Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks

Kisei reflects on the closing stanzas of the Affirming Faith in Mind poem, exploring what it means to trust the heart-mind beyond discrimination and thought. She considers seasons of practice, the tension between sidedness and non-duality, and the lived, particular shape of a practitioner's path, weaving in stories of pilgrimage, faith in America, and the koan of calling out to one's true nature. This talk invites listeners to recognize the mysterious source within, honor their unique karma and calling, and cultivate trust in the unfolding of their life and practice. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this dialogue, Jogen and Hogen reflect on practice, uncertainty, and how to find direction in life. Hogen shares what he would tell his 18-year-old self about confidence and liberation, while Jogen explores non-resistance, yielding to experience, and listening deeply to the body and mind. Together they discuss career choices, not knowing the future, and how Zen practice cultivates discernment, flexibility, and trust in the unfolding of a life. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Hogen reflects on turning problems into wisdom, exploring how fear, beliefs, and fixed stories can become inner prisons—and how practice opens a path to freedom. Drawing on teachings about equanimity, responsibility, and gratitude, he invites listeners to face fear directly, soften around difficulty, and transform life's challenges into sources of insight, compassion, and appreciation for this one precious life. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this closing retreat talk, Jogen explores awareness, language, and love as portals into awakening, weaving poetry with Zen teaching to question what we mean by “the world.” Reflecting on impermanence, intimacy, and the bodhisattva path, he invites listeners to recognize the myriad worlds arising through their own body and mind—and to live so that life itself becomes an altar of love, responsibility, and presence. This is talk 5 of the 2026 Dharma Gates retreat. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this New Year Dharma talk, Kisei reflects on the Zen koan of stepping from the top of the hundred-foot pole, exploring what it means to move from insight into lived, embodied practice. Weaving together koans, tarot imagery, and reflections on aspiration, habit energy, and curiosity, she invites listeners to examine where they hold back from life and how playful, resourceful engagement can become a path of awakening. Through images of the Fool, the lotus in fire, and the bodhisattva archetypes, the talk encourages a wholehearted leap into intimacy with experience and a renewed connection to personal vow as the year begins. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this retreat talk, Jogen explores the inner disturbance that drives spiritual practice and the ways mistaken perception, fixed beliefs, and self-image shape our suffering. Drawing on Zen teachings, poetry, and personal reflection, he examines how we live in mental representations rather than direct experience, and how practice invites us to shed accumulated knowledge and see more clearly. The talk points to deep yielding and decisive, wholehearted engagement as gateways to freedom, inviting practitioners to soften resistance, question the reality of the separate self, and fully inhabit the living moment of practice as it unfolds. This is talk 4 of the 2026 Dharma Gates Retreat. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this opening talk of a series, Hogen introduces the Dharma as a practical path for transforming life's challenges into wisdom, compassion, and clarity. Drawing on the Four Noble Truths, he reframes suffering as “challenge” and emphasizes that everything in our inner life is workable when met directly. The talk focuses on cultivating a clear mind through slowing down, presence, and discernment, learning to distinguish facts from problems, and understanding what is truly ours to carry. With humor and plainspoken examples, Hogen outlines how practice helps us meet fear, confusion, and dissatisfaction at the root—laying the foundation for real, lived transformation rather than quick fixes or abstract solutions. From Heart of Wisdom Sunday night on January 11, 2026. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Kisei explores the Bodhisattva path as a life oriented toward love for the world and responsiveness to suffering. Drawing on Mahayana teachings, Shantideva's Way of the Bodhisattva, and contemporary reflections, she distinguishes between boundless compassion as our true nature and active compassion as a practice we cultivate. Introducing the “five compassions”—wise, fierce, patient, joyful, and unified—Kisei offers practical guidance for living the Bodhisattva vow with discernment, humility, and sustainability, while avoiding the pitfalls of burnout, righteousness, and pity. The talk invites practitioners to embody compassion in ways that are grounded, aligned, and responsive to real conditions. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this retreat talk, Jogen explores love, yielding, and aimlessness as essential dimensions of Zen practice. Beginning with love as the ground of awakening—from kindness toward oneself to devotion to ending suffering—he offers practical guidance for integrating warmth, relaxation, and embodied presence into meditation. The talk unpacks distraction and return as the natural texture of practice, introduces the Mahayana teachings of signlessness, wishlessness, and aimlessness, and points to how releasing the habit of striving opens timelessness and freedom. Throughout, Jogen emphasizes sincere effort, deep yielding to the present moment, and the way an awakened heart-mind naturally interpermeates and benefits the wider world. This is talk 3 of the 2026 Dharma Gates retreat at Great Vow. ★ Support this podcast ★

