The Zen Studies Podcast

The Buddha taught that there are five main "hindrances" we encounter in our spiritual practice. In this 2nd episode of 3, I start going into detail about each hindrance and recommended ways to abandon them. I get through worldly desire and ill-will. In the next episode I'll cover sloth-and-torpor, restlessness-and-worry, and uncertainty (or skeptical doubt).

I review Robert Wright's  Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment.  While it's not necessary to know the "why" of things in order for Buddhist practice to be effective (and it can actually be a distraction), sometimes it can help us gain additional freedom from our subjective experiences.

Meditation and other aspects of Buddhist practice can be difficult. According to the Buddha, it's useful to pay attention to exactly what's going on when we're feeling challenged. Any obstacle can be characterized as one of five hindrances: 1) Sense desire; 2) ill-will; 3) sloth-and-torpor; 4) restlessness-and-worry, or 5) uncertainty (or skeptical doubt). By identifying our hindrance, we get a be...

The list of supposedly-highly-realized Buddhist teachers who have abused their power and acted in harmful ways – particularly in the realm of sex – is long, and getting longer all the time. Unethical and selfish behavior is incompatible with our Buddhist ideal of true enlightenment, and transgressing teachers are often exactly those held up as especially inspiring examples of realization and pract...

In Part 1 (Episode 82), I defined Devotional Practice as extending beyond demonstrations of respect, gratitude, and reverence to practices believed to result in real benefits – perhaps intangible but often tangible – to the devotee, especially when performed in proximity to a holy person, his/her relics, or some other center or object of spiritual power. In this episode I talk about what early Bud...

Traditionally, Buddhist practice has been more than something you do to make everyday life more pleasant; it's a path of training and study aimed at becoming an awakened, liberated, wise, compassionate, and skillful person. The ideals of Buddha and bodhisattva are not something most of us have any hope of achieving in this lifetime, but we ennoble our lives, and benefit others, by committing whole...

Nyoho practice is looking for opportunities to act in accord with the Dharma in the midst of our daily lives, in very practical, physical ways. We view no act as too mundane or insignificant to perform with care, and no object or being we encounter as beneath our respect or attention. In this episode I hope to convey the significance and beauty of Nyoho practice, and the wonderful opportunity it p...

We have a practice in Zen of trying to make even our smallest actions reflect the deep truths of the Dharma, including interdependence, impermanence, no-self, suchness, and Buddha-nature. I'm going to call this practice "Nyoho," a Japanese term which means doing something "in accord with" (nyo) the Dharma (ho): Treating each and every thing we encounter with respect and care, and performing even t...

Samvega and pasada keep our practice alive and on course. Samvega is spiritual urgency arising three things: A sense of distress and disillusionment about life as it's usually lived, a sense of our own complicity and complacency, and determination to find a more meaningful way. Contrary to society at large, Buddhism encourages the cultivation of samvega - as long as you balance it with pasada, a s...

Buddhism teaches that you can change the nature of your experience by changing your own mind and behaviors - increasing the proportion of your life spent feeling calm, confident, positive,and compassionate. Sometimes, after many years of effort, we experience negative thoughts and emotions and find ourselves thinking, "I shouldn't feel like this." I discuss how to practice with this conundrum, and...

I propose there are two paths to meditative concentration: directed effort (what the Buddha taught) and letting go (something we do in Soto Zen). One path or the other may work better for some people. In this episode I describe the "letting go" path in some detail: What it involves, how it (ironically) requires great "effort," and why it works.

I believe some of our struggles in meditation could be eased if we recognized there are two paths to meditative concentration, or samadhi – directed effort, and letting go – and what works well for one person may be frustrating and fruitless for another. In this episode I briefly discuss what samadhi is, and then describe the two very different ways to achieve it. In the next episode I'll describe...

