Zen Mind

This episode was first published in February 2022. We are republishing this episode because in it, Zenki Roshi addresses the most common questions asked by beginners and the issue of discomfort sometimes experienced by practitioners of all levels during zazen.
 
What exactly are we doing in zazen meditation? What kind of effort is necessary? This talk addresses the shift we are inviting when we sit still, and it explores three zazen instructions and how they are interrelated: (1) just sit, (2) think not-thinking, and (3) counting the breath.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk is the first of seven Sesshin talks. (A Sesshin is a 7-day Zen meditation intensive.) It starts with the question, 'What does it mean to love?' The word 'love' carries all kind of baggage. So much so that in American Zen it doesn't seem to have a whole lot of currency. Yet, we're all longing for the spiritual dimension of love. This wide-ranging talk explores the connections between love and unconditional acceptance, saying yes to life, sweetness, straightforwardness, meaning, self-improvement, buddha, big mind, warm-heartedness—and how all of that can only be practiced and embodied in this very moment now.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
 

This talk was given as part of the closing ceremony of the 3-month Everyday Zen Practice Period. At the end of retreats and periods of intensified practice, many practitioners wonder how they can carry the renewed and invigorated sense of practice into their everyday lives. The answer is simple but not easy to implement: continue to stay fully present in each situation, each action, each gesture. The talk connects this challenge to the wisdom of Dogen's Genjo Koan, which was discussed throughout the Practice Period.

We are excited to announce the self-paced course on Dogen’s Genjo Koan is live! There you can find all the rest of the dharma talks in this Genjo Koan series. The course helps make Dogen’s text more accessible and bring his teachings into our everyday lives. Learn more here.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk concludes the line-by-line commentary on the Genjo Koan. Dogen has given us a clear (and maybe disappointing) vision of practice. We are never done with our practice. It's not like we are practicing in order to reach enlightenment, and once we have realized it, we're good. Instead, we are challenged to express enlightenment through our practice — one moment and one action at a time. From this emerges a revised understanding of Buddha-nature. Buddha-nature is not something we HAVE—like a jewel at the core of every being that can be uncovered by removing endless layers of dirt (afflictions, bad habits, mindless distractions). And we don't become a "Buddha-person" if we just practice diligently and hard enough. Rather, we realize the Buddha-nature we always already ARE by continuously enacting "Buddha-moments" of non-reactivity and response-ability.

We are excited to announce the self-paced course on Dogen’s Genjo Koan is live! There you can find all the rest of the dharma talks in this Genjo Koan series. The course helps make Dogen’s text more accessible and bring his teachings into our everyday lives. Learn more here.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk is the eighth in the series on Dogen's Genjo Koan. Dogen views realization not as an experience of oneness or a discovery of the ground of being but as an endless and groundless path of engaging the mystery and challenge of the present moment. In comparing our human life on this earth to the life of a bird in the sky and a fish in the ocean, he shows that each person in each moment is the expression of the totality of interdependent being (the 10,000 dharmas). This expression takes place here-now, and it is from this here-now that our path unfolds. This expression, however, is not passive, it requires our full attention and engagement—one moment and one dharma at a time.

We are excited to announce the self-paced course on Dogen’s Genjo Koan is live! There you can find all the rest of the dharma talks in this Genjo Koan series. The course helps make Dogen’s text more accessible and bring his teachings into our everyday lives. Learn more here.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk is the second in the series on Dogen's Genjo Koan. It is a close reading of the first four sentences. First, it provides an understanding of dharmas as momentary experiential units. Then it discusses Dogen's seemingly contradictory presentation of the dharma (the teaching of liberation) in light of the classic path of awakening, the teaching of emptiness, and an approach that doesn't get caught in one or the other. The talk ends with a threefold reading of the famous line, "In attachment flowers fall, and in aversion weeds spread." One important lesson is that Zen doesn't aim at transcending our humanity but at arriving more fully in it.

We are excited to announce the self-paced course on Dogen’s Genjo Koan is live! There you can find all the rest of the dharma talks in this Genjo Koan series. The course helps make Dogen’s text more accessible and bring his teachings into our everyday lives. Learn more here.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk kicks off a lecture series on Dogen's most celebrated writing, the Genjo Koan. It explores the meaning of the title phrase, which informs the entire text. GEN means to appear, JO means to complete. KO can be understood as the universal, while AN points to what is particular and unique. So GENJO KOAN means: to complete what appears as simultaneously universal and unique. As a practice, the Genjo Koan asks us to realize in our everyday actions how each appearance is an expression of the two truths: always already complete (an emergent product of the interdependent whole of existence) and in need of completing (a moment that challenges us to take the next appropriate step).