This talk explores the Buddhist teaching of impermanence as the foundation of liberation and ethical living. Reflecting on the meaning of a “new year,” it examines how fixed ideas about self, time, and identity create suffering, and how seeing the fluid, moment-to-moment nature of experience opens creativity, responsibility, and freedom. Through teachings on letting go, vow, and integrity, the talk invites practitioners to align their deepest intentions with daily life, discovering how personal practice naturally becomes service to the world. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this opening retreat talk, Jogen explores the nature of effort in zazen, describing practice as a living, responsive correction of the mind's continual drift from intimacy with body, breath, and present awareness. Using the image of driving a car, he shows how meditation requires both gentle steadiness and, at times, wholehearted intensity, always guided by sincerity rather than force. He unpacks the “discriminating itch” that divides experience into right and wrong, and invites practitioners to trust their innate diamond wholeness and big tender heart through unwavering attention, prayer, reflection on impermanence and death, and a deep commitment to stay on the path that leads beyond habitual suffering into freedom. This is talk 1 of the 2026 Dharma Gates retreat at Great Vow Zen Monastery. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this opening sesshin talk, Jogen welcomes practitioners into the deep work of gathering the heart and aligning with true nature through the simple, demanding forms of Zen retreat. He speaks of awakening as the end of unnecessary suffering and the discovery of a deeper truth than personality, a shared root of all beings that softens division and reveals a “diamond kinship” with life. Emphasizing both character formation and mind training, he encourages sincerity, steadiness, relaxation, and intimate attention to the breath, reminding us that we need not be perfect or special to practice—only willing. Through yielding to structure, meeting ourselves honestly, and trusting the immediacy of this very moment, we cultivate freedom, compassion, and the clarity that naturally serves the world. This is from the 2026 Dharma Gates at Great Vow Zen Monastery. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this New Year's talk, Hogen reflects on impermanence as the ground of freedom, showing how the fluid, flickering nature of body, mind, and world makes transformation always possible. Through the traditional elements of letting go, clarifying vow, and living with ethical integrity, he points to the deep creativity inherent in each moment and the unique aspiration alive in every person. By trusting direct experience, releasing fixed self-images, and aligning our actions with our deepest heart, we discover that a new year is not merely a date on a calendar, but an ever-present opportunity to awaken, to serve, and to allow the world itself to become a place of greater clarity, kindness, and possibility. ★ Support this podcast ★

Drawing on the teaching “Appreciate Your Life” from Taizan Maezumi Roshi, Jomon weaves together the Zen story of Gensha with the lives and insights of Carl Rogers, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Marsha Linehan, showing how trust in direct experience, mindful presence, and compassion reveal the same truth across traditions. Through breath, awareness, and the courage to meet life as it is, she points to a lived understanding that this very life is the life of Buddha, that each moment is complete, and that learning to rest in “this is it” allows gratitude, healing, and confidence in our own true nature to naturally arise. This talk was given at the Plum Blossom Zendo in Vancouver, WA. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk on the Faith in Mind chant, Jogen explores acceptance, frictionlessness, and the deeper wisdom that lives beneath ordinary discriminating thought. He reflects on how suffering arises from clinging to opinions, identities, and habitual stances, and how Zen practice reveals a naturally fluid, responsive mind that does not grind against experience. Pointing to prajna—intelligence before thought—he invites us to trust the heart-mind that meets each moment freshly, allowing action and understanding to arise from the bare ground of presence rather than from fear, preconception, or self-doubt. This talk was given at Heart of Wisdom Zen Temple on December 17 2025. