Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Thursday 04/28/2022
The Buddha pointed to our desires as the origin of our suffering. But how do we understand desire? Does having wants guarantee us pain? In this talk, Hogen Sensei discusses the nature of desire and investigates the difference between having attachments and liking certain things. How can we determine if we are bound by desire? And how do we hold the things in life we do like?
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Sunday 04/03/2022
This Dharma Encounter with Hogen Sensei took place at the conclusion of the March Founding Sesshin. What does it mean to take refuge in the Buddha? What does it mean to take refuge and what exactly are we taking refuge in? Hogen Sensei takes this question up with Ango participants in a lively discussion.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Friday Evening 04/01/2022
Dharma Talk during the Founder’s Sesshin 2022 Fusatsu Ceremony
The tenth Buddhist Precept is to “Experience the intimacy of things; Do not defile the Three Treasures.” How do we understand and apply this Precept? In this talk, Hogen Sensei takes up this profound teaching, imploring us to look closely at our practice and our lives.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Wednesday 03/30/2022
From Master Dogen’s 300 Koan Shobogenzo (True Dharma Eye), Case 122 – Fayan’s Fire God
As practitioners of the Dharma, are we truly on the edge of our practice? Is peace and calm an indicator that we can rest in our accomplishment? Or is this just a transitory experience and there is more to be seen? When we reside firmly in our knowledge and don’t step forth to continue inquiring more deeply, what could we be missing?
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Thursday 11/18/2021
From The Blue Cliff Record, Case 86 – Everyone Has Their Own Light
Hogen Sensei asks us: “how can we talk about enlightenment when there is nothing to understand about enlightenment?”. We are inherently enlightened but our conditioning, karma and unskillful ways prevent us seeing it. We should remember that we all have own light and that zazen is the process for cultivating this light.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Sunday 10/24/2021
Dharma Encounter at the Conclusion of the Harvest Moon Sesshin
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Thursday 10/21/2021
From the poetry of David Whyte
Hogen Sensei asks us to consider the questions – we all have – that, As David Whyte puts it, “can make or unmake a life.” What are they? How do we respond? Can we let them be, let them stay with us? Can we live with them without grasping for answers?
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Friday 09/24/2021
The Book of Equanimity, Case 18 – Zhaozhou’s “Dog”
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zoom Broadcast, Thursday Evening 07/22/2021
True Dharma Eye, Case 123 – Mayu’s “Nature of the Wind”
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zoom Broadcast, Thursday 06/24/2021
Teachings from Eihei Dogen, William Shakespeare and Nina Simone
How do we understand the ceaseless change which is our life? Hogen Sensei delves into this question with quotes from Dogen’s “Continuous Practice” and “Being Time” with Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, and Nina Simone’s “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?”.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zoom Broadcast, 5/23/2021
Mumonkan (Gateless Gate) – Case 23: Think Neither Good Nor Evil
Hogen Sensei uses this well-known interaction between Hui Neng, the Sixth Ancestor, and Monk Ming to delve deeply into the meaning of faith. He asks us: When we speak of faith in our practice, the Dharma, what do we mean? Faith in what? Can faith be taken? Can it be given to another?
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Broadcasted via zoom, 3/25/2021
The Blue Cliff Record, case 59: Zhaozhou’s “Why not Quote it Fully?”
Hogen Sensei takes up this koan from the Blue Cliff Record along with related lines from the Faith Mind Poem, and offers another version: “The real way is not difficult, it only abhors choice and attachment”, and asks: Where is the path of freedom in the midst of the choices we make everyday?
