Brooklyn Zen Center

Dharma talk by Sarah Dōjin Emerson, 2023/12/09 " Each one of us has to figure out how to bring forth the wind of the Buddha house. "

Dharma talk by Charlie Korin Pokorny, 2023/12/08 "If I am sitting to get something, I am not totally here. And so my love and my giving is not complete."

Dharma talk by Yoko Ohashi , 2023/12/07 "Rohatsu: this is how we are cultivating the sweetness of Buddha's fruit."

" When dualistic thinking comes up it is usually protective. We are using it as a defense, we are making the world smaller because we can't tolerate how it's messy and complex. "

" Swimming in the water, there is no end to the water, no end to delusion. There is no end to swimming in enculturation and ancestral karma. "

" Our deep, ongoing, loving critical inquiry is something we only do fully with the help of each other, by being open to how our interaction with others contributes to creating a community of ethical care. "

“Sometimes we might think that to pay attention to our own, particular pain is too small to be part of caring for the world. But learning how to care for our own pain is how we train to care for the whole world.”

"In absolute truth, we are all one, we are all connected. What we think, what we speak, and what we act—all these things impact everyone in the world, everything in the world."

"Exploring the big dualities of separation, “self and the world/the other” and how in Dogen's Genjo Koan, there is the encouragement that the way for us to be more aligned with reality, and the truth and complexity of things, is to look at the delusions [like "self" and "other"] that we actually have, and to understand them."

"Systems of oppression keep us divided, keep us in fear of each other."

"What is my relationship to that practice of doing actions and seeing actions through to their end? Like closing a door all the way or closing a drawer all the way? This opens up thick time and is a prelude to devotion and care because we enter into a different relationship with the world."

"The dualities that I suffer with—and that we collectively suffer with—are living in and through the body and my whole being."

The BZC Summer Reading Program concluded in September with a conversation with Chenxing Han, author of   Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists . Dharma Teacher Sarah Dojin Emerson introduced the event, and Chenxing was in conversation with Kaishin Victory Matsui, Director of Ancestral Heart Temple.

In this brief introduction, which preceded a conversation with the BZC sangha at Boundless Mind Temple, Sarah Dōjin Emerson and Charlie Korin Pokorny talked about the theme for the Fall 2023 Ango : non-duality. “Introducing a practice of building in rest — as a community and as a practice in engagement. What does it mean to pace ourselves, to live sustainably, to have engagement and intensity...

" Letting contradiction live is part of not making life small and allowing for complexity, a fuller sense of meaning and value. "

"Caring for this posture: balanced, awake, present, and relaxing into stillness. In this practice I’m not trying to make anything happen—simply be present with what’s here. Trusting that this presence is, itself, a force of transformation."

"Are our thoughts or actions moving in the direction of healing the delusion of being separate? Or are they deepening that wound?"

BZC‘s administrative director Ryan Lee Wong in conversation with author Chenxing Han on her book one long listening: a memoir of grief, friendship, and spiritual care . Image by Lan Le

"The truth in Zen is not something we can know, or grasp. But it’s a liberating truth, one that we experience in relationality—we open to it."

Even when there is really clear awakening, that awakening is useless until it’s turned toward suffering.

What I don’t look at, what I will not face, runs my life. From a bodhisattva perspective, denial is a disaster.

How do we reconcile our behavior with the eight-fold path? Are we always deluded?

We are trying to wake up to that activity of how grasping creates the sense of self that we think we need to walk through life.

We do want people to be able to be whole, to live the full expressions of their lives, to be able to have choices about what happens. And to be able to be free in a collective way of freedom where freedom means we are caring for one another.

If we do not view and respond to every human being as a tender, vulnerable body deserving of our love, we are wrong .