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…
Featured Event
On January 12, at Fire Lotus Temple, Hojin Sensei gave the bodhisattva precepts to three students who have been practicing for a number of years within the MRO…
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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, 05/31/2020
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.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, 05/28/2020
“Immediately, change your life.” Shugen Roshi continues to explore the life and teachings of Xinggang, a renowned 17th century Rinzai zen nun. What is “changing your life?” We often think we are here to change ourselves, trade in unwanted aspects for preferred ones. But, as Roshi reminds us, “All the way to heaven is heaven itself” – nothing is ever lacking.
Bear Gokan Bonebakker, Senior Monastic
Zen Mountain Monastery, 05/29/2020
Delving into the opening lines of Hongzhi’s Cultivating the Empty Field, senior monastic Bear Gokan Bonebakker reflects on how we purify, cure, grind down, or brush away our habits and attachments. He reminds us that practice will not turn us into a different person – the imperative instead is to meet the whole of ourselves directly, to come to know our own mind and body intimately and lovingly.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, 05/28/2020
This floating life a changeable dream, yet we bitterly toil away;
The entire day full of busyness, as our karma grinds us down.
If only you can make a clean sweep of the cave of ignorance,
Nothing will remain but a life full of leisurely freedom and ease!
So begins the poem written by Xinggang, a 17th century nun in the Rinzai tradition who was able to fulfill her lifelong aspiration to become ordained after the deaths of her husband and parents. Shugen Roshi relates her poem on practicing true freedom of mind to a teaching from Trungpa Rinpoche on independence and developing faith in the dharma through meeting hardship with compassion and courage.
Frank Kyosho Fallon, Lay Senior
Zen Mountain Monastery, 05/27/2020
In this talk, Frank Kyosho Fallon, a senior student in the MRO, examines the suffering caused by the mind of self-righteousness. Invoking the final lines of the Metta Sutta, “By not holding to fixed views, the pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision, being freed from all sense desires, is not born again into this world”, Kyosho offers practical guidance in practicing harmony by trusting “the basic peace that doesn’t rely on winning an argument”.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, 05/24/2020
We affect others in all that we do. Drawing on Dogen’s allusion to compassion and effort that is “continuous and sustained,” Dogen says, “It forms the circle of the way and is never cut off.” In this talk on the first of the Four Immeasurables, Shugen Roshi looks into the compassion and wisdom within our intention: “May all beings be free from suffering and know the root of suffering.”
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery, 05/15/2020
We each create the entire world in every moment; every thought, word and action goes into the stream. The majesty of creation gives us everything we need; so how might humility and reverence be qualities of being we might want to cultivate, and aspire to? Awe, wonder and a little fear help us wake up to the vastness of the path, offers Hojin Sensei, and help nourish our continuous good practice of discovery within the precepts.
Michelle Seigei Spark, Lay Senior
Zen Mountain Monastery, 05/10/2020
What is it to recognize every being as having been at one time your mother? Senior lay student Seigei explores the practice of gratitude and wonder from the perspective of the interdependence of all beings. Awakening to kindness and deep compassion through a small shift in perspective, we can also recognize that we give birth to goodness and compassion all the time through our own thoughts, words and actions.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, 5/3/2020
At some time in meditation practice, Mara the evil one will come and try to dissuade you. Mara has endless means for shaking up our faith and resolve, appearing inside our own minds. Our habitual responses, as well as our cultural certainties, are not helpful when the very foundations of our understanding of hierarchies, and the order of things, is in dynamic flux and change.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, 04/26/2020
A Question and Answer session between Shugen Roshi and students on the earth, community, commitment and the dharma of interdependence and solitude at this challenging time of social distancing, isolation and uncertainty.