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this closing sesshin talk, Hogen reflects on faith not as belief, but as the lived courage to step into the unknown moment by moment. He speaks of karma as an unfolding stream, of practice as learning to trust the next step without grasping at outcomes, and of life's purpose as simply being fully alive in what is. Through images of walking, breathing, and letting go of fixed identity, he points to a deep confidence in the present moment and in the heart's aspiration, inviting us to meet the future with clarity, curiosity, and a faith grounded in direct experience. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this Rohatsu sesshin talk, Chozen reflects on awakening, silent mind, and the constructed personality that both protects and confines us. Drawing on the Buddha's own awakening, the teaching of “don't-know mind” from Seung Sahn Sunim, Eckhart Tolle's modern account of disidentification from thought, and the koan of Isan tipping over the water bottle, she points to the moment when thinking falls away and original mind reveals itself—vast, intimate, and free from entanglement. The invitation is to trust this silence, let personality become optional, and allow awakening to flow through the body and into everyday life. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Jogen reflects on joy not as something to be manufactured, but as a natural expression that arises when we stop getting in the way of our own experience. Drawing from Zen practice and everyday life, he explores several forms of joy: the brightness of nowness and sensory vividness, the steadiness of samadhi, the intimacy of non-separation, the ease of a clean conscience, the warmth of an undefended heart, and the quiet fulfillment that comes from generosity. Together, these point to a joy that is not dependent on circumstances, but emerges from presence, ethical clarity, and a mind at rest in itself. This talk was given at Heart of Wisdom Zen temple of December 10 2025. ★ Support this podcast ★

What is here before the mind contracts around thought, identity, or effort? This talk points to the moment prior to grasping—where awareness is open, unconfined, and quietly alive—and offers guidance on recognizing and resting in that simplicity. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Kodo reflects on Faith in Mind as a teaching on living with uncertainty and relinquishing judgment, comparison, and fixed views. Drawing on Dōgen, early Buddhist teachings, and reflections from contemporary teachers, she explores how practice shifts us from self-centered thinking into direct awareness, where impermanence is lived rather than conceptualized. Through sustained meditation, ethical living, and sangha engagement, we gradually loosen the grip of the small self and discover a boundless, compassionate mind capable of meeting life's difficulties with clarity, purpose, and care for others. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this wide-ranging talk, Jogen explores spaciousness as a direct and liberating dimension of Zen practice, drawing from his own experience and from Zen and Dzogchen teachings. He reflects on how awareness of space—physical, experiential, and unconfined—can soften fixation, interrupt grasping, and provide refuge amid pain, anxiety, and self-contraction. Through stories, humor, and guided practice, he offers practical ways to cultivate intimacy with space in meditation and daily life, emphasizing that spaciousness is not an altered state but an ever-present ground that welcomes all experience and allows wisdom, compassion, and ease to arise naturally. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this Rohatsu Sesshin talk, Chozen reflects on the meaning of awakening—not as a one-time event, but as an ongoing opening into reality beyond self, time, and conceptual division. Drawing on classic Zen stories, Dōgen's teaching of non-thinking, and stages of meditative settling described in the Chan tradition, she explores how sustained concentration and a quiet, even silent mind allow the constructed sense of self to loosen and fall away. Through vivid examples, humor, and practical guidance, the talk emphasizes awakening as something that must be clarified, embodied, and continually refined through committed practice, ethical living, and ongoing housecleaning of habitual patterns—revealing a way of being aligned with impermanence, intimacy, and boundless clarity. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this Rahatsu talk, Jomon tells the story of Siddhartha Gautama's path to awakening, tracing his journey from royal luxury through extreme asceticism to the discovery of the Middle Way. Drawing on early Buddhist sutras and later mythic imagery, she explores the pivotal moments of nourishment, resolve, confrontation with Mara, and touching the earth as witness. The talk highlights the Four Noble Truths as lived insight rather than doctrine and emphasizes awakening as something inseparable from the great earth and all beings—an inheritance not reserved for the Buddha alone, but available to us through our own sincere practice.This talk was given at the Plum Blossom Zendo in Vancouver, WA on December 2, 2025. