Zen Mind

This episode is a conversation with meditation teacher and author Gaylon Ferguson about his new book "Welcoming Beginner's Mind." The conversation touches on the main themes of the book and their importance in our practice and everyday life such as welcoming experience just as it is, spaciousness, control and grasping, stages of practice, and what is called our true nature or Buddha...

This talk was given in preparation for this year’s Lay Initiation Ceremony (Jukai). It explores the ethical dimension of Zen practice as expressed in the Sixteen Bodhisattva Precepts. On the one hand, the precepts don’t appear to be different from other religious moral codes. They formulate common sense behavioral guidelines. On the other hand, they can be interpreted from the point of view of emp...

This talk was given to kick off this year's fall course on 'Transforming Habits.' It considers Ken Wilber's distinction between 'waking up' and 'growing up.' It then asks how being intimate with the field of mind (open awareness) can be used to facilitate the transformation of unwholesome habits, which is essential for the process of growing up. In contrast...

This talk was given as part of a One-Day Intensive at Boulder Zen Center's new Mountain Zendo. It takes the following quote from Suzuki Roshi as its jumping-off point: "When you're sitting in the middle of your own problem, what is more real: your problem or you yourself? That you are here, right now, is the ultimate fact." Usually, the contents of our minds seem more real—obje...

This talk was given as part of a Weekend Sitting. It explores the question of how we enact practice-enlightenment (Dogen's concept) in our daily activities. It talks about the importance of pace for attuning to the field of undivided activity and specifies two requirements: (1) letting go of resistance or being truly open and (2) a change in worldview. To shift our view of the world not just...

This talk continues to explore bringing attention to how attention functions in our lives. The distinction between focused consciousness (contents of mind) and nonfocused awareness (field of mind) is discussed as two different kinds of concentration. Learning to rest in and trust this nonconscious field, which is marked by interdependence and impermanence, is an essential part of the spiritual jou...

Attention is our most precious resource. Where our attention goes, our life goes. The cultivation of attention is at the center of Zen practice. This talk points out that this cultivation is extra challenging under the conditions of what social scientists and critics have come to call the ‘attention economy’ and ‘surveillance capitalism.’ We’re not just dealing with the typical entanglement of att...

This talk is about habit change from a Buddhist perspective. In one sense, it is a preview of BZC‘s upcoming Practice Course “Transforming Habits” (Oct 4-Nov 9, 2024). However, it also stands on its own. It explores what happens when we bring the question “What would a Buddha do?” to every moment in which we feel a misalignment between our habituated actions and our inmost intentions. What kind of...

This talk continues the exploration of how to discover and develop a sense of community. It differentiates between intimacy as undividedness with all beings (the spiritual dimension of community) and intimacy as closeness (the conventional longing for being known and understood by others in our physicality, feelings, and thoughts). Regarding this longing for closeness, the talk examines the typica...

This talk was given as part of a Weekend Sitting at the Boulder Zen Center. It highlights the distinction between the contents of mind and the field of mind and its importance for practice. Dogen encouraged his students "to be continuously intimate with the field of mind." The talk presents two attentional practices to discover and establish oneself in the field of mind: (1) "To pau...

This is a special conversational episode. Christian (Zenki Roshi) is interviewed by Dr. Greg Madison, a British psychologist and psychotherapist. More than usual, Christian connects the concepts and practices he teaches with his own biographical journey. In the beginning, the conversation centers around Christian's encounter of and interest in Gene Gendlin's philosophy and his psychother...

This talk explores the experience of loneliness and the practice and views we might want to adopt to foster a sense of community: (1) share space instead of expecting to share beliefs or interests, (2) prioritize doing things together over talking, (3) practice mutual embodiment (notice how we interaffect each other in our sensations and movements). Along the way, the talk highlights reductionism...

This episode was first published in February 2022. We are republishing this episode because in it, Zenki Roshi addresses the most common questions asked by beginners and the issue of discomfort sometimes experienced by practitioners of all levels during zazen.   What exactly are we doing in zazen meditation? What kind of effort is necessary? This talk addresses the shift we are inviting when we si...

