Zen Mind

Sitting Like a Buddha

Where are you located in your body? Most of us, without ever having chosen it, sense ourselves somewhere behind the eyes. Zazen instructions typically bundle two separabl

Studying the Mind Through the Senses (Part 3)

One week after the Open Sky weekend, this talk was given at the Boulder Zen Center and turns that earlier study of the senses toward a question asked after morning medita

Studying the Mind Through the Senses (Part 2)

Given outdoors during our recent Open Sky Practice, this talk takes up the Yogācāra teaching of the eight consciousnesses, which splits mind into three to address self, c

Studying the Mind Through the Senses (Part 1)

Given outdoors during our recent Open Sky Practice, this talk takes up the Buddhist approach to the senses. Where we usually count five, Buddhism counts six, treating min

Is Zen Buddhist Daoism?

Zen is an amalgamation of Buddhism and Daoism. But which way around: is it a Buddhism with a Daoist inflection, or a Daoism reinventing itself through a Buddhist lens? Th

Even This Belongs

To be alive is to have problems. While having problems is unpleasant, the deeper difficulty, this talk proposes, is not the problems themselves but the resistance we brin

What You Already Want (On the Precepts)

This talk was given the day before a Bodhisattva Precepts Ceremony (Jukai) for five members of the Boulder Zen Center sangha. After describing the ceremony's lineage

Just Now is Enough

This talk was given at a One-Day Sitting at the Boulder Zen Center in partnership with Dharma Gates, an organization dedicated to opening pathways into formal meditation

How Practice Takes Shape (The Role of Vow)

This talk was given during a zazen intensive at the Boulder Zen Center. The talk holds a question often left unasked: what is the role of vow in Zen practice? It opens wi

Make Your Whole Life the Garden

This talk is about how aliveness wants to unfold through our life process. It opens with the question of what it means to find an activity that expresses one's alive

This Mind Here Now is Buddha

This talk was offered on Day 3 of the Spring Sesshin at the Boulder Zen Center, continuing the investigation of mind begun the previous day (published two weeks ago). The

The Mind is Mountains, Rivers, and the Earth

This talk was offered on Day 2 of the Spring Sesshin at the Boulder Zen Center. It takes up a classic koan exchange: “What is the wondrous clear mind?” – “Mountains, rive

Resonance - In Touch with the Root of Compassion

This talk is from the Practice Course "Developing Embodiment," originally offered live at the Boulder Zen Center and now available as a self-paced course. It challenges a

Completing the Past in the Present

Zazen reveals how much of our mental struggle is bound up with time. The future presses in as plans, goals, and ideals of what we or the world should become. The past ret

Noticing with Subtlety

This talk was given as a practice encouragement before entering the silence of a Weekend Sitting at the Boulder Zen Center. It highlights aspects of zazen relevant for an

Timelessness, Change, and Everyday Life

This talk was given as an introduction to a multi-week study of Dogen’s essay Being-Time (Uji) during the Boulder Zen Center Everyday Bodhisattva Practice Period. It does

Staying in the Zone of Nourishment

This talk was given at the opening of the 7th 90-day Everyday Bodhisattva Practice Period at the Boulder Zen Center, as participants were clarifying guiding intentions fo

Receiving and Unfolding (On Right Intention)

At the turn of the year, we often pause to reflect, set intentions, and imagine a better version of ourselves ahead. Yet often we experience a stubborn gap between those

What Can Be Relied On When Everything Changes

This talk explores impermanence as an intimate fact of lived experience, in contrast to our desire for permanence and stability. Along with conditionality and no-self, im

Freedom Within Limitations - Sesshin Day 3

This talk was given on day 3 of a 7-day sesshin at the Boulder Zen Center. It continues an exploration of three modes of attention: focus, field, and full function. Atten