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Jogen responds to a request to explore Zen practice in relation to seasonal affective disorder and low-level depression, while distinguishing these experiences from deeper spiritual “descents” that can arise through sincere practice. Reflecting on impermanence, the “two arrows” of suffering, and being taken for a ride by conditions, he invites us to meet low mood without resistance, interpretation, or self-judgment. Through Zazen, gratitude practice, and a willingness to stay close to direct experience, even states like sadness, grayness, and powerlessness can become gateways to wisdom, intimacy, and a deeper trust in life as it is. This talk was given at Heart of Wisdom on the Wednesday night program.  ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Hogen explores how the teachings of Affirming Faith in Mind illuminate the way we meet family, conflict, and connection—especially during the holiday season. He reflects on the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha as refuges that steady us in the midst of strong opinions, old patterns, and the familiar dynamics that arise when we gather with others.This talk was given on November 30th 2025. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Jogen explores the human habit of comparing ourselves to others—and to imagined versions of ourselves—through the lens of the classic Zen text Affirming Faith in Mind. While difference is inherent in experience, comparison is optional. Jogen examines how the mind's natural ability to perceive distinction easily collapses into judgment, envy, regret, and self-critique, and how meditation reveals the space prior to mental elaboration.This talk was given during the Heart of Wisdom Wednesday night program. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Jōmon explores the deep connection between gratitude, generosity, and Dōgen's teaching of identity action—acting together as one body. Through reflections on Sōtō Zen practice, stories from contemporary teachers, and an extended look at the life and writings of Etty Hillesum, this episode invites us to discover the continuous availability of spiritual practice in every moment of our lives.This talk was given during the 2025 Gratitude Sesshin. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this sesshin talk, Jōgen invites practitioners to turn directly toward the living fabric of experience with wonder and open-handedness. Reflecting on the Kesa verse and the teachings of the Third Ancestor, he points out how the thinking mind masquerades as a solver of problems while actually weaving most of them—and how practice uncovers the unmoving ground that allows all states to arise. Through guided inquiry, poetry, and humor, he encourages listeners to look, feel, and experience what this moment is truly made of beyond concepts of self, struggle, and separation. Jōgen reminds us that we are always being carried in the river of being, even when fear or habit causes us to thrash about. From this recognition, compassion, trust, and genuine freedom naturally reveal themselves.This talk is from 2025 Ancient Way Sesshin. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this sesshin talk, Hōgen Roshi reflects on the heart of practice through the teachings of the Xin Xin Ming. He emphasizes that “what we turn our attention to becomes our world,” encouraging practitioners to stop believing the habitual thoughts that create suffering and to turn instead toward the intimate, living ground of experience—breath, aliveness, clarity, and ease. Through stories, humor, and examples from daily life, he illustrates how fixed beliefs obscure this root and how sesshin supports us in seeing beyond them. Hōgen reminds us that spiritual maturity does not come from thinking or emotion but from repeatedly returning to the still, spacious refuge at the center of our being. From this foundation, doubts fall away and genuine confidence in our true nature begins to grow.This talk was given during the 2025 Ancient Way Sesshin. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Jomon explores the first of the Bodhisattva's four embracing actions—generosity—and how giving becomes boundless when we drop the sense of separation between giver, receiver, and gift. Drawing from Dōgen's Bodhisattva's Four Embracing Actions, stories of King Ashoka, and Shantideva's Way of the Bodhisattva, she illuminates how generosity arises naturally from a heart touched by gratitude and compassion. Through reflections on trust, appreciation, and offering even “one speck of dust,” Jomon shows how giving can take the form of acceptance, imagination, presence, and allowing the world to unfold. She offers practical practices from Shantideva—like imagining vast offerings—to help cultivate a giving heart in daily life. The talk closes with a guided contemplation on what is being given in each moment and how we might meet it with generosity. