The OzZen Podcast

This is my last talk, in a series of talks, on Zen as religious practice. In the first part of the talk, I will summarise some of the reasons why I view Zen as a religious practice, and how I was drawn to Zen because of its teaching of the direct realisation of our true nature in this life – not in some future life to come. From the Zen perspective, “the goal of life is to live fully as a human be...

This meditation focuses primarily on the last two lines of the practice principles: Each moment, life as it is, the only teacher. Being just this moment, compassion’s way. It explores just this moment, as being complete, right here and right now.

Neti Mushin Parekh is an Australian based Soto Zen Priest who has recently returned home from 20 years in the USA to establish the Twining Vines Zen Centre - Katto-an Temple in Canberra. Neti has received transmission in both the Diamond Sangha Koan lineage and the Shunryu Suzuki Soto Zen lineage. Neti will be giving what is called in the Soto Zen tradition, a "Way Seeking Mind Talk" - these talks...

This guided meditation continues the meditation in part one of Ordinary Mind is Buddha: Ordinary mind is always here, Closer than close, nearer than near. In fact, its inseparable from who you truly are. Ordinary mind is Buddha. In Part One we focused on calm-abiding. In this meditation we focus Vipasyana (Inquiry leading to Insight). We start with experiencing and the six dimensions of experienci...

This talk continues my discussion of revisioning religious practice for the 21st century. It is based on how I understand Buddhism to be evolving in the west and how I see OzZen as being part of what I am calling the fourth way: “The OzZen Way is an attempt to do a preliminary sketch of how we fit into the larger pantheon of global Buddhism, and then, how we fit into Western Buddhism and what kind...

This talk is an invitation to begin to re-vision what it means to live a religious life in the 21st Century – in our time and place. In particular it explores the three major forms of Modern Buddhism has taken in the West: Religious Buddhism, Secular Buddhism and secular mindfulness. The talk concludes that Religious Buddhism, founded on “no-gain” Zazen and “practice/realisation” can provide the f...

“That which we most deeply yearn for is the thing that is already most fully present, already the very closest to us. Thus, our ancestral teachers, according to their own circumstances at hand, have always shown that Buddha is now, here. So, we place our focus now, here.” Harada Tangen. This guided meditation is in two parts. The first part is an introduction to calm abiding (shamatha): calming th...

Gurdjieff designed this meditation as a morning preparation exercise, designed to increase one's awareness and sense of I Am. This meditation was led by Elisabeth Barrett, an Australian independent teacher in the Gurdjieff tradition.

Poetry (and other art forms) have been part of Chan/Zen practice since its origins in Ancient China. This tradition has been passed down through excellent translations of classical Chinese poetry and Japanese Haiku. These works influenced western poets from the 1950’s onwards, to explore the wilds of the mind and the restorative power of wilderness. The classic Chinese text, the Tao Te Ching by La...

This dharma talk will picks up from our Living without Walls dharma talk last fortnight (18.07.21) with a focus on making the Heart Sutra less abstract and more accessible and relevant to our lived experience. Hence rather than just giving a lecture, I introduce some mini-meditations to facilitate exploring how the world shows up when we start to free ourselves from the suffering of the isolated a...

Trees, rooted into the Earth, inseparable from the Earth, entirely dependent, entirely interdependent, hosting a variety of flora and fauna, welcoming all. This meditation invites us to reflect on how we can be like the tree, allowing life to be as it is, allowing us to be as we are, including the parts of ourselves and the parts of life that we don’t like and don’t want. This radical opening to l...

The focus of today’s talk is part three of the heart sutra: The Bodhisattva Path. Sattva means being and bodhi means awakened. So, a bodhisattva is an awakened being or a being which aspires to awaken. In the first part of the heart sutra, Shariputra is asking Avalokiteshvara to teach him prajnaparamita. Prajna is wisdom and paramita means perfect or beyond. So prajna paramita is the perfection of...

