Brooklyn Zen Center

Recorded as part of BZC's Fall Practice Period at Boundless Mind Temple The  BZC Podcast  is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to BZC  here . Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded as part of BZC's Fall Practice Period at Boundless Mind Temple The  BZC Podcast  is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to BZC  here . Thank you for your generosity!

"What is saying a word, when our foundation is sitting? What do we say - can you hear it?" The  BZC Podcast  is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to BZC  here . Thank you for your generosity!

“The faith comes afterwards. It’s not like we have to muster a full body of faith until we go into practice. The practice and the faith happen together.” The  BZC Podcast  is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to BZC  here . Thank you for your generosity!

"Practice, what's that? This is not practice, this is their lives, this is not just their way of living, this is the life that wells up within, the life that's forming and moving in the world. Your practice is your life. This is you living."  This talk was offered as part of  SZBA's  Celebrating the Voices of Women in Buddhism  series.

The Teaching of Thus: the Avatamsaka Sutra as a Root of Zen Practice

The Teaching of Thus: the Avatamsaka Sutra as a Root of Zen Practice

The Teaching of Thus: the Avatamsaka Sutra as a Root of Zen Practice.

The Teaching of Thus: the Avatamsaka Sutra as a Root of Zen Practice

The Teaching of Thus: the Avatamsaka Sutra as a Root of Zen Practice

"How is what it means to be human transformed, or expanded, by allowing or imagining another perspective?" The  BZC Podcast  is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to BZC  here . Thank you for your generosity!

"Let the rage and the hurt and the righteous anger be one of the things that we affirm in this wide, life affirming embrace." The  BZC Podcast  is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to BZC  here . Thank you for your generosity!

" Sometimes it can look like the project is not to feel and not to listen to pain. But can we start, instead, to regard our pain as a kind of superpower? "

"When you walk in the door for the first time, there is already an aspiration to free all beings from suffering. Within the beginner's mind is the Bodhisattva vow, which for us is the heart/mind, the motivation that allows us to sit and be uncomfortable, because within the vow there is a spark of our natural wish to care for other beings." The  BZC Podcast  is offered free of charge and made possi...

"Let’s encourage each other to dance with our vows, to dance with the taste of our freedom."

"In the stability of practice, we have to humanize everybody."

"Is the mind that we are living with going to be one of division and aggression? Are we going to give in to that mind? Or is there another mind? The mind of the whole earth, the mind of all beings that doesn't make those kinds of divisions?" The  BZC Podcast  is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to BZC  here . Thank you for your generosity!

"We are all sensitive beings that are feeling everything that has happened."

" Sometimes, when we are trying to understand how to work with the suffering of the world, we might fall into the belief that, somehow, I need to build up an individual, personal capacity to hold all of the suffering of the world. Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara tried that, and her head and her arms exploded. "

" When we are sitting in confusion, instead of jumping to certainty, which is going to be rooted in fear, go to love—love for one's self first, as that confused being . "

" We train in stillness so that we can respond in the world with the possibility of healing things that previously haven't been healed . "

"The Bodhisattva vows are an affirmation of life. An open-hearted choice, a loving commitment to giving myself completely to this world of suffering with all beings. "

" Though the conditioning of violence is thick—and it is old and sometimes it can feel calcified and intractable—it isn't. We are changeable, we can change ourselves, we can change how we think, we can change our habits. We can choose whether or not we are complicit in harming. "

“The practice of equanimity is a practice of care, of bringing very close care to your body. What is happening right now as we sit? "