We are excited to announce the self-paced course on Dogen’s Genjo Koan is live! There you can find all the rest of the dharma talks in this Genjo Koan series. The course helps make Dogen’s text more accessible and bring his teachings into our everyday lives. Learn more here.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk was given as an opening talk for the 2024 Boulder Zen Center - Everyday Zen Practice Period (Jan 20 - April 13). It discusses the concept and tradition of 'Three-Month Practice Periods' and explores how to go beyond the value judgments implicit in the Lay/Monastic distinction. At the root of all transformative practice is the sincere, committed search for an appropriate way of life. This is the Bodhisattva Way. However, there is no universal recipe; what's truly appropriate is unique to each practitioner. Therefore, we must each find our own way. Rather than adopting a fixed pattern of practice, we must commit to a process that adjusts to observations and feedback we receive along the way.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk explores how in times of crisis we can feel shaken by an experiences of groundlessness, and how we try to maintain and hold onto a sense of self as a defense against such groundlessness. We also employ language and understanding for that purpose of illusory grounding. Zen is not about perfecting our sense of self or our conceptual understanding; it is a practice of continuous opening to change and disturbance. The world is not a constellation of separate things. The many things are one inter-activity. This interactive complexity shows up in our bodyminds as an experiential, felt 'implexity.' We need the practice of continuous opening to be intimate with and participate in this implexity to take appropriate action and lead lives that feel true.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt considered the "capacity to begin anew" the essence of being human. This talk, given on the day before New Year's Eve, weaves our longing for new beginnings together with Buddhist notions of continuous birth and beginner's mind, and with practices of forgetting and forgiving. The talk ends with a reflection of how renewed intentions, purpose, and meaning can appear in our lives when we forget preconceived ideas and learn to attend to those aspects of our lived contexts that call on us to respond.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk is a wide-ranging exploration of seemingly disparate topics such as 'a life lived authentically," subjectivity vs. objectivity, truth, spiritual awakening, transcendence, and the postmodern condition. It starts with a statement by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, "When you become you, Zen becomes Zen. When you are you, you see things as they are, and you become one with your surroundings." It explores notions of small self vs. True Self, conceptual thought vs. pure awareness, contents of mind vs. field of mind. Finally, it proposes that it is the "bodily felt sense of a situation" that guides us in carrying a situation forward—step by step—in a way that is non-manufactured and non-arbitrary and that could be called "authentic." This non-arbitrariness is rooted in the interrelatedness (undivided activity) of all things and points a way out of the dreadful aspects of the postmodern condition.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Please consider donating to our annual fundraiser.

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk was given as part of a weekend zazen intensive. Based on the opening paragraphs of Dogen's fascicle 'Zenki' (Undivided Activity), the talk explores the Buddhist views of interdependence and field of mind and gives pointers for how to verify them in one's own experience.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Please consider donating to our annual fundraiser.

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

Given during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, this talk explores the experience and practice of gratitude. Gratitude is the appreciation of that which nourishes and sustains us. Bowing is an expression of such gratitude. We can practice bowing to our parents and ancestors acknowledging the gift of life that has come to us through them. As we bow to the Buddha, we bow to the matrix of interdependence that brings forth this very moment. Gratitude is a gateway to the joy of being alive for no other reason than being alive. As we practice appreciating how we are supported by breath, earth, family, friends, teachers, culture, society, and the whole web of life, we can explore whether we can begin to include even our own suffering in the widening circle of gratitude.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Please consider donating to our annual fundraiser.

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk introduces the 16 Bodhisattva Precepts ahead of an annual Precepts Initiation Ceremony at Boulder Zen Center. It presents the precepts as a pragmatic approach to practicing an ethical life that avoids the extremes of universalism and relativism. The precepts can be understood and practiced on three levels: (1) guarding against self-centeredness, (2) balancing the needs of self and other, and (3) realizing intimacy.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Please consider donating to our annual fundraiser.

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk explores how to make use of the turning phrase "No inside, no outside." A turning phrase is a verbal expression that can transform our sense of self and being in the world. The phrase is held in mind as an antidote to culturally or personally ingrained views. When we investigate common sense distinctions such as internal/external and self/other, we come face to face with our tendency to objectify what is perceived to be outside and the resulting sense of alienation. The talk provides embodied practices for entering a space of intimacy so that sight and sounds as well as thoughts and feelings can be perceived as appearing in the same undivided space.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Please consider donating to our annual fundraiser.

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk is about one of the most common questions among practitioners — "How do I bring practice into my everyday life?" The answer is simple but the practice is not easy — "Stay present.” It starts out with an example that presents anxiety and worrying as a habit that is rooted in a defense against anxiety. Physical, emotional, and mental behaviors can all become habits with addictive qualities when they are employed to mask or medicate disturbing feelings for the short-term reward of feeling distracted or a little bit better. But the price can be minor or major harm in our daily life. The talk suggests to intentionally extend the practice of "being present" into the very fabric of our most dysfunctional habits.

In the talk, Zenki Roshi refers to and recommends the following book on habit change that combines neuroscience, the psychology of reward-based learning, and mindfulness practice.

Judson Brewer: Unwinding Anxiety, New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind

The book is about more than anxiety and gives practice suggestions to deal with all kinds of addictions and harmful habits.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Please consider donating to our annual fundraiser.

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk was given as an introduction to a Weekend Seminar titled "An Appropriate Response," which is a well-known Zen phrase Master Yunmen gave as an answer to a question about the teachings the Buddha offered over the course of his lifetime. The talk explores how Yunmen could have answered by explaining Buddhism through its main views, its core practices, or its expected fruits. Instead, Yunmen bypasses all forms of explanation and points us directly to this very moment. How are you responding to the situation here now? How is this responding appropriate or inappropriate?

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Learn more about our upcoming course, Compassionate Action.

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This bonus episode is our first Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Zenki Roshi. Each month, Zenki Roshi will answer 3 questions that have been submitted by our listeners. You may submit your questions via email at [email protected].

Future AMA episodes will be published as a part of our Premium Podcast. If you would like to support the podcast and gain access to these monthly AMA episodes, as well as recordings of the Q&A sessions that follow each of the dharma talks and the talks and practice instructions given at intensives such as Weekend Sittings and 7-day Sesshins, please consider becoming a premium subscriber. You can check it out here: https://zenmind.supercast.com. Boulder Zen Center Members are automatically eligible for premium access.

Traditional Buddhism doesn't explicitly address the topic of meaning. But for us contemporary Westerners, meaning is an important topic. Living a meaningful life includes such things as purpose, values, ethics, and the significance of life events. An important insight is that meaning is not be found within the "self," which from a Buddhist point of view doesn't exist in an individualized, permanent fashion. Rather meaning emerges from moment to moment in the interaction between you and your circumstances as a response to what is asked of you by the 10,000 things. A fruitful way to address the topic of meaning within a Buddhist worldview is to see it as a Middle Path between nihilism (nothing matters; everything is only subjectively constructed) and eternalism (meaning is inherent, objective, and guaranteed by God or some kind of pop-spiritual oneness). In other words, meaning emerges from a dance that doesn’t get fixated on inherent meaningfulness nor ubiquitous meaninglessness.

