Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks

The Shape of Karma - Jogen Salzberg, Sensei

Jogen explores karma as the ongoing relationship between our actions, habits, and experience, emphasizing that practice gives us freedom in how we respond to the results

Don't Expect Applause - Bansho Sensei

Threaded through this talk by Bansho Sensei is the tension between wanting recognition for helping others and the practice of "not expecting applause." It frames true gen

Give Life to Life - Hogen Roshi

Centered on the idea of "futuring" or craving, this talk by Hogen Roshi examines how the mind actively shapes an infinite, formless world into a narrow personal story thr

Slipping Beneath the Difficulty - Hogen Roshi

This talk by Hogen Roshi explores craving as the mind's habitual grasping — "I want, I want" — and how it quietly generates most of our dissatisfaction. It contrasts two

Avoiding Foolish Ways - Hogen Roshi

This talk by Hogen Roshi unpacks a traditional chant on "blessings" by redefining the word away from divine reward and toward human capacity. It centers on discernment —

A Whole Forest Within You - Kisei Sensei

Using poetry, koans, and personal story, this talk paints practice as a slow accumulation of intimacy with the world — with fear, with joy, with the earth itself. It clos

Remembering How to Come Home - Kisei Sensei

This talk Kisei explores practice as homecoming — returning to a natural ease we knew as children but lost through striving and adulthood. A folk tale and the Buddha's ow

Listen With Your Eyes - Kisei Sensei

This talk explores what it means to listen beyond the ears — to the earth, to silence, to a mind not bound by self and asks whether the boundary between "sentient" and "i

Creatively Companioning Distress- Jogen, Sensei

This talk explores the emotional and spiritual dimensions of caring for someone who is suffering, arguing that presence — flawed, tiring, and imperfect as it is — matters

Sipping From Many Flowers - Jogen Sensei

Reflecting on today's overwhelming availability of spiritual teachings from every tradition, this talk asks whether sampling freely across lineages creates confusion and

What the River Says: on Vocation and Calling- Hogen, Roshi

This talk explores vocation not as a career choice but as a calling that arises from deep within the heart. The speaker weaves in poetry from William Stafford, David Whyt

I'm a Thing! : How Craving Dreams Us Into Lumps- Hogen, Roshi

The Tanha Sutta's core teaching, Hogen explains, is that craving turns the fluid, ever-changing experience of being alive into a fixed identity — "I am this," "I am that"

The Weaver That Chokes the World: on Grasping Thoughts- Hogen, Roshi

This talk explores the observation that craving turns ordinary desire into compulsive thinking, creating a tangle of self-concepts — "I am a failure," "I am a success" —

What's the Hurry? - Bansho Sensei

This talk explores patience (kshanti), one of the six Paramitas in Mahayana Buddhism, as an essential practice in a culture built for instant gratification and constant p

Not Personal, Permanent, or Perfect: The Three Dharma Seals- Zen Teacher Jomon

This talk on reflects on the Five Remembrances — that we are of the nature to age, get sick, die, and be separated from loved ones — as a practice for living wisely rathe

Good in the Beginning, Good in the Middle, Good in the End -Zen Teacher Jomon

This talk explores how the ups and downs of a single sitting period mirror the larger arc of a retreat or an entire life of practice.   Drawing on the image of a snake in

Courage To Be Afraid- Working Our Edges- Jogen Sensei

Drawing on the eleventh-century yogini Machig Labdron's uncompromising slogans—confess your hidden faults, approach what repels you, help those you think you cannot help—

The Timeless in Direct Experience- Hogen Roshi

This talk is a teaching on the ageless, ever-present awareness beneath our changing thoughts and circumstances. Drawing on the Mangala Sutta, this talk explores how recog

Our Inseparability From The Natural World- Zen Teacher Jomon

Drawing from an annual outdoor meditation retreat , this talk explores how sitting in silence among deer, mosquitoes, and fallen apples can reveal our inseparability from

Making Peace with Your Inner Critic - Zen Teacher Jomon

This talk explores the inner critic as a habitual pattern of thought, emotion, and body sensation—not a fixed truth- as well as offering practices of self-compassion. ★