The OzZen Podcast

Silence is the gateway into ordinary mind. In our Ordinary Mind Zen School, we have two basic practices that work in tandem: just sitting or resting in presence (no-gain) and inquiry (I would also include guided meditation as a form of inquiry). Inquiry and guided meditation are necessary to embody our awakening. Inquiry investigates the mind and explores the body. The purpose of both just sitting...

It is free of suffering, arising, cessation, and path. This talk reflects on human suffering from the perspective of the Heart Sutra. Most of our suffering originates from rejecting this moment in the form of clinging or resisting. This moment is never it. The separate self is the activity of endlessly seeking something other than just this! Suffering is a form of homesickness – we are alienated f...

In this talk I begin with the reasons why a psychologically minded zen practice needs to be a trauma-informed zen practice: firstly, to ensure that zen practice doesn’t inadvertently retraumatise people; and secondly, zen practice can facilitate the healing process of trauma survivors. I then define trauma and discuss how the symptoms of trauma are the price we pay for surviving trauma. Following...

This is a famous koan which our Zen school is named after. In the story the student is asking the teacher what is the Tao, what is the Buddha way? Basically, how do I practice? The way is basically our life. The whole of our life is our practice. In this talk I introduce the metaphor of “falling in love with life” as a way of understanding the process of awakening as both a sudden and a gradual pr...

"Peaceful dwelling as change itself liberates all suffering sentient beings and brings them to great joy". With this dedication we explore the practice of non-abiding - as resting as change itself - discovery nirvana in the midst of impermanence.

This talk is on the need for both wisdom and compassion to be always working together, like the two wings of a bird enabling us to fly to go with the flow of the reality of this moment. We can err on either side of the equation – we can get stuck in the wisdom of oneness or we can get burnt-out by putting others needs before our own. Rather, wisdom (or prajna) frees us from our attachment to the s...

This was the second talk given at the Yarrawarra Aboriginal Cultural Centre during our Autumn sesshin. This talk focused on the great matter of life-death from the Absolute or Wisdom beyond Wisdom teachings perspective. It draws from the essay called Genjo Koan written by the 13th century Japanese Zen Master, Eihei Dogen. It points to how enlightenment is not an “experience” that is realised by a...

In this meditation I guide participants in objectless awareness, or awareness of awareness. This is the practice of “just sitting” in our tradition. We rest our attention in awareness itself, nonabiding in any object. This is the direct experience of freedom in impermanence, nirvana in samsara – the dharma gate of ease and joy.

This was the first talk given at the Yarrawarra Aboriginal Cultural Centre during our Autumn sesshin. This talk focused on the relative dimension of life-death. Looking from the human perspective, we must confront our awareness of the inevitably and finality of death. The talk focuses how death, like life, can be a great teacher. Don’t wait for your “real” life to begin sometime in the dream of th...

This talk was given as part of the Zen Buddhist service for my mother (and other sangha members whose mother had recently passed away). My mother passed on the 12/4/19, the day before her 96th birthday. The eulogy takes the form of me speaking directly to my mother, whose photograph was placed on the alter.

This talk is a commentary on the chapter “The Razor’s Edge” by Joko Beck. It distinguishes the activity of the self-centred self, which is the attempt to control and resist impermanence in order to avoid feeling emotional pain from what Joko called embeddedness in life. When we are embedded in life there is no separation and hence no problem. We allow our lives to flow. However, when we feel threa...

This talk commences with some words on the act of terrorism that had just occurred in New Zealand on the previous Friday. I then share some of my reflections on the chapter True Suffering and False Suffering from Everyday Zen. It begins with a discussion of the absolute and the relative together as it relates to suffering. I then discuss the basic distinction between true and false suffering as a...

In this talk I give a commentary on Barry Magid’s dharma poem "I am my body". I think Barry's writing is addressing two basic issues: 1) the tendency in religion/spirituality to seek to transcend the impermanence of our body (our incarnation) and seek permanence somewhere else other than where we are; and 2) to transcend the Cartesian mind/body duality we still tend to get caught in. The expressio...

