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
Of Fish and Nets
The thought that we can escape from the ebb and flow of reality as the sign of being a “skilled practitioner” is to not yet see the true nature of reality itself. Speaking from within a quarantined cloister, Shugen Roshi invites us to examine our present situation as the very stuff from which realization can emerge. With tender attentiveness, we can navigate through even our most negative experiences, and our grief…
Tour the ZMM Garden
Take a pre-taped tour of the garden as it reaches full bloom. Mn. Yukon will soon be offering a Zoom “call in show” for anyone with questions about their own organic gardening endeavors and how to bring more mindfulness into the mud…
Featured Video
May 31, 2020—Following a week of sesshin practice at the Monastery and social upheaval across America, Shugen Roshi reflects on the power of mind to create separation and to repair; to inflict great harm, and to atone…
Featured Interview
The creative team behind our new annual journal sit down to discuss the process and realization of this exciting endeavor. Mountains and Rivers: Zen Practice and Dharma and Practice brings to life a year’s worth of teachings…
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, 7/12/2020
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, 07/05/2020
From the Book of Serenity, Case 56: “Spiritual Uncle Mi and The Rabbit”
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, 06/28/2020
The Blue Cliff Record, Case 52: “Zhaozhou let’s asses cross, let’s horses cross”
A monk asked Zhaozhou, “For a long time I’ve heard of the stone bridge of Zhaozhou, but now that I’ve come here I just see a simple log bridge.” Zhaozhou said, “You just see the log bridge; you don’t see the stone bridge.” The monk said, “What is the stone bridge?” Zhaozhou said, “It lets asses cross, it lets horses cross.”
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Broadcasted from Hogen Sensei’s home in Pennsylvania, 6/27/2020
Blue Cliff Record, Case #87
“Medicine and sickness heal each other. The whole world is medicine. Where do you find the self?” Speaking on this simple, powerful koan via Zoom from his home, Hogen Sensei explores how poison is transformed into medicine, how medicine can be misused as poison, and how we can meet the great challenge of this time with honesty, clarity, and humility, within the freedom of no-self. He emphasizes that rage itself can heal, quoting Zenju Earthlyn Manuel Sensei, who writes of anger as “a burning from which I am able to speak on injustice from a place that includes the liberating nature of all beings.”
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, 6/26/2020
This talk explores a poem on meditation by Yikui, a 17th century nun who succeeded Xinggang as abbess of Crouching Lion Convent. “In moments of leisure,” Yikui writes from her hermitage, “I sit upright in the shade of the pine tree.” Shugen Roshi speaks about the great effort, profound faith, and tireless determination out of which this leisure is born, urging us to take up our practice, to “enter the scars of the burning,” with the urgency of the blazing, red hot-stove which Yikui evokes.
Danica Shoan Ankele, Senor Monastic
Zen Mountain Monastery, 6/24/2020
“Vast ocean of dazzling light, marked by the waves of birth and death.” Shoan uses this powerful line from the memorial service liturgy to speak about how we can trust our connection to the whole, although we appear to manifest as separate beings. Because it is difficult to see our wave-selves as completely one with the ocean, sometimes it is skillful to address enlightened mind as if it is outside of ourselves. Shoan speaks of the importance of this devotional attitude, highlighting the invocations of the sacred feminine already present in our daily liturgy.
Bear Gokan Bonebakker, Senior Monastic
Zen Mountain Monastery, 6/24/2020
In this talk, Gokan investigates the Buddha’s teachings on “knowing how to be satisfied,” taking up these instructions as guidance in letting go of the self-critical voice. He cites Maezumi Roshi’s commentary: “If we know how to be satisfied with ourselves exactly as we are right now, that’s all there is to know.” The solitude of zazen gives up this opportunity to offer ourselves complete acceptance, which is not different, Gokan suggests, from letting go.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, 06/21/2020
Book of Serenity, Case 20 : Dizang’s Intimacy
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, 6/14/2020
The moral and ethical vows of a practicing Buddhist are given and received in this ceremony of Jukai. Join the sangha in hearing these teachings as Sarah Taisho Sands receives the Bodhisattva precepts and the dharma name, Taisho, “Illumination Body.”
Prabu Gikon Vasan, Senior Lay Practitioner
Zen Mountain Monastery, 6/7/2020
Our minds project shape and meaning on all things in the world, and also offer ways to understand how our bodies manifest in the world: how our senses give us entry but also obscure. It is our work to dismantle the thoughts which cause restriction, harm ourselves and others, and to do so in reliance on the Buddha’s teachings can ground us in how we manifest the antidote to suffering and offer it to others in our lives.