Avalokiteshvara, clearly saw all five skandhas are empty, freeing us from all identification as a separate self and thereby releasing us from all anguish and distress. From the perspective of emptiness this body and mind is like a waterfall. A waterfall is not a thing but rather a name for a process of happening. Our name and date of birth are just conventions. Just like we cannot distinguish wher...

The meditation has three parts. In the first part we will inquire into the question: who or what is thinking the thoughts? In the second part, we will inquire into how thoughts turn into stories and how we can become captive of those stories. In part three, we explore the crucial distinction between thoughts and experiencing the reality of what is.

Both Zen and psychotherapy involve bringing awareness to endings, though they do this in different ways. Psychotherapy normally focuses on the big endings in our lives – finishing a job, a relationship breakup, losing a loved one – and can highlight our personal patterns of ending, patterns often developed to help us to avoid the pain of loss. Zen practice points to endings at more of a micro leve...

The Direct Path is the path of nonduality. It is found in all religious traditions. In Hinduism it is found as Advaita-Vedanta or Kashmir Shaivism; In Islam it is found as the way of the Sufi; in Christianity it is found in mystics like Meister Eckhart; in Buddhism it is found in Chan/Zen and Mahamudra and Dzogchen. We can say, it is simply being.

When we become Buddhists, we first make atonement and then we take refuge in the Triple Gem: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. These are the first three of the 16 precepts – without these there is no Buddhism.

This meditation considers the wisdom of relatively unstructured meditation practices, as are taught in the Ordinary Mind tradition. How do we show up when there is no obvious goal, when there are no detailed guidelines, and when there is no clear right or wrong way of doing things? How do we configure ourselves in an unstructured space? This meditation explores how unstructured practice ultimately...

This interview continues the exploration of the common ground between the teachings of Gurdjieff and Joko Beck. It begins with a brief biography of Elisabeth’s journey with the Gurdjieff teachings. The interview then stays on practice issues such as waking up through self-observation and self-remembering and non-identification. It also clarifies the meaning of no-self and Self in Zen teaching.

Joko Beck often quoted an expression from the Hebrew Bible: “Be still, know I am”. It describes our practice of just sitting or silent illumination. Silence is the stillness – it is the anchor, the stabiliser that naturally allows clear seeing to arise. The light that illuminates all phenomena is awareness. The Buddha said be a light unto yourself. You are the light. Recognise yourself as the ligh...

The Heart Sutra is a condensed version of much longer Heart Sutras. It really contains all we need. It teaches the direct path: seeing directly into our true nature. We can let go of all identities by coming this moment. The meditation then focuses on Consciousness. The mantra coming at the end of the Sutra can be seen as a summary of the whole sutra. Then during the final 10 minutes of the guided...

This guided meditation presented by Dr Jed Blore invites an exploration of three interrelated questions: 'what are we doing?’, ‘why are we doing it? (or: 'why does it matter?)’, and, 'what are we hoping to gain?’. The exploration continues with an invitation to connect with a spacious, open awareness that is accepting of our ‘gaining ideas’ alongside the rest of our experience (thinking, feeling,...

This talk begins with bearing witness to Anzac Day in the light of the Ten Precepts, starting with the first precept of bearing witness to the reality of violence and abuse, in myself and in the world. I then give an historical overview of how Anzac Day has evolved over the years since the 1920’s. I then explore what and who does Anzac Day currently exclude and fail to bear witness too? For exampl...

We all resist parts of our experience. This meditation draws on the psychotherapeutic idea of supporting resistance, exploring how at times the path through resistance involves fully embracing it. When resistance is supported, sometimes it can be released.

This meditation is a continuation of a series of meditations inspired by the Heart Sutra. The topic today is resting in sensations. Simply resting in our senses. As Joko Beck says in her book Nothing Special Living Zen: “Without awareness of our sensations, we are not fully alive” (p. 159). In this meditation we will be meditating on the first and second skandhas and the six sense realms, which ar...