This talk reflects on the nature of the observing self as described by Joko Beck. The observing self is distinguished from the conceptual or personal self. In a sense it is a knowing or awareness that is embodied. We are aware of being aware. This is the miracle. This body is aware. We can see and describe our body as object, but we cannot describe the body as subject. The body as subject cannot b...

I share my reflections on the chapter “What Practice Is” from Joko’s first book Everyday Zen. It discusses the relationship between sitting practice and everyday life practice, focusing on “thought labelling” and “experiencing”. It finishes with a discussion of common thought traps that we all at times fall into.

Do you know your core fears? Fear can alert is to our patterns of attachment to the apparent separate self. In this talk I explore how we practice with our fears on the level of the mind (thoughts/core beliefs) and the body (the memory or residues of past fears that have accumulated over our lives). Recorded 20.05.18. If you found Andrew’s talks or meditations helpful, please consider donating to...

In Buddhism attachment is often seen as the root cause of suffering and non-attachment is seen as the solution. In classical Buddhism this took the form of monastic communities. Obviously, this is not the solution for lay practitioners. So, what is the understanding of non-attachment that is helpful for lay-practitioners? This talk discusses how dwelling in non-abiding awareness is the form of non...

In inquiry practice we explore the barriers that get in the way of us waking up. In this talk we look at the need to make a descent down into the cellars of our “Guest House”. That which we resist, persists – and that which we lock away tends never to go away. So, we make our descent to recognise and acknowledge the prisoners that have been locked away, often in childhood. We then give them a voic...

The movement from avoidance to acceptance is an area in which both therapy and zen dovetail and overlap. The suffering we experience when invested in the separate self takes two basic forms: lack and resistance. In this talk we focus on the example of shame or personal inadequacy. Shame is an emotion we experience from a deep sense of lack – we will never be good enough and it is a painful feeling...

I give some history of American Zen and some details of Joko’ biography. This helps to understand her break from her teacher, Taizan Maezumi Roshi and the innovations she made to western Zen, such as her emphasis on practice and deemphasis on the teacher and enlightenment. Her emphasis on psychology and deemphasis on robes and ritual, developing a unique American style of zen.

This talk begins with Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality – how as children and even as adolescents we are in touch with the wonder of being alive, but as we become adults, we tend to lose this wonder and it is obscured by the “realities” of family life and work. Then the “fall” happens, the loss of wonder. Life is taken for granted. We identify with our separate self and suffer. Then at a cer...

“The mystery is never very far away – it is so close that sometimes we miss it!” This mystery or wonder at existence is often something we experience in childhood and adolescence, but when we arrive at adulthood, we often get disconnected from it as we become preoccupied with our busy lives. Retreat is an opportunity for us to re-connect with this mystery. Recorded 13.04.18. If you found Andrew’s...

We are social and political beings. From an evolutionary point of view our brain has developed in order to help us survive. Buddhism offers the hope of living in a world were other human beings do not represent a threat. One of the ways our body/brain regulates threat is through the autonomic nervous system. Habits of connection or protection. We want to shape our nervous system to be more open an...

The Bodhisattva vow is to awaken with all beings realising the impermanence interdependence and perfection of all life. From our deep realisation of this reality arises deep compassion and gratitude. The realisation that we and life are perfect just as we are is hard to understand. We think, this doesn’t feel like Buddha, because we have expectations or beliefs about what we think Buddha should be...

What does it mean to identify as a Buddhist? There is a diversity of Buddhism, so what kind of Buddhist? The most important point for me is that it is a commitment to a teaching and a teacher. We are all students of the Buddha Way. We are always deepening our understanding and our practice. In Buddhism the teaching is called dharma. We could say we are students of the dharma. What is the essence o...