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Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk explores birth and death as a practice of moment-to-moment change—in addition to birth and death as biological events. While it appears situations come and go and beings are born and die, things ultimately don't come into and go out of existence. Instead, everything is a continually changing expression of what Dogen calls "undivided activity"—everything-all-at-once coming together and manifesting as this moment. Our practice is to stop defending against the groundlessness of this here-now-presence and to entrust ourselves to being the always-changing form that expresses it.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Please consider donating to our annual fundraiser.

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk continues the exploration of everyday life practice as a dance of form and emptiness. The focus is on the contradiction yet undividedness of order and chaos in work activities (such as sweeping), in the mind (as clarity and discursiveness), and in how we organize time (schedule and spontaneity).

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Please consider donating to our annual fundraiser.

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

What if we stopped trying to dispel disturbance, confusion, and crisis from our experience and, instead, made use of these unwanted mind states as gates to appreciating our lives as a continual dance of form (fixations) and emptiness (radical openness)? This talk provides an initial conceptual understanding of emptiness as change, interdependence, and non-self. As always, intellectual study is not enough. So how can we use everyday circumstances—such as having opinions, going through a crisis, being creative, or having one's expectations disappointed—to realize freedom? Moment by moment, our challenge is to accept life as a process that can be lived without hope or fear of a permanent direction.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Please consider donating to our annual fundraiser.

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk was given as the public portion of a Weekend Workshop, during which a number of Boulder Zen Center practitioners came together to prepare for a Bodhisattva Precepts Initiation Ceremony. The Bodhisattva precepts are a practice of investigating one's ethical conduct based on the principle of doing no harm. In the midst of our everyday activity, what does it mean to vow to do no harm? And what is the relationship between our meditation practice and our commitment to ethical conduct?

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Please consider donating to our annual fundraiser.

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk explores the relevance of a practice and culture of transformation in the face of an ecological crisis that will more likely than not lead to a severe degradation of living conditions, especially for future generations. How will we respond pragmatically, compassionately, and responsibly to this crisis? And how will we maintain self-respect and dignity in the midst of our actions? The talk highlights the pivotal importance of practicing and realizing what Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen in Japan, calls "being constantly intimate with the field of mind." The practice of intimacy with the field of mind holds the potential for developing a number of mental resources that will probably become crucial in the future: unconditional joy of aliveness, the ability to be satisfied with less, resilience in the face of pain and adversity, a sense of connection and care with all beings, and the clarity of mind to do what's right independent of outcomes and any hope for success. Another crucial mental virtue will be self-compassion as we explore the limitations and inertia of our own minds and the societies we live in.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Please consider donating to our annual fundraiser.

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

The freedom we can realize through Zen practice (or any existentially honest spiritual practice) manifests not so much through THE CONTENT of our experience but through HOW WE RELATE to our experience. This HOW is a fundamental attitude—an attitude that expresses itself throughout our lives. This talk uses Master Yunmen's teaching phrase" Every Day is a Good Day" as well as a couple of expressions by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi to explore this fundamental attitude. Finally, the talk asks how zazen (or meditation in general) is a practice and expression of this attitude.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Please consider donating to our annual fundraiser.

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk explores the distinction between two perspectives on our human existence: aliveness and life. Aliveness is this here-now moment unfolding as ever-changing sensorial contents within a field of mind. Our life, in contrast, can be understood as the result of a weaving of past and future into a life story. The unsatisfactory nature of our life presents us with the question and task of how to give aliveness to our life. In other words, how can we unfold our life from the perspective of aliveness? This also brings up the question of what makes our lives meaningful or meaningless.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Please consider donating to our annual fundraiser.

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

The ability to deal with our manifold problems is rooted in the craft of being present with what is happening in our life. What is the importance of cultivating mindfulness of the body (bodyfulness) in this? This talk explores the fruits of learning to locate ourselves in and through the body: (1) transforming the NOW of the present moment into a HERE that covers the whole of the sphere of experience; (2) deepening the ability to sustain concentration (samadhi); (3) developing the body as the medium of true compassion; (4) finding joy in being alive for no other reason than being alive; and (5) establishing stability and fearlessness in the midst of groundlessness.


Welcome to Zen Mind!

Please consider donating to our annual fundraiser.

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk introduces some of the main themes of Zenki Roshi’s book “The Path of Aliveness.” It was given to an audience largely new to Buddhism at the Aspen Chapel. At the core of all Buddhist practice is recognizing suffering (our desire for life to be other than it is) and committing to a path of liberation (allowing our experience to be exactly what it is). The talk reframes our deep wish to be happy and recommends four simple but profound practices: returning to one's immediate experience, becoming bodyful, committing to kindness, and resting in presence. Finally, it asks how all of this applies to being in relationship and what "loving thy neighbor as thyself" might mean from a Buddhist point of view.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Learn more about our upcoming Weekend Seminar, An Appropriate Response — The Essence of the Buddhist Path. Available online and in person.

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

Zen practice can be thought of as a craft of opening our minds to complexity—to the complexity of our lived lives that cannot be conclusively grasped by our thinking minds. It is common to feel overwhelmed by complexity and frustrated that it cannot be reduced to black-and-white concepts. This talk continues the discussion of the teaching of the Five Skandhas (see March 8, "Empty of Separate Self"). By becoming familiar with the non-thinking experiential domains of perception and feeling, a new way of living with and from complexity can emerge. This is called wisdom.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

Learn more about our upcoming Weekend Seminar, An Appropriate Response — The Essence of the Buddhist Path. Available online and in person.

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom, and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk was given at the beginning of a weekend intensive. It provides a framework for how to cultivate attentiveness—on an off the cushion. The fundamental mental posture in meditation and mindfulness practices is to allow one's experience to be exactly what it is at this very moment. However, to be able to be present to the present in this all-encompassing way, we need a path to cultivate our attentional skills.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Learn more about our upcoming Weekend Seminar, An Appropriate Response — The Essence of the Buddhist Path. Available online and in person.

