Interviews

In this podcast interview, Monastic Hokyu Aronson speaks with guest instructor Vangeline about embodied movement and healing. Along the way, they discuss some of the deep history of butoh and how trauma-informed guidance can help students settle their nervous systems, whether they are pursuing Zen, butoh, or life itself. Although Vangeline emphasizes this approach in […]

Dr Eduardo Duran, PhD – 01/31/2023 – An interview with Dr. Ed Duran conducted in January 2023 by MRO students Daniel Onren Latorre and monastic Taikyo Gilman. The topics considered were drawn from previous conversations Ed offered in recent years: with the MRO BIAPoC Sangha on Decolonizing Buddha; and, with the MRO sangha at large, on Decolonizing Awakening On Turtle Mountain. – Ed Duran (Apache/Tewa/Lakota) is a psychologist who has been working in indigenous communities most of his professional career. He is a Vietnam Veteran who started his academic training after being discharged from the US Navy. He has been involved in Buddhist and traditional Native practices for many years, and his work is informed by traditional Indigenous understanding of heart knowing. – Eduardo is the author of Buddha in Redface (Writers Club Press, 2003), a story that deals with these traditions as well as our karmic relationship to the Earth. He is also the author of Healing the Soul Wound: Trauma-informed Counseling for Indigenous Communities and Native American Postcolonial Psychology. He presently lives outside of Bozeman, Montana.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The ZMM Podcast is pleased to present this conversation about the practice of parenting and how informed self-inquiry can lead us to true intimacy. These are just two of the topics explored by Bethany Senkyu Saltman in her new book, Strange Situation: A Mother’s Journey into the Science of Attachment.  Senkyu is a poet, essayist, […]

Thinking about emptiness might seem like a misguided approach to spiritual practice or perhaps just a poor use of one’s time. But that is exactly what was advocated by the Indian philosophers who developed Abhidharma, Madyamika, and Yogācāra. As Buddhist scholar William S. Waldron points out in his work, these developments were merely a further […]

First the podcast, an abridged version of a longer conversation you can find at the bottom of this page. There’s a saying about modern religious practice in Japan. “When there’s a birth, go to the Shinto temple for a blessing. When there’s a marriage, go to a church for the ceremony. When there’s a death, […]

Our newly launched journal—Mountains and Rivers: Zen Dharma and Practice—is now available. Just ahead of the February 2020 release date,  journal editor Suzanne Taikyo Gilman and the journal’s designer, Kristin Keimu Adolphson, sat down for a conversation about this exciting project with Valerie Meiju Linet, a former editor of Mountain Record quarterly. Here’s a bit […]

Author Lawrence Shainberg will be at the Zen Center of NYC on Saturday, October 5th for a reading from his new book, Four Men Shaking. Shainberg began formal Zen practice in 1973, first at the Zen Studies Center, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side as well as its Catskills-based training center, Daibosatsu Zendo. Later, he became […]

When launching the Buddhist Poetry Festival in 2018, David Hinton was one of the first writers who came to mind and it was no accident that we scheduled him to open up the event on the first morning. Hinton bridges past and present, distinguishing himself as one of the foremost translators of ancient Chinese poetry […]

In September, Zen Mountain Monastery hosted the biannual conference of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association for three full days of practice, discussion and exploration. Close to 70 ordained priests and transmitted teachers joined the conference, representing dozens of training centers and sitting groups throughout North America. Following the conference, we spoke with Tenku Ruff who […]

Margaret Gibson in conversation with Zuisei Goddard, Sensei Zen Mountain Monastery, 7/6/2018 Over the course of four decades, Margaret Gibson has amassed a body of work as rich and varied as it is consistent in aspiration. One reads a poem by Margaret Gibson and comes away having shared in the yearning to see deeply, often […]

​In this March 2017 interview with Zuisei Sensei, we talk about the misunderstandings and true potential of cultivating—and maintaining—awareness​. This conversation was recorded ahead of Zuisei’s April 2017 retreat, “Taming the Mind.”