A collection of dharma talks, events, interviews and other media from Zen Mountain Monastery and the Zen Center of NYC. Please scroll down for all available talks. Subscribe via: iTunes | Google Play
A collection of dharma talks, events, interviews and other media from Zen Mountain Monastery and the Zen Center of NYC. Please scroll down for all available talks. Subscribe via: iTunes | Google Play
Everyday Words
Picking up where he left off from a previous Fusatsu talk on Right Speech (Learning How to Speak – 4/8/21), Shugen Roshi investigates storied examples of practitioners using language to express the ordinary and the extraordinary. Master Dogen says, “Words are neither different nor not different from our fundamental nature. But if a person becomes attached to words and their everyday meaning, they can become attached to views.” We tend to use words very casually, but language has power and views can imprison.
Listen >
Dharma Talks on Livestream
Check out our continually expanding library of talks archived on Livestream. And join us live each Sunday morning for zazen, liturgy and a talk that concludes our training week.
View >
The Jizo Project Rolls Out
A multimedia presentation of the Jizo Project: our initiative that aspires to make Zen Mountain Monastery a more accessible and welcoming place for all.
A Look Back on 40 Years
Check out This Thing We Made: a special filmstrip that looks back on the Monastery’s origins and development over the course of 40 years on Tremper Mountain.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, 04/25/2021
Dharma Encounter at the Conclusion of the 2021 Apple Blossom Sesshin
Shugen Roshi begins with the koan in the last paragraph of Master Dogen’s fascicle “Ten Directions”. Priest Fungshan was asked by a monk: “The World Honored Ones in the ten directions are all on the one path to Nirvana. Let me ask you: where is the path?” Fungshan drew a line in the air with his staff and said: “It’s here”. Shugen Roshi asks us: What are the ten directions? Where is the path to liberation? Is it the path that we are on? Why do teachers describe the path in so many different ways? Are there different paths to liberation?
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, 04/24/2021
Blue Cliff Record, Case 62 – Yunmen’s “Within There is a Jewel”
Shugen Roshi reminds us that we are the creators of our lives. Our pervasive sense of being lost or broken is a creation of our mind. Out of habit we look outside of ourselves for relief. This koan tells us to “Turn the light around” and find the jewel within that shows us the path to the end of suffering.
Danica Shoan Ankele, Senior Monastic
Zen Mountain Monastery, 04/23/2021
Drawing inspiration from Master Hongzhi’s teachings “Cultivating the Empty Field”, Monastic Shoan invites us to tap into our innate sense of wonder and investigate the fundamental questions: Who is this I? Who am I? What is impermanence? And so, how do we actually soften our fixations on reified reality and let go? We can begin by resting in wonder. For starters, the world is burning AND the springtime is glorious.
Patrick Yunen Kelly, Senior Lay Student
Zen Mountain Monastery (Via Zoom), 04/22/2021
Bringing forth the Fire Sermon Discourse, one of the Buddha’s earliest teachings, Yunen asks us to investigate the sources of our suffering: Why do we suffer? What is this fire we live in? Is it possible that we have something to do with this suffering?
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, 4/21/2021
Book of Serenity, Case 60 – Iron-Grinder Liu
Evoking this pithy exchange between Liu Tiemo and her teacher Guishan, Shugen Roshi asks us to reflect on how we meet these teachings. How do we turn towards what we do not understand but somehow know is true? And ultimately, how do we become serene in a world of perceived adversity?
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, 4/18/2021
Halfway through ango, Shugen Roshi officiated this novice monastic ordination for Jeffrey Kien Martin. Kien is currently the Monastery cook (among other responsibilities), but his involvement with the Monastery goes back two and a half decades. Now, as he takes on the robes of a novice, Kien will further explore the monastic vows and train in the role of a monastic, though it’s worth noting that one does not formally commit to those vows until full ordination, leaving the discernment process open to further clarification. Those lifetime vows are: simplicity, service, selflessness, stability, and following the path of the Buddha. See photos and find a link to the video here.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, 4/11/2021
The Blue Cliff Record, Case 95 – Ch’ang Ch’ing’s “Three Poisons”
Picking up where he left off from a previous Fusatsu talk on Right Speech (“Learning How to Speak” – 4/8/21), Shugen Roshi investigates storied examples of practitioners using language to express the ordinary and the extraordinary. Master Dogen says, “Words are neither different nor not different from our fundamental nature. But if a person becomes attached to words and their everyday meaning, they can become attached to views.” We tend to use words very casually, but language has power and views can imprison.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, 4/8/2021
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery, 4/4/2021
As we celebrate the Buddha’s Birthday today, Hojin Sensei offers a teaching from Zen Master Bankei: “What I teach everyone, in these talks of mine, is the unborn buddha mind of unlimited wisdom. Nothing else. Everyone is endowed with this buddha mind, only they don’t know it.” Sensei looks at the subtle ways “the unborn buddha mind” manifests in and through all of us and she reminds us that we are all living Buddhas.
The strands of thought linking Buddhist liberation from suffering and the aims of social justice are aligned with the Buddha’s realization that “I and all beings at once enter enlightenment,” affirming the interdependent nature of reality. Yet despite our best intentions, why do deeply embedded habit formations—and inherent bias— continue to arise and perpetuate suffering? This harmful trend exists in primarily white, cis-gender dharma communities where BIPOC and LGBTQ practitioners can feel marginalized, unless and until this trend is directly addressed and disrupted. Healing is possible, but first must come an understanding of how the mind perpetuates suffering. How do these strands of conditioned mind, and our intentions and capacity for realization, interrelate?