It's pretty typical to hear only one side of Buddhist history – that is, the side that focuses on what the Buddha taught, or the Dharma, and on the people who studied and practiced that Dharma. There's a whole other side to Buddhism, present since the beginning: Devotional Practice. In this episode (Part 1 of 2) I introduce what it is, and talk about its origins in the Buddha's own teachings – whi...

It's natural and healthy to aspire to things like having more equanimity, being more generous, and overcoming negative habits – and, in fact, such aspiration is part of the Buddhist path. However, when we encounter aspects of ourselves that are difficult to change, we may be tempted to wage war on ourselves. This is not only counterproductive, it's incompatible with our own aspirations. I'll outli...

In the last episode, I introduced the Four Foundations of Mindfulness as the Buddha taught them. Mindfulness means to remember something, or keep something in mind. The Four Foundations are the four categories of things you keep in mind if you want to walk the path to spiritual liberation. In this episode I talk about how the Four Foundations of Mindfulness are actually practiced, and then about h...

One of Buddha's central teachings was the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, about how you walk the Eightfold Path to liberation. Mindfulness, or sati, means to remember or keep in mind, and the four foundations are the four things you should keep in mind (or focus on) if you want to progress on the spiritual path. In this first episode of two on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, I introduce the...

The Ten Oxherding pictures are a Zen teaching, but many Buddhist practitioners are familiar with the experience of trying to motivate yourself to practice without the rewards of explicit, tangible goals or markers of progress. The oxherding pictures  describe - rather than prescribe - stages of practice we go through over a lifetime. They can be inspiring and encouraging as long as you don't try t...

Second part of a two-part series: The story of my particular school, Soto Zen, in America, but even if you identify with a different type of Buddhism you may find it interesting because so many forms of Buddhism face a similar lack of racial diversity in the west – despite the diversity of our surrounding communities. Even if you're not particularly interested in the development of western Buddhis...

I tell you the story of my lineage of Zen over the last 100 years or so – its birth in America, its growth, its rocky adolescence, and how it's coming into an adulthood of sorts that gives it the strength to face the koan of race - particularly its own extreme lack of racial diversity. In the next episode, I'll go into more detail about what's involved in facing that koan and what a tremendous gro...

This my second episode on the Sandokai, an ancient teaching poem composed by Chinese Zen master Sekito Kisen (Shitou Xiqian, 700-790). It's recited daily in Soto Zen temples throughout the world - one of only a handful of Zen or Buddhist scriptures similarly honored. In the first episode I read the whole poem, discussed the "big deal" about absolute and relative (why Zen talks about this topic so...

Sandokai is a teaching poem composed by Chinese Chan (Zen) master Sekito Kisen (Shitou Xiqian, 700-790). It's recited daily in Soto Zen temples throughout the world. In this episode I explore the meaning of the Sandokai and why it's given such a central place in Soto Zen. I discuss the "big deal" about absolute and relative (why Zen talks about this topic so much), read the poem, and then start ex...

Is Buddhism religious, spiritual, or secular? The short answer to that is all three – depending what questions you're asking. In this episode I define religious, spiritual, and secular, and then examine how these terms apply to Buddhism - and how they don't.

In Episode 38  I talked about how Buddhist practice has two sides – samadhi power and karma relationship. Samadhi power is about cultivating a direct, real-life experience of the nondual aspect of reality, while karma relationship is about taking care of our lives in order to reduce suffering and reflect the truth of the nondual in the midst of the relative. In this episode I focus on karma relati...

In this third episode of my series on the Four Brahmaviharas, I briefly talk about how to use them in daily practice without setting them up as unattainable ideals. Then I discuss what tends to get in the way of unlimited compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, and ways to work through those obstructions.

"Intrusive" thoughts and emotions arise repeatedly with enough intensity for them to be disturbing or distracting, even though they aren't objectively relevant or helpful as they're arising. In this episode I describe how to use Buddhist practice to reduce the intrusiveness of irrelevant or unhelpful thoughts and emotions by decreasing our identification with the content of our experience and incr...