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Broadcasted from Hogen Sensei’s home in Pennsylvania, 2/14/2021
The True Dharma Eye, case 248
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Broadcasted from Hogen Sensei’s home in Pennsylvania, 12/28/2020
Invoking the beloved Mountains and River Sutra Hogen Sensei quotes “These mountains and rivers of the present are the actualization of the word of the ancient Buddhas. Each, abiding in its own dharma state, completely fulfills its virtues. Because they are the self before the germination of any subtle sign, they are liberated in their actualization.” (Link) With this profound pointing, Hogen invites us to see through our fabricated ideas, beyond self and other.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Broadcasted from Hogen Sensei’s home in Pennsylvania, 11/18/2020
Case 47 from Dogen’s 300 koan Shobogenzo, Guishan’s “Do Not Betray Others”:
One day after sitting Guishan pointed at the straw sandals and said to Yangshan, “All hours of the day, we receive people’s support. Don’t betray them.” Yangshan said, “Long ago in Sudatta’s garden, the Buddha expounded just this.” Guishan said, “That’s not enough. Say more.” Yangshan said, “When it is cold, to wear socks for others is not prohibited.”
In today’s talk, Hogen sensei invites us to reflect on the nature of self and other. When giving, who is it that is receiving, and who is it that is giving? Hogen reminds us to be wary of dualistic thinking. We might also ask what is being given when nothing is physically exchanged? In other words, what is exchanged when we are in a state of ignorance? Or what is exchanged when we practice wholeheartedly? Hogen draws upon modern studies published in the Scientific Journal to point to the teachings of the old Zen Masters, that we are deeply interconnected. Showing us that the self does not end at the tip of our nose.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Broadcasted from Hogen Sensei’s home in Pennsylvania, 10/23/2020
Rarely do we, as a society, intimately contemplate death. Even the minority of those seeking to uncover the nature of death may be doing so superficially. Hogen speaks of a renowned philosopher, who wrote many prized works on death. Yet in his final days, sensing the reality of life and death, he proclaimed them all worthless! Fortunately for Zen students, we don’t have to wait for our lives to end. We can practice and become intimate with life and death. Pulling from one of America’s great contemporary poets, Hogen Sensei supports and inspires our own reflection:
“There are questions that I no longer ask
and others that I have not asked for a long time
that I return to and dust off and discover
that I’m smiling and the question
has always been me and that it is
no question at all but that it means
different things at the same time
yes I am old now and I am the child
I remember what are called the old days and there is
no one to ask how they became the old days
and if I ask myself there is no answer
so this is old and what I have become
and the answer is something I would come to
later when I was old but this morning
is not old and I am the morning
in which the autumn leaves have no question
as the breeze passes through them and is gone” by W.S. Merwin
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi & Ron Hogen Green, Sensei & Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei
Zoom, 9/5/2020
Intention, Aspiration and Vow are taken up by three teachers of the Mountains & Rivers Order in open discussion with the on-line sangha.
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.”
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery – Broadcasted from Hogen Sensei’s home in Pennsylvania 04/19/2020
From the Eihei Koroku
Please note that there are a few words in this recording that are not clear due to technical difficulties.
From his home in rural Pennsylvania, Hogen Sensei offers this talk on the path of realization as this world at this time—a Buddha field manifesting wisdom and wholeness of all phenomenon—which is our world, the world of things and people, where nothing seems certain. We take refuge in the three treasures of Buddha, dharma and sangha especially by looking deeply within ourselves, at our honest feelings, and our tenderness and fears. “Emotions can also become refuges,” he says, by returning to our roots, our willingness to witness difficulty, to practice our feelings and not neglect the simple joys and surprise in day to day life.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Center of New York City, 03/08/2020
Exploring the study text for the 2020 Spring Ango, Dogen’s Mountains and Rivers Sutra, Hogen opens the Spring Ango at the Zen Center of New York City, reviewing the meaning and history of Ango, a three-month period of intensive training and dedication to practice. Ango helps us realize that our practice is about aspiration, not accomplishment. We become more alive through increased intimacy with the teaching. Ango is one answer to the question, “What are you going to do about it?” It invites us to turn both inwards with concentration to our practice, and outwards with compassion to the world outside the Monastery.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Sunday 05/15/2022
From the Book of Serenity, Case 18 – Zhaozhou’s Dog
If buddha nature is ineffable, if it has no characteristics, then how do we turn towards it? We want to direct our attention towards it so we can examine it and realize it. But it doesn’t exist. It doesn’t have a form. So how do we study that which is our true self, our true nature? Shugen Roshi takes up these questions using the well known koan “Does a dog have buddha nature?”
