Brooklyn Zen Center

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

These precepts are received and practiced in a conversation face to face. Just like I suggest that justice is received and practiced in a conversation face to face. Hating people is not justice. Being angry can be justice — sometimes it is justice — but that anger is a conversation, where everybody is participating. Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by...

Some people aspire to do practices for themselves, and they don’t aspire to do practices for others — that’s called individual practice. And other people aspire to practice with others, and by others, and for others, and as others, and that’s called the Bodhisattva path. And they’re both good. And there’s a third way: which is saying the two are the same. Our au...

If you go up to injustice and say, “ I resist you ,” that’s because injustice is calling you and saying “ would you come and liberate me from being stuck in this appearance? Would you be my friend?” If you say “ I resist you ” as a gift, that would be an appropriate response to anything– but in particular– to injustice. Our audio dharma talks a...

Truth is a relationship. Truth isn’t something that I’ve got over here separate from you. It isn’t something you’ve got over there separate from me. The real truth – the truth that is justice – is not on either side. It’s our relationship. Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Broo...

The way all of your appear in my consciousness is a reduced, biased, constricted, impoverished version of you. So from that perspective, I cannot do to justice to you. How can I do justice to you? How can you do justice to me? We do justice to each other by fully responsible conversation face to face. Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive....

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

“When we are experiencing life right now at this moment, we have this huge mind that has all these people in it, and this room, and sound, cool air, and the whole Earth supporting us. All of this is going on – right now. But we think we’re just this little thing. And everybody else is somehow not us, even if our direct experience is that all of this is arising as this mind.” Our audio dharma talks...

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

Our being in the world –  and our karmic orientations in everything that is happening – is what makes the world around us what it is.

Reflections on Resistance and Pipeline 3: a share by Yoko Ohashi and Koan Anne Brink

Please take care, and practice this song, this Samadhi song, for the welfare of this world. And listen to the teachings that you working on this Samadhi yourself is transforming beings. We are not doing this just to transform our self, were doing it to transform all beings. But working on our self in this way, transforms beings.

The focus of the Bodhisattva Samadhi is the Bodhisattva wish, the Bodhisattva aspiration: to make Buddhas for the welfare of the world. And then there is that aspiration, you can also, in a sense, vow and commit to that aspiration. So the aspiration, and the commitment of the aspiration, is at the center of the Bodhisattva Samadhi.

The beings who have this wish and commitment – to realize perfect understanding for the welfare of all beings – when those beings enter into Samadhi, their vow goes with them. So in that sense, the Bodhisattva Samadhi (or what I would call zazen) – I consider the zazen that I am recommending and encouraging is Bodhisattva Samadhi. And that Bodhisattva Samadhi, that zazen, is a vo...

The Samadhi is the teaching of Suchness. The Samadhi is intimate communion. The Samadhi is Buddhas and Ancestors. Buddhas and ancestors are the Samadhi. Buddhas and Ancestors are that teaching. Buddhas and Ancestors are intimate communion. Bodhisattvas want to live in that intimate communion, they want to be Buddhas and Ancestors, they want to be the teaching of Suchness. Because that is what they...

Everything you do is an opportunity. Everything you say, every gesture you make, every thought that arises in your mind. All of those are opportunities – each one is an opportunity to take care of this Samadhi that has been given to you.

In the sensation of the low-grade heartbreak there is gratitude, appreciation, grief and sadness. How can I cultivate the space in my life for a low-grade heartache, that I think is necessary to engage in Bodhisattvic activity? It’s an uplifting grief that sustains us and that can keep us in the game.