Ocean Mind Sangha

We don’t always know we’re perfect, we don’t always feel complete, yet fundamentally, both are true of who we are. In this talk Zuisei highlights Zen as a path of transformation. She shares her personal journey with sadness and leads an intimate exploration of how practice can change the ways in which we relate to ourselves and to each other. In this way, darkness becomes light, and sadness, joy.

Using a passage from the 14th century mystical text, The Cloud of Unknowing, Zuisei speaks of the bridge between the relative and absolute worlds. She refers to the center of the present moment as the place where there is nothing and we are nowhere—the place where we “just sit"” “just walk,” “just eat,” as we refer to it in Zen. It’s the place where doing and doer disappear and we are free to resp...

Anchoring her talk on the teachings on loving-kindness contained in the Karaniya Metta Sutta, Zuisei speaks on the importance of applying these teachings to oneself, as well as others. For the longer we practice, the more we understand that the lines we draw: inside and outside, self and other, exist nowhere else but in our minds. “The only thing that stops you is your mind,” Zuisei says, quoting...

Zuisei Goddard

In this interview Zuisei shares a glimpse into her history around the monastic life and introduces her book Still Running—the Art of Meditation in Motion. Pilgrimage is both an inner and outer journey; it is travel into the unknown for the purpose of knowing ourselves intimately and drawing closer to our understanding of the divine. It is realizing that at the end of a long sojourn, we return to t...

What does it mean to open into, trust reality, instead of trying to force things into being? How do we reconcile accepting the things we cannot change with changing the things we cannot accept? Zuisei explores the possibility of seeing things as they are, learning to work with this truth instead of against it, and basing this work on the realization of our interbeing.

The term mindfulness is ubiquitous these days. But its origins can be traced back to the teachings of the Buddha, whose main practice was anapanasati, “mindfulness of breathing.” In this interview, Zuisei Godddard discusses some of the misunderstandings of mindfulness, as well as its true potential to help us cultivate awareness, wisdom, and compassion.

“What I saw or heard or felt came not but from myself—and there I found myself more truly and more strange.” —Wallace Stevens Zuisei Sensei speaks from the heart about her own spiritual journey and her ongoing commitment to practice as she steps further into lay life.

Zuisei Goddard draws on the life of the Buddha to illustrate the six stages of pilgrimage—the call, homeleaving, the journey, contemplation, encounter, return. Pilgrimage is both an inner and outer journey; it is travel into the unknown for the purpose of knowing ourselves intimately and drawing closer to our understanding of the divine. It is realizing that at the end of a long sojourn, we return...

We have to be willing to take a risk in order to see clearly. In this talk on case 31 of the Gateless Gate: Zhaozhou Saw Through the Old Woman, Zuisei speaks of the spiritual life as a perilous journey. “Every time we ask,” she says, “we expose ourselves. But when we don’t ask, we also expose ourselves. So we might as well take a risk—be wild and daring—and see what comes of it.”

For this Fusatsu (Renewal of Vows ceremony) Zuisei speaks of sacred space as the ground in which atonement and vow become possible. It is, to borrow Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s words, “A sanctuary in time”—a place and period which is both distinct from and equal to the everyday. A space full of possibility. Correction: The opening quote, attributed to Charles Chu, is actually by Margaret Gibson...

We are never practicing alone—not in the darkest pit of hell, not in the brightest state of bliss. When we know this, the natural response is to bring forth our buddha ancestors and look at them in veneration. We formally bow and meet them, which is none other than meeting ourselves. Zuisei and Hojin Sensei speak about the importance of honoring and connecting to our ancestors in spiritual practic...

Zuisei speaks of that which is beyond ordinary knowing and must be known intimately. As she puts it, devoting our full attention to the breath or a koan can be an act of love. Zazen itself is that act of love, an act rewarded in ways we cannot predict.

In part two of this talk on Gateless Gate 41, Zuisei speaks on the five overarching disturbing emotions: attachment, pride, envy, anger, and ignorance, and the collective journey we are on to wake up to these patterns and remember our innate goodness. As the Buddha said, all of his teachings were for the purpose of seeing the truth of suffering and its cessation. The way to put at end to suffering...

“We look out at the world and we see nothing but conflict, nothing but clamor and strife and forces that seem to feed on our discontent. And we think, how can I be at ease in the midst of all this?” In this talk on Gateless Gate 41, Zuisei speaks on waking up to the state of our minds and the ongoing journey of cultivating ease and peace in the midst of all that life brings us.

In the third talk in a series on the Three Essentials of Zen, Zuisei speaks on the third essential: Great Determination. Zuisei explains that Determination is not an obsessive nor heroic quality, but rather, it is our humble, steadfast commitment to waking up— through the good, bad, and mundane. “[Great Determination] knows what it is capable of. It knows— without even knowing how we know— that th...

Great Doubt is one of the Three Essentials of Zen practice — wherein doubt is not flaky nor pessimistic, but rather a commitment to an ongoing investigation of: what’s really going on here? In this dharma talk, Zuisei explores doubt and how the cultivation of this quality leads us to a deeper understanding of the way things are.

In this first talk in a series on the Three Essentials of Zen, Zuisei speaks on the first essential: great faith, discussing the four stages of faith and the role that they play as we commit to the dharma. To have faith is to trust, and to let that trust guide us along our path as it unfolds. It is believing in our goodness, in the teachings, and in our communities—trusting that they will support...

When we practice working with our minds, we quickly discover the immense impacts our thoughts have on our lived reality. And when we look at this using the framework of the Buddhist perspective, we come to understand the relationship between mind and reality even more profoundly: that reality itself is really just the minds’ projection. In this talk, Zuisei reflects on Gateless Gate, 26: Two Monks...

In this talk, Zuisei shares teachings on contemplating and feeling into the body’s experience of aliveness as practices of awareness and dharma. Through understanding our experiences through the five aggregates, (form, sensation, conception, discrimination, and awareness) we practice opening ourselves to the fundamental interconnectedness of this body, to all.

“If you meet a person of the Way on the way, greet them with neither words nor with silence. Now tell me, how will you greet them?” In this talk, Zuisei speaks on a koan that helps us to reflect on how we regard and interact with others on the path. She asks: If we do not greet one another with words nor with silence, what is the ground that we meet each other on?

Through the practice of zazen, we come to see the unruliness of our minds more intimately. In this talk, Zuisei speaks on the arising of “no”— the “not this” aspect of our practice that allows for discernment and the continual practice of turning towards a more ultimate truth. And after all the “nos”, Zuisei says, there comes a “yes”— an opening to infinite possibility and freedom. “All of these ‘...

Zuisei speaks on the Buddha’s Eight Conditions for Wisdom: studying, asking, withdrawal, ethical conduct, learning and reflecting on the teachings, energy, right speech, and understanding the rise and fall of the five aggregates. These eight conditions give us the ability to see things more clearly and allow us to cultivate the space to hold the knowing of our inherent goodness. Through cultivatin...

Do we choose the course of our lives, or is it divinely chosen for us? In this talk, Zuisei explores the age-old question of the relationship between pre-determination and free will using the support of the Buddha’s teachings coupled with wisdom from other spiritual and philosophical traditions. Zuisei says that regardless of the cause and effects of our circumstances, we do have the ability to ch...