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

The dis-ease with our existence often manifests as a lingering feeling that there is something wrong with us and/or the world. The first sentence of the Heart Sutra gives an instruction for how to liberate ourselves from this kind of suffering. It asks us to practice the realization that the five skandhas—the experiential domains of form, feeling, perception, conditioning, and consciousness—are empty of a permanent, independent self. When we empty these domains of our desire for permanence and separateness, they reveal themselves to be "full" of change and interdependence. This talk is about how to explore this shift in our meditation practice.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Learn more about our upcoming Weekend Seminar, An Appropriate Response — The Essence of the Buddhist Path. Available online and in person.

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk explores the relationship between zazen mind, awakening, and everyday activity. In Zen, we use bodily markers and shifts to create a sense of continuous practice. Essentially, this is about finding a way to maintain the presence of the FIELD of mind in the midst of the ever-changing CONTENTS of our lived life.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Learn more about our upcoming Weekend Seminar, An Appropriate Response — The Essence of the Buddhist Path. Available online and in person.

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

In Soto Zen practice we say, "Zazen is good for nothing." Or we say, "You should sit without any gaining idea?" There is a disturbing paradox here: We all start to practice because we want an answer to an existential question or a solution to a deep-seated problem, and yet the teaching tells us to just sit and allow our moment-to-moment experiencing to be exactly what it is—not expecting any improvement, not even enlightenment. This talk explores how this good-for-nothing approach to zazen helps us have confidence in our true nature. Rooted in this confidence, we can begin to treat our seemingly existential problems as practical issues that inevitably come with being alive as a human being.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

What if we (like Bodhidharma) refrain from answering the question ‘Who am I?’ with the concepts and categories our culture provides and expects? What if we allowed ourselves to exist outside of the culture—not functionally, but fundamentally? Instead of trying to define our identity, we can practice being intimate with the basic ingredients of our existential activity (attention, sensation, intention, and cognition) and learn to use and mix them differently. What does that have to do with becoming a buddha?

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

Around the transition from one year to the next, many people engage in the practice of year-end reflection and new-year resolutions. This talk, given on New Year's Eve, asks about the source from which intentions arise. What makes them stick or not stick? It explores the wisdom phrase 'If it's your intent, it's not pure intent," and asks about the role of the wider field, in which our individual lives are embedded. Finally, it looks at the role of hope and how different types of hope shape our relationship with the future differently.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Support our annual fundraiser by becoming a Boulder Zen Center Member or through a one-time donation! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk was given during a Weekend Meditation Intensive. It begins by exploring zazen as a way of noticing layers of inner bracing and discovering a willingness to soften, accept, and be intimate with experience as it is, not as we desire it to be.

Our modern culture of control conditions us to relate to the world more and more as a "point of aggression" (Hartmut Rosa's term). Zazen can help us to rediscover the world as a partner of resonance—and it is resonance that we truly long for, not control. Control makes resonance impossible.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Support our annual fundraiser by becoming a Boulder Zen Center Member or through a one-time donation! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, available in person or online.

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk relates the details of a particular koan story ("Don't try to control the 10,000 things") to the societal conditions of late modernity. Our culture has the means to bring more and more aspects of our daily lives under control and therefore implicitly, as well as explicitly, expects us to participate in that dynamic. Paradoxically, the more we live in a controlled world, the less alive we feel and the more we are prone to experience anxiety and depression. So what's the antidote? Deliberately give up the desire for control and cultivate the ability to resonate. This means to be willing to be vulnerable to the uncontrollable aspects of being alive!

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Support our annual fundraiser by becoming a Boulder Zen Center Member or through a one-time donation! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks! Check our website for the schedule and Zoom link.

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

This talk was given in October 2021 to kick-off the second 8-week practice course in the Foundational Zen Teachings Series called "Liberation from Suffering".

Generally speaking, we tend to interpret freedom from suffering as personal happiness (feeling good) and, on a societal level, as a world, in which big problems such as poverty, inequality, war, and the climate crisis are solved. Buddhism is more pessimistic, or shall we say realistic. It assumes that there will always be problems. Does this mean we don't care about improving our situation? Not at all. It means we need to learn to get the order right: If we first learn to not have a problem with having problems, we can then be better at solving them.

The talk presents a guided body scan that directs attention to the freedom of "unconditional aliveness" and makes suggestions for how to fold this freedom into our daily lives.

Support our annual fundraiser by becoming a Boulder Zen Center Member or through a one-time donation! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

Click here for information on the Foundational Zen Teachings course series.

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See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk was given in January 2021 to kick off an 8-week practice course called "Transformative Practice". It reflects on the nature of transformation and shows how it is grounded in what Zen calls the inmost request. The inmost request is what we truly want in life. It's not our calling, not our purpose; it's not about WHAT we are doing in our life but HOW we are doing it moment by moment. What we truly want is not exactly happiness, but to feel fully alive. While happiness is about feeling BETTER, aliveness is about FEELING better. Practicing meditation can strengthen this ability to be unconditionally open to our experience as it is at this very moment--whether we like it or not. It can help us access the joy of being alive for no other reason than being alive.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Click here for information on the Foundational Zen Teachings course series.

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!

Become a Boulder Zen Center Member! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk continues the inquiry into wisdom. It introduces the Five Dharmas (an ancient teaching from the Lankavatara Sutra) and makes it available as a practice for our everyday lives. In a first step, we need to understand how the human mind produces delusion through ordinary mental activities like sense perception, naming, discrimination, and story-telling. In other words, the mind creates a sensorial and conceptual map that it then mistakes for reality. Based on that understanding, we can then interrupt this process with "right knowledge" and develop a feeling for suchness, the ungraspable mystery of reality, in which each of us is an active participant.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Click here for information on the Foundational Zen Teachings course series.