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Jogen explores how our relationships—especially with family—can become genuine fields of practice. He challenges the assumption that practice only happens on the cushion, offering instead a vision of relational life as an arena for choosing “the bigger heart.” Through principles such as breaking through indifference, pausing when triggered, cultivating curiosity, and listening with an empty, receptive mind, he shows how connection requires intention, not luck. Jogen emphasizes that we're not fixed beings and that every moment offers a chance to shift out of self-protection and into presence. These teachings offer practical guidance for meeting family and community with clarity, warmth, and wholeheartedness.This talk was given during the Sunday Program at Great Vow on Novemeber 23 2025. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, we explore the Zen poem often translated as Inscribing Trust in the Heart or Affirming Faith in Mind. The teaching points to a profound realization: the Way is perfect, like vast space, where there is no lack and no excess. Jogen reflects on how our habitual striving, judgment, and fixation on imperfection obscure this truth—and how practice, especially decisive Zazen, helps us touch the Way directly. Through reflections on presence, beauty, and the ordinary rhythms of life, this talk invites us to experience reality beyond our preferences, evaluations, and notions of right and wrong.This talk was given on Nov. 5, 2025 at Heart of Wisdom Zen Temple. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Hogen Roshi explores the Zen chant Affirming Faith in Mind, showing how its guidance is rooted in direct, present-moment experience. He emphasizes that the “great way” is not difficult when we are fully present and free from the disease of the mind—the constant vacillation between likes and dislikes. Through vivid examples from daily life and practice, he demonstrates how anchoring in the now allows creativity, responsiveness, and deep appreciation to emerge naturally. Hogen also offers insight into non-duality, reminding us that reality is already inclusive and non-dual, and that awakening arises when we directly experience what is, right here and now. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Jogen Sensei explores the opening stanzas of Affirming Faith in Mind, illuminating what the poem calls “the Great Way”—life itself, unobscured by picking and choosing. Through clear examples of conditioned happiness, the wobbling of preference, and the subtle ways we strobe in and out of wholehearted engagement, he shows how resistance divides us from the peace inherent in each moment. Jogen emphasizes that dropping even slight distinctions allows the spacious, undivided nature of experience to appear, revealing the “one taste” running through all conditions. With warmth and humor, he invites practitioners to directly feel life as it is, free from the mind's disease of constant like-and-dislike. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Hogen Roshi explores the opening line of Affirming Faith in Mind—“The Great Way is easy”—and shows how quickly the mind complicates even the simplest instruction: just feeling our toes or our breath. Through humor, examples, and vivid demonstrations of how attention creates our experience moment by moment, he reveals how the body, thoughts, and sense of self arise and disappear with each flicker of awareness. He encourages practitioners to return again and again to direct experience—free of belief, story, or self-image—so the primal source of life can reveal itself. With clarity and compassion, Hogen emphasizes that the Way is both the easiest and the hardest thing in the world: resting with things exactly as they are.This talk was given during the 2025 Ancient Way Sesshin. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Jogen Sensei explores the paradox of longing—the pain and medicine of our deepest yearning. Drawing from Dōgen, the Faith in Mind poem, and ancient teachings, he illuminates how our wanting, striving, and efforts to understand can either bind us or open us to freedom. Through stories, humor, and grounded guidance, Jogen invites us to practice with wholeheartedness for its own sake—not as a transaction, but as intimacy with life itself. This talk moves through themes of determination, innocence, and the living rhythm of practice that carries us beyond “easy” or “hard.” This talk was given during the 2025 Ancient Way Sesshin at Great Vow. ★ Support this podcast ★