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Sunday 05/08/2022
From Master Wu-men’s Gateless Gate, Case 35 – Ch’ien and Her Soul Are Separated
How do we remain undivided amidst the divisive forces within and around us? And where can we truly go to seek wholeness in our lives? In this talk, Shugen Roshi explores the experience of division and wholeness, and how Zen practice brings us closer to the heart of the matter.
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei
Zen Center of New York City, Fire Lotus Temple, Sunday 05/08/2022
How do we practice fearlessness in the midst of fear? In this talk, Hojin Sensei invokes the dragon – a being that is often referenced in the Zen tradition as an embodiment of our enlightened nature. It is through turning around and facing the dragon with direct, kind awareness, she says, that we develop our capacity for fearlessness.
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Sunday 05/01/2022
This Dharma Encounter with Hojin Sensei took place at the conclusion of the Apple Blossom Sesshin. What are our reasons for coming to the Dharma? Is our practice helping to answer those questions? And how do we know that our practice is working? Hojin Sensei takes these questions up with Ango participants in a lively discussion.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Saturday 04/30/2022
From The Blue Cliff Record, Case 87 – Medicine and Disease Subdue Each Other
Why do certain afflictions arise for us? Are we simply victims of our karma, of causes and conditions? Or might our hardships be helping us cultivate something that we need? In this talk, Shugen Roshi illuminates how it is through our suffering that we find our path to liberation and that our teachers are often closer than we think.
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Friday Evening 04/29/2022
Dharma Talk during the Apple Blossom Sesshin 2022 Fusatsu Ceremony
Not Creating Evil, Practicing Good, and Actualizing Good For Others — these are The Three Pure Bodhisattva Precepts. But what does it mean to truly take up these vows in our own lives? In this talk, Hojin Sensei explores the meaning of each precept and how they can guide us in our practice.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Thursday 04/28/2022
The Buddha pointed to our desires as the origin of our suffering. But how do we understand desire? Does having wants guarantee us pain? In this talk, Hogen Sensei discusses the nature of desire and investigates the difference between having attachments and liking certain things. How can we determine if we are bound by desire? And how do we hold the things in life we do like?
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Wednesday 04/27/2022
Why are we drawn to a retreat where silence is practiced? And why did the Buddha refer to this practice as “Noble Silence”? In this talk, Hojin Sensei opens the April Apple Blossom Sesshin by inquiring into the first sesshin precaution–to maintain inner and outer silence–and explores what silence and stillness have to offer us.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Sunday 04/24/2022
Why are the Bodhisattva Vows so important in Buddhist Practice? Where do they come from and why are they these particular four–to save all sentient beings, to put an end to desires, to master the dharma, and to attain the Buddha Way? In this talk, Shugen Roshi explores the meaning of each vow and illustrates what they can teach us about our true nature.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi
Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Sunday 04/17/2022
Shugen Roshi officiates the Spring Ango Jukai ceremony at Zen Mountain Monastery in which six students receive the sixteen Buddhist precepts. Rennin, Seisan, Jiho, Yugaku, Shindo & Onren have all been practicing as formal students and studying these moral and ethical teachings for a number of years. During the ceremony Shugen Roshi offers joyful encouragement to the recipients as they take up these living teachings, living vows.
Richard Rennin Hubbard (“Pure Patience”)
Michele Seisan Laura (“Peaceful Mountain”)
Mark Jiho Taylor (“To Set Free, Release the Self'”)
Tom Yugaku Caplan (“To Remember and Know Courage”)
Rebecca Shindo Kisch (“Trust in the Way”)
Daniel Onren Latorre (“True Kindness” / “Pure Gratitude”)