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!

Become a Boulder Zen Center Member! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk was given as the opening talk to the third course in the Foundational Zen Teachings series. It presents wisdom as the ability to respond appropriately to the ever-changing circumstances of our lived situations. This orientation toward appropriateness requires us to shift from knowing (our accumulated concepts and habits) to not-knowing (a non-conceptual, non-habitual openness to how things present themselves in this very moment).

Welcome to Zen Mind!

There's still time to join the Oct 21–23 Weekend Seminar "Navigating Self and Non-Self".

Click here for information on the Foundational Zen Teachings course series.

THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!

Become a Boulder Zen Center Member! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on yogic embodiment.

This talk explores the importance of the body in mindfulness practice—not just as a target of attention but as a way to be attentive. Practicing mindfulness as bodyfulness means to shift from attending TO the body to attending WITH the body. By first joining breath and attention into breath-attention and then bringing breath-attention to the parts of the body, we discover our bodymind as a “sphere of attention” that is in resonance—a constant felt dialogue—with objects and other people. This resonance is our original connection with the world and the source of compassion.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!

Become a Boulder Zen Center Member! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on yogic embodiment.

This talk addresses the craft of mindfulness practice. Even though the Zen tradition doesn't explicitly teach stages of mindfulness meditation, it is useful to describe the cultivation of attention as a passage through specific gates—an unfolding of mental spaces that transform how we relate to ourselves, others, and the phenomenal world.This talk addresses the craft of mindfulness practice. Even though the Zen tradition doesn't explicitly teach stages of mindfulness meditation, it is useful to describe the cultivation of attention as a passage through specific gates—an unfolding of mental spaces that transform how we relate to ourselves, others, and the phenomenal world.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Find out more about the upcoming practice course "Wisdom Mind", taking place both in-person and online Sept 24 – Nov 12.

THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!

Become a Boulder Zen Center Member! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on yogic embodiment.

In our meditation, as we drop out of discursive mentalness and into bodyfulness, what do we find? A kind of existential darkness. This darkness is simultaneously our basic aliveness and our core vulnerability. In this darkness, we encounter the groundless joy of being alive as well as our mortality, existential aloneness, and fundamental insecurity regarding our safety, livability, and worthiness. In it, we also come face to face with ungraspability and meaninglessness. This talk presents and considers five basic patterns with which we try to not feel the disturbing and threatening feelings we are inevitably feeling as long as we are alive. These common but ultimately ineffective patterns are: blaming others, blaming oneself, expectations of others, misplaced loyalty, and age regression. Noticing these patterns is a way to practice in our everyday life.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!

Become a Boulder Zen Center Member! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on yogic embodiment.

This talk was part of a Weekend Sitting at the Boulder Zen Center and addresses how to approach zazen practice. It explores Dogen's famous statements about his realization that "the nose is vertical and the eyes are horizontal" and about zazen being "the dharma gate of ease and joy." The purpose of zazen is neither to torture us nor to make us feel good. Zazen is about becoming aware of the truth of our experience at this very moment.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!

Become a Boulder Zen Center Member! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on yogic embodiment.

This talk explores the relationship between sitting meditation (zazen) and attentiveness in everyday life. It's starts with Joko Beck's definition of enlightenment as the "ending in yourself of that hope for something other than life being as it is" and unfolds practice as the effortless effort to allow one's experience to be exactly what it is at this time—that is, to fully commit to the present moment. Feeling unconditionally alive instead of chasing happy feelings is the fruit of this practice.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!

Become a Boulder Zen Center Member! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on yogic embodiment.

This talk explores the freedom that opens up when we put ourselves at a distance from the structures within which we live on a daily basis. Freedom has two directions: (1) freedom FROM structures and (2) freedom TO deliberately live within specific structures. To be free from constraints can be liberating and feel exciting, but often it's also anxiety-provoking because we enter into a space of infinite possibilities, uncertainty, and fundamental groundlessness. Our attachments to structures and concepts serve a purpose: they help to avoid and mask the existential anxiety that comes with freedom. Zazen is a practice of taking our seat in emptiness (infinity, groundlessness) and developing confidence in the face of uncertainty.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!

Become a Boulder Zen Center Member! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on yogic embodiment.

This talk was given in the context of a "rakusu" sewing seminar. Rakusu is the name for the small robe given to a Zen practitioner in a lay ordination ceremony. Part of the ceremony is the giving and receiving of the Bodhisattva precepts. This talk presents the precepts as both common sense ethical guidelines and an expression of Buddha mind.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!

Become a Boulder Zen Center Member! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on yogic embodiment.

This talk explores practice along the lines of Big Mind and small mind and how Big Mind has to include small mind to be truly Big Mind. It also touches on Suzuki Roshi's remark that "the real purpose of Buddhism is to bring about the right human life where there is no Buddhism, but if you think that without any training you can have that kind of life, … you are either a great fool or a very selfish person.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale! Use the code TPOA30 for 30% off until May 31.

Become a Boulder Zen Center Member! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on yogic embodiment.

In Zen practice, we are instructed to view each activity as an expression of our true nature or buddha mind. We cannot find buddha mind in the past or in the future—only in the present. Master Mazu famously answered the question ‘What is buddha?’ with the iconic phrase ‘This mind here now is buddha.” This talk considers two common misinterpretations of this statement—naturalness and essentialism—and suggests practices for establishing here-now-presence.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Become a Boulder Zen Center Member! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you’re enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on yogic embodiment.

When it comes to big issues like the war in Ukraine or the climate crisis, we can feel unnervingly powerless. This talk presents a simple practice of listing all of our concerns, everything that is on our minds and weighing on our bodies. Through Zazen we can know that we are simultaneous very small and very large. We are capable of resonating with everything in this globalized world. The way this largeness and smallness comes together is through the actions we take—one step at a time.