In the second week of the Ango practice period, Jomon Sensei reflects on verses from Affirming Faith in Mind—“The Great Way is without limit, beyond the easy and the hard.” Through multiple translations and the koan Ling Zhao's Grass Tips, she explores how our preferences and narrow views create tension, while the Way itself remains relaxed, spacious, and clear. Drawing on vivid imagery of dewdrops, grass, and the natural world, Jomon encourages us to meet both difficulty and ease with open presence. This talk reminds us that in stillness and in motion, the teachings of the ancestors are shining everywhere—even in the most ordinary momentsThis talk was given at the Plum Blossom Zendo in Vancouver, WA on October 14th 2025. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk Jogen Sensei introduces Affirming Faith in Mind as a mirror for practice and a reminder that the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult. Moving through the themes of impermanence, longing, and the poignancy of being human, he invites practitioners to meet life directly on the ground of reality. Jogen speaks of sesshin as a sacred vessel for awakening, describing three ingredients of transcendent insight: the desire to go beyond, a vivid steady mind, and bowing to what is. With clarity and humor, he shows how sesshin reveals our suffering and our freedom—teaching us to yield completely to the immediacy of this fleeting life.This is talk two of the 2025 Ancient Way Sesshin. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this opening talk of 2025 Ancient Way Sesshin, Hogen Roshi introduces the Affirming Faith in Mind chant—an ancient poem pointing to non-dual awareness and the ease of the great way. He reminds us that our suffering begins when we believe our thoughts, and peace appears when we let them flow without grasping. Through humor, reflection, and simple body-based practices, Hogen shows how inclusivity, satisfaction, and faith in the “heart-mind” reveal a stability beyond our judgments and preferences. The talk weaves ancient teaching, modern psychology, and poetry into a living encouragement to trust this very moment. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this episode, Kisei Sensei explores Koan 25, Nyozin's Pale Moon of Dawn, and Koan 33, Bodhidharma's Flesh, examining how Zen teaching passes through time, poetry, and the body. She reflects on Chyono's poem about the pale moon and the bucket, showing how our sense of self can be patched together and then fall away in practice. Drawing connections to Bodhidharma's transmission to his students, she emphasizes how awakening is both a lived, embodied experience and a study of ancestral teachings. Listeners are invited to reflect on the moon, their own practice, and the questions of body, awakening, and interconnection that these koans present.This talk was given during Kisei's online Tuesday night program. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Jomon Sensei continues the autumn Ango practice period by exploring passages from the ancient Zen poem Affirming Faith in Mind. Through multiple translations and reflections, she examines how striving—whether for worldly success or inner enlightenment—entangles us in duality. She invites us to rest in simplicity and let the “way be invisible,” seeing that stillness and motion, comfort and discomfort, are inseparable expressions of oneness. With warmth and humor, she shows how retreat practice and daily life both reveal the same truth: reality is not perfect, permanent, or personal.This talk was given at the Vancouver Zen Group on October 21st 2025. ★ Support this podcast ★

Jogen explores the Buddha's teaching of right thought. Through vivid metaphors and down-to-earth humor, he invites us to notice what we hold onto that tethers us to unhappiness and how readiness to release can arise naturally, like ripe fruit. The talk moves from the monastic renunciate ideal to the subtler, everyday practice of relinquishment in relationships, habits, and self-images. Letting go, he says, is not moralistic or forced, but an alchemy of honesty, compassion, and faith in a deeper happiness.This talk was given on October 1st 2025 at Heart of Wisdom Zen Temple. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this episode, Kisei explores the unique Zen practice of mirror meditation at Tokeji, a thirteenth-century Japanese convent. Practitioners sit before a mirror, asking, “Where is a single feeling, a single thought in the mirror image at which I gaze?” Through historical stories, personal experiences, and reflections from teachers like Zenju Earthlyn Manuel and Ruth Ozeki, we witness how this practice reveals habitual judgments, fear, grief, and ultimately compassion and equanimity. By sitting with the reflection, we learn to see ourselves as nature itself, discovering clarity, openness, and our original heart-mind. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Jogen explores the Zen practice of embracing our darkness—not as something negative to overcome, but as the ungraspable, untamable side of human life. He reminds us that despite our efforts, relationships splinter, longings surface, and hurtful words escape; we never fully master life. Rather than rejecting sorrow, confusion, or anger, we can companion them, seeing them as expressions of our shared nature. Alongside cultivating brightness of mind, the path asks us to embrace the darkness too, recognizing it as belonging to the very heart of the world.This talk was given on September 24 2025 during the Heart of Wisdom Wednesday night program. