Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery, 5/19/2019
Book of Equanimity, Case 8
Riding the waves of life is not a problem, in fact it can be joyful, even with karma playing out as it will. Hogen Sensei explores the workings of karma as never the result of one single action but an interplay between choices and situations, some of which we can see and others that we cannot. Even an enlightened being, however, should not ignore cause and effect, and neither should we.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Center of New York City, 5/5/2019
Blue Cliff Record, Case 84
Hogen Sensei takes up the koan on Vimalakirti’s silence to examine non-duality. When asked about non-duality, what did Vimalakirti say? What would you say? If you answer with silence, you’re missing it.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery, 4/28/2019
Dharma Encounter
Hogen Sensei explores the question of Wholesome and Unwholesome Action in this lively dharma encounter. Daily encounters present us with questions like: What is the right thing to do? What’s the intention and what karma am I creating? Or simply: where is the “me” in this?
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery, 4/25/2019
True Dharma Eye, Case 29
How is it that we are living and dying in each moment? Hogen Sensei reminds us that turning away from death is turning away from life.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Center of New York City, 4/21/2019
In the midst of the three celebrations for Passover, Easter and the Buddha’s Birthday, Hogen Sensei explores the non-dual nature of joy and suffering.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Center of New York City, 4/18/2019
Precepts Mondo
Hogen Sensei explores the fourth precept on truthfulness, not lying. The Dharma is inexpressible; how can anyone speak a true word? The more the Buddha lies, the more he becomes Buddha. What does this mean for our lives?
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Center of New York City, 4/14/2019
Blue Cliff Record, Case 37
Hogen Sensei takes up a koan where a teacher asks a student, “Where do you seek the mind?” Realizing that life and death is a vital matter, where do you begin and how do you continue to follow a spiritual practice which gives you nothing to hold on to?
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Center of New York City, 4/13/2019
Hogen Sensei takes up the question of what is zazen. Why do we practice? What is practice, and what motivates us to practice? He points us to Zen Master Joshu’s reply: zazen is alive.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Center of New York City, 4/11/2019
Hogen Sensei explores wholesome action as an action that come out of discrimination rooted in wholeness.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery, 3/29/2019
Even in our ignorance of the impact we have on others, karma is created. Hogen Sensei explores how we can use dharma practice to investigate what it is to “just refrain from,” both wholesome and unwholesome activity, as Dogen describes in the fascicle being studied during this Ango.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Center of New York City, 3/10/2019
Hogen Sensei offers a talk introducing Dōgen’s fasicle “Refrain From Unwholesome Action”, and relates it to the issues of injustice we face as a society.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Gateless Gate, Case 44
Zen Center of New York City, 3/3/2019
Hogen takes up the koan “If you have a staff, I will give one to you; if you don’t have a staff I will take it away” and connects this to the sangha’s “Beyond Fear of Differences Work”. The difficult work of moving beyond our attachments helps us see ourselves in everyone and everyone in ourselves. *We experienced technical difficulties and the recording is missing the first 5 seconds of the talk.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Gateless Gate, Case 43
Zen Center of New York City, 02/03/2019
Call it a stick, or don’t call a stick. – Speak! Speak! Hogen Sensei explores the interplay between the relative and absolute, suffering inherent in our attachment to the limited conceptions of our self and reality, and learning to trust the immediate completeness of our moment-to-moment experience.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Blue Cliff Record, Case #73
Zen Center of New York City, 1/20/2019
Hogen Sensei explores the difficulty of clarifying the dharma in language and describes the power of the koan tradition to express the inexpressible.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Center of New York City, 1/13/2019
As we find ourselves in the new year, Hogen calls upon poet W. S. Merwin to investigate our asking ourselves the deeper questions. What does it mean to be still? What makes our practice real? How can we fully inhabit our own experience? How do we create a good day?
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Center of New York City, 1/12/2019
In this talk, Hogen Sensei cites Leonard Cohen and Shantideva in discussing the six paramitas, the virtues cultivated by the aspiring bodhisattva.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Center of New York City, 11/4/2018
Hogen Sensei teaches on impermanence , how nothing ever goes exactly according to plan, and how we must all eventually face ourselves.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
The Gateless Gate, Case #22
Zen Center of New York City, 11/3/2018
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Center of New York City, 10/31/2018
Hogen Sensei leads the last of three group study sessions on the Jataka Tales, legends about the previous lives of the Buddha found in the Pali Canon. Here he takes up the story of Kassapa, an ascetic whose almost abandons his commitment to non-harming in order to marry the king’s beautiful daughter, Candavati. The discussion focuses on gender, desire, objectification, and what it means to study texts from cultural contexts different than our own.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Center of New York City, 10/21/2018
In this talk, given on the occassion of a fusatsu ceremony, Hogen Sensei addresses the vows we renew, and what it means to take them up. The bodhisattva precepts, he points out, are at the heart of Zen practice and our common understanding of how to live an awakened life.