This bonus episode is the introductory talk to a recent Weekend Sitting retreat. It offers detailed instructions for how to hold the body-mind in sitting meditation (zazen) with an emphasis on energetic flow and balance.

What exactly are we doing in zazen meditation? What kind of effort is necessary? This talk addresses the shift we are inviting when we sit still, and it explores three zazen instructions and how they are interrelated: (1) just sit, (2) think not-thinking, and (3) counting the breath.

Being excited or disillusioned about the promise of meditation are both signs that we expect meditation to fix our problems. But while meditation doesn't necessarily solve our problems, it can help us change the relationship we have with our problems. Through meditation, we can learn to be willing to have problems and live them. Suzuki Roshi said, "Just to be alive is to have problems." And he said, "When you are you, zazen becomes true zazen. So when you practice zazen, your problem will practice zazen, and everything else will practice zazen too."

It's a new year and many people make New Year's Resolutions to make changes in their lives. Why do these resolutions often not work? This talk explores a Buddhist way to think about intention. Instead of asking "What do I want to do?", we could ask questions like: "What does my body want me to do? What does my family want me to do? What does my community want me to do? What does the biosphere want me to do?" We can find out that our deepest intentions transcend the seeming dichotomy between self-centeredness and altruism.

This is the last talk of this podcast season! Thank you so much for listening. We would be so appreciative if you took a moment to leave a rating or short review! This talk continues the exploration of studying the Buddha Way by studying the self and forgetting the self. Dogen says one's body and mind and the body and mind of the external world fall away when we allow ourselves to be actualized by the 10,000 things. To practice this means to take on the view and to form the intention that our own bodymind is not separate from the space of the world. Then we can grow into the perception that this body is how the whole world manifests in this particular location.Welcome to Zen Mind! New talks will be published bi-weekly throughout the summer. Registration is now open for our fall practice course, "Liberation from Suffering", led by Zenki Roshi. The course will begin on October 1st with a 3-day weekend seminar on "Working with Reactivity", which can also be attend on it's own. See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007. If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review! Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on yogic embodiment.

The goal of Zen practice is not to become a better, enhanced person; the goal is an open, flexible mind. Openness may sound attractive, but it actually means we allow the teaching to undermine our habit and personality structures. This can be a bit scary. To study "the Way" is to study ourselves not as a fixed thing that needs improvement here and there but as an open-ended process of unfolding. This talk investigates five interrelated dimensions of how to study this unfolding: (1) psychological, (2) behavioral, (3) energetic, (4) attentional, and (5) conceptual. It shows how we need to navigate within and between these dimansions to make our study work. Welcome to Zen Mind! New talks will be published bi-weekly throughout the summer. Registration is now open for our fall practice course, "Liberation from Suffering", led by Zenki Roshi. The course will begin on October 1st with a 3-day weekend seminar on "Working with Reactivity", which can also be attend on it's own. See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007. If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review! Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on yogic embodiment.

This talk continues to explore Dogen's statement, "To study the Buddha Way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self, to forget the self is to be actualized by the 10,000 things." This talk uses the teaching of the five skandhas (form, feeling, perception, conditioning, and consciousness) to explore studying the self as being intimate with one's own experience. Suzuki Roshi says that in the experience of breathing in and breathing out, when you say "I breathe," the "I" is extra. Similarly, we can study how the "I" is extra in our material existence, in our feeling, perception, habit structures, and thinking consciousness. When we "forget the self" in this way, how does that change the way we respond to circumstances?  

Studying the Buddha Way depends on studying the felt body. When we study the felt body by bringing attention to sensations of breathing and the body, our sense of space can change. We can realize that what we feel in the region of the physical body is an open, connective space that includes the sense perception that we typically interpret as the outside world. This talk brings this experience, which we can practice in meditation, in relationship to Dogen's famous statement from the Genjo Koan: "To study the Buddha Way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self, to forget the self is to be actualized by the 10,000 things." Welcome to Zen Mind! New talks will be published bi-weekly on Wednesdays throughout the summer. Registration is now open for our fall practice course, "Liberation from Suffering", led by Zenki Roshi. Head to our website to find out more: www.boulderzen.org. See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007. If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a review! Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on yogic embodiment.

This is a short talk given by Zenki Roshi prior to a recent Weekend Sitting retreat. He gives instructions for zazen, which is Zen meditatiton. I hope that you find these instructions helpful in your own meditation practice. Boulder Zen Center is hosting four Weekend Sitting throughout the year. They are silent, 1.5 day retreats with a lot of meditation, a shared meal practice, and dharma talks. It's a great introduction to Zen practice and anyone can join. Follow this link to find out about the next Weekend Sitting. I hope you'll join! —Bryant Welcome to Zen Mind! New talks will be published bi-weekly on Wednesdays throughout the summer. See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a review! Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on yogic embodiment.

This talk is the first in a series of talks on study. How do we study the Buddha Way? Often we bring ideas about study that are rooted in our experience with being in high school or college. But to study Buddhism isn't just a conceptual endeavor; we need to start with our own inmost request. Are the tenets of Buddhism—transformation, liberation from suffering, wisdom, and compassion— truly expressions of what it means for us to be fully alive or fully ourselves? Zen writings supply us with images and views. One aspect of study is to bring these images and views in touch with our inmost request. There is no fixed curriculum; you are the curriculum. Welcome to Zen Mind! New talks will be published bi-weekly on Wednesdays throughout the summer. See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a review! Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on yogic embodiment.

It's worth building a regular and diligent practice of disentangling sensation from interpretation/thinking. This is true for the sense perceptions of the phenomenal world and for the proprioceptive intensities that arise within us as we live our life. When thinking is disentangled from sensation with some stability, the structures of the discursive and narrative self collapse. We can begin to discover the field of awareness as the ultimate fact of our aliveness and a source of intimacy and joy. Welcome to Zen Mind! New talks will be published bi-weekly on Wednesdays throughout the summer. See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a review! Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on yogic embodiment.

