel and assume someone's driving. And that's gonna be terrifying every time.” - Dave Cuomo   Dave celebrates the lazy days summer by trying to cure a decade long writer’s block with the help of The Artist’s Way and some sassy ancient commentary on the Xinxinming that sounds uncannily like our own inner critics. What is Dave’s one trick to always be...

“It’s not your zazen, it’s just zazen. And it’s going all the time.” - Jason Dodge   Jason unpacks the meaning behind the Buddha’s beguiling nickname while reminding himself exactly why he does want to sit zazen during a hard month when the last thing he wants to do is sit down and do his zazen. Why did Buddha promise we all get to share his accomplishment while also promising it was something we...

“There’s a feeling of, if I was stressed out, then it must have been really good. Or people say, ‘I would meditate but I don’t want to lose my edge.’ But what heights could they attain without the misery and suffering?” - Emily Eslami   Emily throws us a bonfire of the attachments with a pointed talk on single minded effort. With readings from Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind we take a g...

“When I look people in the eye lately they seem a little savvier, a little more self aware, and a good bit more confused. And I trust that.” - Dave Cuomo   As a retreat goes off the rails, Dave and the sangha try to find their faith in a practice built on the promise that everything is ultimately fleeting, empty, and full of suffering. Plus! A dramatic reading of Red Pine’s lithe (and downright Se...

“A Zen teacher once told me, ‘I’ve been watching you and you're a good sitter.’ And I think that's what they tell the people that are kind of stupid and really don't get it.“ - Helena Harvilicz   Long time friend of the sangha, Helena Harvilicz gives us a raw, funny, and heartening story of sarcasm and weltschmerz and wanting to make the world a better place with no idea how. Why do moms make such...

“I kept asking the same questions, what is this about? Where's the teaching? And then they teach us, if you can't see everything there is, then that's your problem.” - Gyokei Yokoyama    Change is afoot in the Zen world as many sanghas undergo a generational  turnover in leadership and Gyokei has a sweet story to meet the moment of two monks trying to figure out who’s supposed to be steering the s...

“The fact that the word ‘emptiness’ is still upsetting people 2,500 years later tells me, that must be an important lesson. Clearly it’s something we needed to hear.” - Dave Cuomo     Dave takes us on a walking tour of space with a slightly nerdy dive into the history of emptiness in Buddhism; what it meant when Buddha first said it, how that changed over time, what it means for us now, and how it...

“What brought me to meditation was a desire to essentially eradicate my own neurosis. But the instruction to focus on not just what's happening inside allowed me to realize I was a part of an ecosystem, like a drop in the sea and less like the whole ocean.” - Tanya Orlov   Tanya generously shares her personal practice story of riding the hamster wheel of personal development through anxiety and ne...

“I feel very confident… confident that I don't know what the f*** I'm doing.” - Sara Campbell   Sara takes us on a personal tour of ambition and emptiness, with a first hand account of how teachings on groundlessness do and do not prepare us for a world of gig economies, uncertain employments, and potentially dubious digital windfalls. What good is being grounded? What does it mean to be present f...

“The hardest thing for me to do is to peacefully watch somebody else screw up their life. But I'm told that's a big part of true compassion - letting go without turning away.” - Dave Cuomo   Dave looks at how to make lasting peace in the world while regaling us with the legend of Dongshan’s ‘Celebration of Silliness’, the week long banquet of delusion Dongshan threw for him and his monks on his de...

“Wind is liberated from the mountain, I is liberated from nothing at all… I’m here because I need y'all, because practice doesn't make sense without you.” - Henry Zander   Henry takes us to the Christian plains of the midwest to regale us with a personal practice story of finding yourself somewhat alone in your own weird wildness only to find the odd ways that singular experience can hone and flou...

“They say you can’t intellectualize Zen, but don't short change yourself. If your brain wants to understand it, do that first. The old masters all did. They knew exactly what they were talking about.  And then one day you might realize that even the highest level teachings aren’t enough. But you have to get them before you can realize that they’re not enough.“ - Dave Cuomo   History of Zen returns...

“If you don't understand the way right before you, how will you know the path as you walk?” - Shitou Xiqian   Sara reflects on some challenging lines from Shitou to work through medical troubles in her family, while Shunryu Suzuki and Huangbo shed some light on the dawns and midnights of life that always seem to go hand in hand. How does practice help in the times we’re most reticent to sit down t...

“’Don’t trust anyone…’ When you have this limited idea of trust, you put someone in a box. ‘Not trusting anybody’ means allowing them, moment to moment, to be different.” - Natalie Goldberg   Dave gets grumpy about getting to live his dream life and reads letters from the sangha about why he shouldn’t go to Japan for monastic training, plus a reading from Dainin Katagiri’s “You Have To Say Somethi...

“How do you become a flavor that gives life to other flavors? How do you become a person that gives life to other practitioners instead of taking away their life?” - Gyokei Yokoyama   Bitter, salty, spicy, sour, or sweet - Gyokei gives us a subtle and patient recipe for finding our own true original flavor that brings out the best in all the rest. What melodies are waiting to sing to us in uncomfo...

“What would be so bad if I wasn’t the best?” - Emily Eslami   Emily regales us with the story of a young girl growing up wanting to think she was something special, only to find herself one of eight billion people thinking much the same thing. Reading from Shunryu Suzuki’s classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, this is the real life story of realizing all the anxiety and effort it takes to keep an ego...

“If all of you have access to the same wisdom, and you all hear it in your own distinct ways, that also implies that no one's ever gonna hear it like you. Whenever you feel that beautiful swell of connection, that’s for you alone. You don't get to share that. I don't know. It both like swells and breaks my heart at the same time.” - Dave Cuomo   Mountains walk and rivers talk as Dave delves into D...