Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks

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. ★

This Heart is Mirrored Everywhere- Jogen Sensei

By stepping out and seeing the noisy marketplace of endless consumption and self-fixation, we align with a source that never loses its luster. Living from this allows us

The World Lies To Us- Jogen Sensei

This talk emphasizes that by alertly seeing through life's illusions—rather than chasing temporary worldly comforts or getting caught in abstract spiritual concepts—we st

Serenity Is a Stance Not a State- Jogen Sensei

When you sit and look for the self you never find it — just thoughts, feelings, space and energy — and this talk traces how that discovery becomes practical liberation, h

Looking for Something Dependable - Hogen Roshi

The Buddha said he kept looking for real stability and kept reaching for things that couldn't provide it — and this talk uses a dying biohacker, the nature of vow, and th

Joyful Mind, Grandmother Mind, Magnanimous Mind: Dogen's Three Hearts of Practice - Bansho Sensei

Drawing on Dogen's instructions for the monastery cook, this talk unpacks three orientations that Dogen considered essential to wholeheartedly engaging the way — the happ

This Is Not Mine- Not-Self and Thoughts That Moved In Without Paying Rent- Bansho Sensei

Walking through the Buddha's discourse on the five aggregates — form, feeling, perception, thought, consciousness — this sesshin talk asks a deceptively simple question:

Right Now It's Like This: Practicing Honestly with Heat, Sweat, and a Wandering Mind- Bansho Sensei

Borrowing Ajahn Sumedho's simple phrase as its anchor, this sesshin talk invites practitioners to stop arguing with their experience — the drowsiness, the pain, the restl

The Diamond Sutra, a Tea Lady, and the Freedom of Not Knowing - Zen Teacher Jomon

The Diamond Sutra says there is no such thing as x, it is only called x — and this talk traces what that teaching looks like when it stops being a concept and starts bein