In the first half, this talk continues the exploration of the "Modalities of Mind" from last week. The mind (our sentient presence) is like an orchestra with different instruments. We can learn to listen to and conduct these instruments in the service of our deepest intentions. In the second half, the talk presents examples and practices for distinguishing the modalities of “sensation” and “interpretation.” Making a commitment to our sensations (pleasant, unpleasant or neutral) decreases our investment in interpretations as real and increases our freedom for alternative interpretations. Welcome to a NEW SEASON of Zen Mind! New talks will be published bi-weekly on Wednesdays throughout the summer. See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a review! Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on yogic embodiment.

This talk describes five modalities of mind that we can learn to distinguish when we commit to a path of meditation and mindfulness: (1) discursive thinking (2) applied thinking (3) attentional consciousness (4) felt sense (5) awareness We encounter the modality of discursive thinking when we first sit down in meditation. We begin to see that it obscures, blocks, obstructs the other modalities. By learning to be less invested in discursiveness, over time, we can become more and more familiar with each of the other modalities and see their value, interrelatedness, and limitations. This increasing granularity allows us to employ our minds more and more skillfully on our path of transformation, liberation, wisdom, and compassion. Welcome to a NEW SEASON of Zen Mind! New talks will be published bi-weekly on Wednesdays throughout the summer. See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a review! Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on yogic embodiment.

This talk is about how to put a regular zazen practice together in one's daily life. It starts out with a look at the two sicknesses of meditation: Treating meditation as a means to an end. Using meditation as a way to escape difficulty. The antidote to the two sicknesses is seeing zazen as the repeated gesture of "opening up around" our experience as it is from moment to moment. By committing to this gesture as the essential enactment of zazen, we can discover zazen as an expression of buddha mind. The talk concludes with some very basic and practical ideas for how to set up a daily meditation practice. Welcome to a NEW SEASON of Zen Mind! New talks will be published bi-weekly on Wednesdays throughout the summer. See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a review! Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on yogic embodiment.

Discipline is not a popular word. To most people, it feels like something imposed from the outside, an expectation others have of us or one we have internalized. This talk is about reframing the concept of "discipline" as the ability to hold an intention over time. Intention is most deeply rooted in satisfaction—not in willpower.

This talk looks at "nourishment" as the other side of suffering. When is an experience nourishing-independent of whether it is pleasant or unpleasant? The answer lies In the practice or completing that which appears: allowing our experience to be exactly what It Is at this time and also allowing it to become what it wants to become.

What is enlightenment? And what is the relationship to habits and karma? This talk examines what the words "enlightenment," "awakening," and "realization" point to. It presents a "practice of enlightenment" based on Dogen's instruction "to be steadily intimate with the field of mind." The practice of enlightenment is not a self-improvement or self-actualization project. However, improvement is a valid interest; so how do we approach it in the context of enlightenment?

Using the koan of "Baizhang's Fox" (Case 8 in the Book Serenity), this talk asks about the Middle Way of being simultaneously free from and entangled in the world of karmic patterns. We are free from karma by savoring nirvanic moments and establishing ourselves more and more in the field of mind that non-reactively allows everything to be the way it is. When we relax and stop seeing ourselves as a problematic person, we can engage with our habits in a practical way, engaging the 10,000 things from moment to moment and inviting their feedback about which of our habits need to change to better benefit all beings.

Transformation through Buddhist practice includes changing our habits/karma. Karma refers to the patterns in our life that emerge from repeated intentional action that, through the repetition, gets automated and subconsciously habituated. This talk examines the structure of habits and how they can be deconstructed. It suggests bringing the practice of Zazen into our daily lives by deliberately being present for the disturbing feelings we tend to "medicate" with our dysfunctional habits and, as a first step, allowing those feelings to be there without doing anything about them.

Transformation through Buddhist practice includes changing our habits/karma. Karma refers to the patterns in our life that emerge from repeated intentional action that, through the repetition, gets automated and subconsciously habituated. This talk examines the structure of habits and how they can be deconstructed. It suggests bringing the practice of Zazen into our daily lives by deliberately being present for the disturbing feelings we tend to "medicate" with our dysfunctional habits and, as a first step, allowing those feelings to be there without doing anything about them.

This talk takes up a question many people ask these days in the face of political polarization and climate change denial. How can we have compassion with those we disagree with? Usually, we try to establish community on the conceptual level—through an agreement about ideas, opinions, and values. A more fundamental connectedness occurs through "resonance," the bodymind's capacity to "feel with" everything that happens around it. This is the root of com-passion. A deliberate practice of resonance allows us to stay open-hearted in the midst of disagreement.

How can we use the 16 Bodhisattva Precepts to study our own experience and transform it? Buddhism tells us that the root of unwholesomeness (harm, evil) in our own experience is the Three Poisons: greed, hate, and delusion—or more subtly, the moment-to-moment mind-gestures of grasping, resisting, and the delusive replacing of direct experience with conceptual knowledge. Practicing the precepts means to refrain from re-enacting these gestures and instead to commit to the cultivation of a non-reactive mind that allows the flux of pleasant and unpleasant sensations to be the truth of our human experience.

This talk is about exploring the basic practice instruction of shifting from the focus of attention to the field of mind and back and forth. The practice, applied in all six sense fields, reveals a basic structure of the mind with far-reaching transformative potential.

The fundamental instruction of our school is "Just Sitting." This "just"—not limited to the sitting posture—means to allow your experiencing to be exactly what it is at this time. Now. Such non-interference invites the mind to shift into awareness, which is without qualities and always already at ease with experience as it is. The spiritual virtues of kindness, wisdom, and resiliency emerge in our feelings when the shift into awareness stops the habits of rejection, scripted knowing, and mental fragility.