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Jomon introduces the Japanese Buddhist holiday Ohigan, celebrated at the equinox as a time to honor the ancestors and reflect on the paramitas—the perfections of practice. From there, she explores karma not just as action and result, but as a living cycle of intentions, deeds, and the dispositions they leave behind. Drawing on Buddhist teachings, neuroscience, and personal stories, Jomon shows how our propensities shape the way we perceive the world, and how practicing generosity, patience, and wisdom can shift the very seeds we carry forward. She closes by asking: What kind of ancestor do you want to be, and how do you wish to meet this life?This talk was given during the Wednesday night program at Heart of Wisdom on September 3rd 2025. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Hogen Roshi shares insights from a recent workshop at the monastery integrating Zen practice with Byron Katie's method of inquiry. He explores how questioning our fixed beliefs—about ourselves, others, and the world—opens freedom and flexibility, and how this investigation aligns with the heart of Zen's great inquiry: What is true? Drawing on examples from daily life, the teachings of Dao Wei, and Thich Nhat Hanh's reflections on impermanence, Hogen shows how seeing from many perspectives helps loosen identification and cultivate vow. Ultimately, he reminds us that because all things are impermanent, we have the creative potential to nurture love, equanimity, and our deepest aspiration in each moment.This talk was given during the Heart of Wisdom Sunday Evening program on September 7 2025. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Kisei shares Case 58 from The Hidden Lamp, drawn from the Vimalakīrti Sūtra, where the goddess playfully transforms Shariputra to reveal the truth of nonduality beyond male and female. She explores the Mahayana roots of the story, its revolutionary challenge to purity doctrines, and its affirmation that awakening is not bound by gender, role, or condition. Through Rinzai's “four positions” and a guided koan exercise, Kisei invites us to embody both Shariputra and the goddess, to see where our own identities and resistances arise, and to discover the freedom of dropping all positions. The talk closes with Chōzen Roshi's reflections on zazen as both microscope and telescope, returning us to spaciousness as the ground of all forms. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Jogen reflects on what it means to protect the innate brightness of the heart-mind. He describes this luminosity not as a metaphor for “choosing happiness,” but as a living reality that shines through when the shrouds of distraction, anxiety, resentment, and tribalized thinking are set aside. Drawing from personal stories, contemporary struggles, and the wisdom of Zen practice, Jogen explores how meditation, ethical behavior, and stepping outside the “flock” of busyness and opinion can safeguard this transcendent okayness. The invitation is to discover and continually uncover the bright mind that is already present, intimate, and sustaining.This talk was given on September 17th 2025 at Heart of Wisdom Zen Temple. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this Jizō Sesshin talk, Jomon explores the poem Peaceful Life by Dainin Katagiri Roshi, opening it as a doorway into the mystery of vow. She reflects on how we often arrive at practice seeking peace, only to find ourselves meeting distraction, longing, or grief—and how vow becomes the ground on which true peace is found. Drawing on teachings from Chozen Roshi, Thich Nhat Hanh, and stories of resilience from Dōgen to living exemplars like Jimmy Carter, Jomon shows how vow functions not as a goal to accomplish, but as an orientation of the heart that fuels compassion, love, and continuity. Through this lens, we are invited to consider what our lives are about, and how even in uncertainty we can return to this breath, this moment, and discover peaceful life in vow.This talk was given during the 2025 Jizo Sesshin at Great Vow Zen Monastery. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Hogen weaves community life, way-seeking mind reflections, and Thich Nhat Hanh's The Art of Living into a deep exploration of impermanence. He reminds us that nothing is stuck—everything is always transforming, whether in our lives, our relationships, or the world itself. By learning to meet each moment freshly, we discover freedom, appreciation, and the possibility of transformation rooted in our vows and intentions. Drawing on the Five Remembrances and the mystery of the present, Hogen points to impermanence not as loss, but as the very ground of practice and awakening. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this talk, Kisei explores Case 15 from The Hidden Lamp, where a woman realizes awakening through the simple phrase “let it be.” She reflects on how this koan functions much like the classic Mu koan—serving as a sword to cut through discursive mind and habitual identification. With stories, metaphors, and practice instructions, Kisei shows how “let it be” invites us to meet fear, thought, and circumstance without grasping, and to discover the vast awareness in which everything arises. She also emphasizes the role of faith—not blind belief, but trust born of direct experience—in sustaining our practice and opening us to the fruit of realization.This talk was given during Kisei's online meeting on Monday evenings. ★ Support this podcast ★