About this Talk

In this talk, Eko Jeff Kelley explores Dogen’s teaching on kind speech as part of bodhisattva practice, describing it as speech that arises from compassion and offers care rather than harm. The talk also reflects on the difficulty of moving beyond self-centered thinking and on the relationship between self and other in Buddhist practice.

The talk connects kind speech with the bodhisattva vow, the robe, and teachings from the Diamond Sutra and Dogen on acting without clinging to a fixed self. It also discusses the Lotus Sutra and Kuan Yin as a model of compassionate voice, ending with examples of imperfect everyday speech and the need to keep practicing.

About this Talk

In this talk, we examine Dogen’s teaching on beneficial action: helping others with compassion, without discrimination or expectation of reward. Koshin Cain connects this practice with sitting meditation, equal sincerity, and learning to respond attentively to both immediate and long-term needs while caring for oneself and others.

The talk also explores helping as an expression of interconnectedness, extending care beyond people to animals, plants, and the natural world.

About this Talk

This talk explores identity action as the interdependence of self and others, in which beings and things continually shape one another. Drawing on Dogen’s examples and a group paving-stone activity, Eko Jeff Kelley considers how openness and non-exclusion apply to the world, meditation, and difficult emotions.

The talk connects identity action with collective practice and the bodhisattva’s vow to serve others, concluding with ways to express it in everyday life through giving, kind speech, and beneficial action.

About this Talk

In this talk, Koshin Cain introduces Dogen’s teaching on the bodhisattva’s four methods of guidance: giving, kind speech, beneficial action, and identity action. The main focus is on giving, which is presented as a foundational practice rooted in non-greed and the willingness to offer without seeking reward or recognition.

The talk connects this understanding of giving to zazen and to Dogen’s idea of “leaving it alone,” meaning allowing things to be as he are rather than trying to control or improve everything. Several examples, including stories about Emperor Tai, a child offering sand to the Buddha, King Ashoka, and Ryokan, are used to illustrate how giving can take many forms in everyday life and relationships.

About this Talk

NOTE: A couple sections of this talk audio that’s less than ideal, but the other 95% is great. Don’t give up!

In this talk, Chon Mun Sunim explores don’t-know mind and together action, beginning with the koan of Baizhang’s test, in which Guishan kicks over a bottle rather than name it. He tells the story behind the koan: Guishan’s year alone on the mountain, the doubt that led him to give up, and the encounter with a tiger that stopped his thinking and turned him back. He uses it to show how the mind before thinking lets things unfold without being driven by our ideas.

He then turns to together action, the teaching his own teacher stressed constantly. He describes resisting it at first and coming to understand it only during his monastic training in Korea, where following the group left no room for self-concern. Drawing on the image of potatoes scrubbed clean against each other and a story about Gurdjieff, he suggests that friction with others in a practice community is not an obstacle but an opportunity to see our own limitations and set them down.

About this Talk

In this talk Anshin David Steel discusses sustaining Zen practice through the paramitas of patience and diligence, placing him within the broader Buddhist framework of the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, and the six paramitas of Mahayana tradition. He explains the idea of “crossing over” and describes the bodhisattva ideal of helping others as central to this teaching.

The talk focuses in detail on patience, including a personal example of waiting before acting, as well as the role of intuition in knowing when to pause and when to move. Anshin then gives guided instruction in standing meditation and qigong, covering posture, breathing, and a cosmic orbit practice.

The final section addresses diligence as steady effort in zazen and samu, using climbing examples to illustrate gradual skill-building. The talk ends with a poem by Mary Oliver about attention, prayer, and the use of one’s life.

About this Talk

In this talk, Koshin Cain introduces Hakuin’s Song of Zazen and its central teaching that all beings are by nature Buddha. He explains Hakuin’s role as a Rinzai Zen master and discusses how the text speaks to both monastic and lay practice.

Koshin focuses on zazen as a way of stopping habitual planning and thinking so that one can recognize the calm, open nature already present. He uses the image of water and ice to describe relaxation, flexibility, and meeting experience without fixation.

He also discusses Buddha nature as something to recognize in oneself before extending it to others, and says it remains present even in difficult emotional states. The talk closes with themes of acceptance, forgiveness, and the idea that realization happens in this very body and this very life.

About this Talk

In this talk, Eko Jeff Kelley reflects on how liking, disliking, and indifference shape experience, drawing on Buddhist teachings about the feelings aggregate and the three poisons. He discusses how the mind can become centered on comfort, gain, praise, and self-protection, and gives everyday examples of these reactions in practice and daily life.

He also explores the tension between comfort and liberation, asking whether joy in practice is attachment or something deeper. In the final part, he shares stories and personal observations to suggest that practice can help one meet fear, desire, and dislike without clinging, making room for a more open and tender way of being.

About this Talk

In this talk, Konjin Gaelyn Godwin speaks about Zen practice, the shared history of Zen centers in the West, and the role of compassion in the tradition. She introduces the Mahayana and the Lotus Sutra, and discusses Dogen Zenji’s training, her travels to China, and the importance of these teachings in her work.

A major focus is Kuan Yin as the bodhisattva of compassion, with her thousand arms and eyes presented as symbols of responsive help. Godwin also explains bodhicitta as the aspiration to awaken for the benefit of all beings, and emphasizes that the first wish to help others is especially important.

She closes by stressing the brevity of life and the need to use it well. She points to Kuan Yin as a model of compassion and creativity, and mentions the Bodhisattva Never Despise as an example of seeing Buddha nature in everyone.

About this Talk

In this talk, Koshin Cain reflects on anger through his training at Mount Baldy Zen Center and how Zen practice repeatedly brought him face to face with frustration, difficult conditions, and strong emotions. He distinguishes anger from related states such as irritation, resentment, and rage, and describes it as a response to perceived unfairness or crossed boundaries.

Cain argues that anger should not simply be eliminated, but understood as a signal that something matters or that change may be needed. He draws on Zen and Buddhist texts to discuss ways of working with anger, including widening perspective, noticing underlying sadness or loss, and recognizing that people are larger than his anger.