How can you be you yourself? "Being you yourself" implies there are ways you can lose yourself. The antidote to losing yourself is mindfulness practice, which reveals a basic structure of immediacy: the contents of mind and the field of mind. Rooted in the mindful presence of your actual experience right now, you can then take the backward step into the field of mind and explore what is more real: the contents which appear as ordinary reality or the mind that is aware of them? And what does that mean for who you truly are?

This talk was given as part of the "Inaugural Weekend Sitting" that marked the transition of the Boulder Zen Center to an urban residential practice center. It uses the feeling of "homelessness" and "displacement" and the truth of impermanence as a starting point for exploring how we can approach feeling at home in the world on a moment to moment basis. The practice suggestion is to realize how "that which is aware" is what we can truly rely on in the midst of change.

This talk starts out discussing "identification" and "personal identity" as a kind of defense against the groundless, momentary, and insubstantial nature of our existence. It then presents a set of practices – momentariness, bodyfulness, and kindness – that can be used not only on the cushion when practicing sitting meditation but also in daily life.

The pandemic brings out emotions in us: anxiety, sadness, anger, impatience, worry, etc. This talk discusses the "anatomy of emotions" by distinguishing the sensation level from the interpretation level of emotion. This distinction is in relationship to the more general practice concept of the primary and secondary activity of mind. Realizing emotional freedom requires the skill to attend to the primary sensation level without any secondary interpretation whatsoever. Based on that skill, we can begin to develop the freedom to respond (rather than react), that is, to align our interpretations and actions with our highest intentions.

Suffering = Pain x Resistance. When pleasure and grasping are included, the formula can be rendered as: Suffering = Experiential Intensity x Reactivity. This opens up two pathways to end suffering: remove pain (experiential intensity) or eliminate reactivity. Buddhism is about practicing with reactivity, because that’s the factor we can bring under our control. There is freedom from suffering (based on freedom from reactivity), but there is also freedom to reduce pain when that’s possible. This leads to a question about “Engaged Buddhism” or as this talk explores: the “Buddhism of Engagement.” Engagement, based on freedom, comes from what we choose to do, not from what we feel we have to do.

This talk is about how we use narratives as support for personal and collective identity and how the current societal conditions challenge our stories and can leave us with a feeling of groundlessness. Buddhist transformation is about the embrace of groundlessness and about making use of our situation—whatever it is—in accord with our highest intentions. Vow is intention plus commitment. What would it be like to meet goundlessness by aligning ourselves with the four central vows of Buddhism: transformation, liberation, wisdom, and compassionate action?

This talk is about the difference between healthy and unhealthy transcendence. Meditation practice and the concept of detachment can create the fantasy that we might be able to transcend our humanness by excluding our emotionality and vulnerability from our beingness. Healthy transcendence in contrast allows us to be dis-identified from our experience while staying connected with it. The talk elucidates this difference through the experiential distinction between the field of mind and the contents of mind.

This talk, originally given to a Zoom audience of white people, acknowledges the intensity of this moment in American history: a convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic collapse with 40 million unemployed, and now global protests against racism in America. Zenki Christian Dillo, a white immigrant born in Germany, reflects on his personal experience with the collective trauma of the Holocaust. He offers the view that, as part of a path of liberation, the crime of slavery and continuing racism need to be recognized as a collective trauma, even by those who do not experience it themselves as victims, because it diminishes the full aliveness of everyone in American society. We are resonant bodies. Resonance, experienced on the sensation level of our experience, is the root of compassion. Buddhist practice is to learn to feel this fundamental resonance with a stable and fearless mind and to let it move us to take appropriate action.

This talk gives Zazen instruction for disentangling attention from thinking. The koan story of Baizhang’s Wild Ducks (Case #40 of the Blue Cliff Records) is brought up to clarify the attentional body that needs to be practiced to stabilize a mind that is able to notice without thinking about. It is through this attentional body that the teachings of “no coming, no going” and “no birth, no death” become experientially accessible.

This talk continues the exploration of impermanence, momentariness, and insubstantiality—all aspects of what Buddhism refers to as emptiness—and adds the aspect of interdependence. It highlights the context of Zazen practice, emphasizing that the exploration needs to be experiential not just intellectual. The koan phrase “Heaven, earth, and I have the same root; the 10,000 things and I share the same body” is introduced as a door to the practice of interdependence.

This talk articulates impermanence as momentariness and insubstantiality, continuing the discussion of the practice of impermanence from last week. To investigate and enact our experience as both momentary and insubstantial transforms our sense of self and provides new ways of working with our habits.

Related to questions about death and dying that are highlighted by the pandemic, this talk discusses three arenas, in which to practice impermanence: self, phenomena, and attention. What happens when we say to ourselves, “I will die. I am willing to die. I am ready to die.” Beyond the mortality of our own bodymind, Zen emphasizes momentariness. This talk explores the practice of the Four Marks of all phenomena (birth, duration, dissolution, disappearance) and creatively applies it to the moment-to-moment observation of the movement of attention. In this moment-to-moment unfolding of experience, where is the birthplace and end of suffering?

This talk distinguishes two modalities of mind: consciousness and awareness. The job of consciousness is to make the world cognizable, sequential, predictable, and meaningful. Awareness establishes perceptual immediacy before it gets overlaid with concepts, time structures, expectations, and stories. Always standing on the two feet of both consciousness and awareness, what happens when we shift our weight from one foot to the other? How does that affect our access to freedom, wisdom, and compassionate action and our ability to deal with crisis such as the current pandemic?

This talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.

This talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.

This talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.

This talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.

This talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.

This talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.

This talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.

This talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.

This talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.

This talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.

This talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.

This talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.

This talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.

This talk was recorded by Zenki Dillo Roshi in 2019, prior to the publication of our podcast, but we wanted to share these dharma teachings with you despite the lack of a formal podcast description.