Zen Mind

This talk was part of a Weekend Sitting at the Boulder Zen Center and addresses how to approach zazen practice. It explores Dogen's famous statements about his realization that "the nose is vertical and the eyes are horizontal" and about zazen being "the dharma gate of ease and joy." The purpose of zazen is neither to torture us nor to make us feel good. Zazen is about bec...

This talk explores the relationship between sitting meditation (zazen) and attentiveness in everyday life. It's starts with Joko Beck's definition of enlightenment as the "ending in yourself of that hope for something other than life being as it is" and unfolds practice as the effortless effort to allow one's experience to be exactly what it is at this time—that is, to ful...

This talk explores the freedom that opens up when we put ourselves at a distance from the structures within which we live on a daily basis. Freedom has two directions: (1) freedom FROM structures and (2) freedom TO deliberately live within specific structures. To be free from constraints can be liberating and feel exciting, but often it's also anxiety-provoking because we enter into a space o...

This talk was given in the context of a "rakusu" sewing seminar. Rakusu is the name for the small robe given to a Zen practitioner in a lay ordination ceremony. Part of the ceremony is the giving and receiving of the Bodhisattva precepts. This talk presents the precepts as both common sense ethical guidelines and an expression of Buddha mind. Welcome to Zen Mind! THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is...

This talk explores practice along the lines of Big Mind and small mind and how Big Mind has to include small mind to be truly Big Mind. It also touches on Suzuki Roshi's remark that "the real purpose of Buddhism is to bring about the right human life where there is no Buddhism, but if you think that without any training you can have that kind of life, … you are either a great fool or a v...

In Zen practice, we are instructed to view each activity as an expression of our true nature or buddha mind. We cannot find buddha mind in the past or in the future—only in the present. Master Mazu famously answered the question ‘What is buddha?’ with the iconic phrase ‘This mind here now is buddha.” This talk considers two common misinterpretations of this statement—naturalness and essentialism—a...

When it comes to big issues like the war in Ukraine or the climate crisis, we can feel unnervingly powerless. This talk presents a simple practice of listing all of our concerns, everything that is on our minds and weighing on our bodies. Through Zazen we can know that we are simultaneous very small and very large. We are capable of resonating with everything in this globalized world. The way this...

This bonus episode is the introductory talk to a recent Weekend Sitting retreat. It offers detailed instructions for how to hold the body-mind in sitting meditation (zazen) with an emphasis on energetic flow and balance.

What exactly are we doing in zazen meditation? What kind of effort is necessary? This talk addresses the shift we are inviting when we sit still, and it explores three zazen instructions and how they are interrelated: (1) just sit, (2) think not-thinking, and (3) counting the breath.

Being excited or disillusioned about the promise of meditation are both signs that we expect meditation to fix our problems. But while meditation doesn't necessarily solve our problems, it can help us change the relationship we have with our problems. Through meditation, we can learn to be willing to have problems and live them. Suzuki Roshi said, "Just to be alive is to have problems.&q...

It's a new year and many people make New Year's Resolutions to make changes in their lives. Why do these resolutions often not work? This talk explores a Buddhist way to think about intention. Instead of asking "What do I want to do?", we could ask questions like: "What does my body want me to do? What does my family want me to do? What does my community want me to do? Wha...

This is the last talk of this podcast season! Thank you so much for listening. We would be so appreciative if you took a moment to leave a rating or short review! This talk continues the exploration of studying the Buddha Way by studying the self and forgetting the self. Dogen says one's body and mind and the body and mind of the external world fall away when we allow ourselves to be actualiz...

The goal of Zen practice is not to become a better, enhanced person; the goal is an open, flexible mind. Openness may sound attractive, but it actually means we allow the teaching to undermine our habit and personality structures. This can be a bit scary. To study "the Way" is to study ourselves not as a fixed thing that needs improvement here and there but as an open-ended process of un...

This talk continues to explore Dogen's statement, "To study the Buddha Way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self, to forget the self is to be actualized by the 10,000 things." This talk uses the teaching of the five skandhas (form, feeling, perception, conditioning, and consciousness) to explore studying the self as being intimate with one's own experien...

Studying the Buddha Way depends on studying the felt body. When we study the felt body by bringing attention to sensations of breathing and the body, our sense of space can change. We can realize that what we feel in the region of the physical body is an open, connective space that includes the sense perception that we typically interpret as the outside world. This talk brings this experience, whi...

This is a short talk given by Zenki Roshi prior to a recent Weekend Sitting retreat. He gives instructions for zazen, which is Zen meditatiton. I hope that you find these instructions helpful in your own meditation practice. Boulder Zen Center is hosting four Weekend Sitting throughout the year. They are silent, 1.5 day retreats with a lot of meditation, a shared meal practice, and dharma talks. I...

This talk is the first in a series of talks on study. How do we study the Buddha Way? Often we bring ideas about study that are rooted in our experience with being in high school or college. But to study Buddhism isn't just a conceptual endeavor; we need to start with our own inmost request. Are the tenets of Buddhism—transformation, liberation from suffering, wisdom, and compassion— truly ex...

It's worth building a regular and diligent practice of disentangling sensation from interpretation/thinking. This is true for the sense perceptions of the phenomenal world and for the proprioceptive intensities that arise within us as we live our life. When thinking is disentangled from sensation with some stability, the structures of the discursive and narrative self collapse. We can begin t...

In the first half, this talk continues the exploration of the "Modalities of Mind" from last week. The mind (our sentient presence) is like an orchestra with different instruments. We can learn to listen to and conduct these instruments in the service of our deepest intentions. In the second half, the talk presents examples and practices for distinguishing the modalities of “sensation” a...

This talk describes five modalities of mind that we can learn to distinguish when we commit to a path of meditation and mindfulness: (1) discursive thinking (2) applied thinking (3) attentional consciousness (4) felt sense (5) awareness We encounter the modality of discursive thinking when we first sit down in meditation. We begin to see that it obscures, blocks, obstructs the other modalities. By...

This talk is about how to put a regular zazen practice together in one's daily life. It starts out with a look at the two sicknesses of meditation: Treating meditation as a means to an end. Using meditation as a way to escape difficulty. The antidote to the two sicknesses is seeing zazen as the repeated gesture of "opening up around" our experience as it is from moment to moment. By...

Discipline is not a popular word. To most people, it feels like something imposed from the outside, an expectation others have of us or one we have internalized. This talk is about reframing the concept of "discipline" as the ability to hold an intention over time. Intention is most deeply rooted in satisfaction—not in willpower.

This talk looks at "nourishment" as the other side of suffering. When is an experience nourishing-independent of whether it is pleasant or unpleasant? The answer lies In the practice or completing that which appears: allowing our experience to be exactly what It Is at this time and also allowing it to become what it wants to become.

What is enlightenment? And what is the relationship to habits and karma? This talk examines what the words "enlightenment," "awakening," and "realization" point to. It presents a "practice of enlightenment" based on Dogen's instruction "to be steadily intimate with the field of mind." The practice of enlightenment is not a self-improvement or...

Using the koan of "Baizhang's Fox" (Case 8 in the Book Serenity), this talk asks about the Middle Way of being simultaneously free from and entangled in the world of karmic patterns. We are free from karma by savoring nirvanic moments and establishing ourselves more and more in the field of mind that non-reactively allows everything to be the way it is. When we relax and stop seeing...