This talk is the first of seven Sesshin talks. (A Sesshin is a 7-day Zen meditation intensive.) It starts with the question, 'What does it mean to love?' The word 'love' carries all kind of baggage. So much so that in American Zen it doesn't seem to have a whole lot of currency. Yet, we're all longing for the spiritual dimension of love. This wide-ranging talk explore...

This talk was given as part of the closing ceremony of the 3-month Everyday Zen Practice Period. At the end of retreats and periods of intensified practice, many practitioners wonder how they can carry the renewed and invigorated sense of practice into their everyday lives. The answer is simple but not easy to implement: continue to stay fully present in each situation, each action, each gesture....

This talk concludes the line-by-line commentary on the Genjo Koan. Dogen has given us a clear (and maybe disappointing) vision of practice. We are never done with our practice. It's not like we are practicing in order to reach enlightenment, and once we have realized it, we're good. Instead, we are challenged to express enlightenment through our practice — one moment and one action at a...

This talk is the eighth in the series on Dogen's Genjo Koan. Dogen views realization not as an experience of oneness or a discovery of the ground of being but as an endless and groundless path of engaging the mystery and challenge of the present moment. In comparing our human life on this earth to the life of a bird in the sky and a fish in the ocean, he shows that each person in each moment...

This talk is the second in the series on Dogen's Genjo Koan. It is a close reading of the first four sentences. First, it provides an understanding of dharmas as momentary experiential units. Then it discusses Dogen's seemingly contradictory presentation of the dharma (the teaching of liberation) in light of the classic path of awakening, the teaching of emptiness, and an approach that d...

This talk kicks off a lecture series on Dogen's most celebrated writing, the Genjo Koan. It explores the meaning of the title phrase, which informs the entire text. GEN means to appear, JO means to complete. KO can be understood as the universal, while AN points to what is particular and unique. So GENJO KOAN means: to complete what appears as simultaneously universal and unique. As a practic...

This talk was given as an opening talk for the 2024 Boulder Zen Center - Everyday Zen Practice Period (Jan 20 - April 13). It discusses the concept and tradition of 'Three-Month Practice Periods' and explores how to go beyond the value judgments implicit in the Lay/Monastic distinction. At the root of all transformative practice is the sincere, committed search for an appropriate way of...

This talk explores how in times of crisis we can feel shaken by an experiences of groundlessness, and how we try to maintain and hold onto a sense of self as a defense against such groundlessness. We also employ language and understanding for that purpose of illusory grounding. Zen is not about perfecting our sense of self or our conceptual understanding; it is a practice of continuous opening to...

The philosopher Hannah Arendt considered the "capacity to begin anew" the essence of being human. This talk, given on the day before New Year's Eve, weaves our longing for new beginnings together with Buddhist notions of continuous birth and beginner's mind, and with practices of forgetting and forgiving. The talk ends with a reflection of how renewed intentions, purpose, and m...

This talk is a wide-ranging exploration of seemingly disparate topics such as 'a life lived authentically," subjectivity vs. objectivity, truth, spiritual awakening, transcendence, and the postmodern condition. It starts with a statement by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, "When you become you, Zen becomes Zen. When you are you, you see things as they are, and you become one with your surround...

This talk was given as part of a weekend zazen intensive. Based on the opening paragraphs of Dogen's fascicle 'Zenki' (Undivided Activity), the talk explores the Buddhist views of interdependence and field of mind and gives pointers for how to verify them in one's own experience. Welcome to Zen Mind! Please consider donating to our annual fundraiser. Love the dharma talks and w...

Given during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, this talk explores the experience and practice of gratitude. Gratitude is the appreciation of that which nourishes and sustains us. Bowing is an expression of such gratitude. We can practice bowing to our parents and ancestors acknowledging the gift of life that has come to us through them. As we bow to the Buddha, we bow to the matrix of interdepende...