PODCAST · religion
The Jizo-an Zen Community Podcast
by Jizo-an Zen Community
Teachings, Dharma talks, Zen studies, and reflections from the Jizo-an Zen Community.
Episodes
-
The Paradox of our Identities
Gessho's teaching explores Dogen's instruction to study and ultimately forget the self through examining the identities formed from roles, experiences, beliefs, and social conditioning. It considers how attachment to fixed identities creates division and suffering, and how recognizing their...
-
The Ceaseless Flow of Mind
This talk explores Buddha nature as the wholeness obscured by afflictions, self-centered stories, and habitual reactivity. Drawing on teachings about contingency, the Noble Path, and daily practice, it considers how awareness helps us recognize the causes of suffering, stop feeding old patterns,...
-
The Eight Realizations of Awakened Beings
What does it mean to live an awakened life, to live in an awakened way? How do we bring our practice and the Dharma teachings into our everyday lives? How do we realize or actualize our practice in the world? Fortunately for all of us, the Buddha and our many ancestors left us a great treasure...
-
Cultivating Right View
This teaching explores right view as the foundation of the Noble Eightfold Path: seeing suffering, impermanence, causation, and personal responsibility clearly rather than seeking happiness through attachment and control. Drawing on Buddhist teachings, contemporary reflections, and personal...
-
Maturing through Practice
As we move through this life, we tend to exchange old stories for new ones, but always there is a backdrop of old fears like a shadow that haunts us. In order to fully mature, we need to see through these stories, to identify and come to grips with our maladapted behaviors and strategies. Zen...
-
2,600 Years of Buddhist History in 26 Minutes
In its 2,600-year history, from the time of the Buddha to the present day, Buddhism has grown from a tiny religious community in northern India into a movement that now spans the globe. It has shaped the development of civilizations in India and Southeast Asia and had a major influence on the...
-
Sutra in the Floorboards
Studying sutras is one way to awaken this heart/ mind. this big mind as Shunryu Suzuki calls it. And the same goes for our ability to embrace moment to moment awareness.. This moment that is free of description and temptations. In my own practice, the floor has become the greatest anchor…as my…
more -
Zen Questions - Spiritual Inquiry and Radical Honesty
We have largely been conditioned to believe that we need to constantly push ourselves very hard and make strenuous efforts to attain, achieve, or become this or that. We often bring this same mentality to our spiritual practice, believing that we must make strenuous efforts to awaken and realize...
-
The Meaning of Gateless Gate in Zen
In Zen we are taught that we have everything within us to be awakened and enlightened. However, we, in our conditioned mind, create barriers that hold us back from tapping into our authentic self and to live how we are meant to. How many times do we miss what is right in front of us? How can we…
more -
Pattern and Novelty, Transcending our Stories
Our lives are constructed of stories. Some are handed down to us, others take form from the outcome of events in our lives. Stories are the stuff of our sense of self, and when habits develop around them, we are constrained, we suffer. To realize new possibilities is how we transform our lives…
more -
A Tribute to Seijaku Roshi
Five years ago, our founder Seijaku Roshi died. As time passes the number of people who actually knew Roshi steadily decreases. But his presence is still here with us and will always be with us. Last year the Jizo-an Zen Community celebrated its 40-year anniversary. There have been a number of...
-
Living in a Paradox - Holding Space for All We Experience
Paradox is both a powerful word and an important aspect of Zen practice. We often don't feel very comfortable with paradox. We prefer to have our life neatly arranged and packaged. But, Zen points to a very different way of being. The reality is that we live much of our entire life in the midst…
more -
Taking Refuge in the Sangha
Traditionally sangha referred to the community of ordained monks and nuns, but today the term sangha, includes all Buddhist practitioners, lay and ordained. The Buddha taught that each of us is responsible for our own journey of awakening "Be an island unto yourself." But at the same time, the...
-
The Mysterious Principle of Linji Yixuan
The "mysterious principle" Master Linji Yixuan (the founder of Rinzai Zen) is centered on direct, spontaneous awareness. He taught us to stop seeking enlightenment outside of ourselves in scriptures, Buddha figures, or even the concept of Nirvana and to recognize our own true unconditioned…
more -
Becoming Intimate with Impermanence
Everything we encounter — our bodies, relationships, thoughts, and circumstances, is in constant flux. Yet much of our suffering arises from resisting this truth or attempting to secure what cannot be held. Accepting impermanence opens the door to a more intimate, compassionate, and vivid way of...
-
The Heart Sutra - The Swiss Army Knife of Zen
The Heart Sutra, possibly the best known text of Mahayana Buddhism, is said to be the pure distillation of wisdom (prajna). Perhaps because of both its profundity and brevity, the Heart Sutra is the most familiar of all the original teachings of the Buddha. An English translation can easily be...
-
Making it Real - Actualizing is the Point
The Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path begins with Right View or Understanding and Right Intention. Understanding our nature and this Way of Being in the world is essential. But we must go beyond just understanding. We must skillfully apply the practice and live it in our daily life. Our life is our...
-
Building a Sanctuary to Weather the Storm
Throughout our lives we experience a wide range of emotions, moods, mind states, and many different physical sensations. Some experiences are pleasant and enjoyable, some are confusing and painful. When considering our own life experiences, or contemplating the world around us, it can be...
-
Why The Practice Works For Me
When we embrace a practice like Zen, we realize how difficult it can be to stay on a path that is so radically different from how we have been conditioned to show up. Deep inside, we know that we are not truly being our authentic selves and we consciously decide to search for something that can...
-
Samsara and Nibbana - Understanding Our Suffering and Our Happiness
As human beings, we all wish for happiness and peace in our lives, and we wish not to suffer. Yet, we experience so much sorrow, discontent, and suffering, and we are often left feeling hopeless or helpless, unable to comprehend this suffering. The Buddha's teachings are about liberation from...
-
Hui-Neng - Know Your Mind, See Your True Nature
The Platform Sutra of Hui-Neng, the sixth patriarch of Chinese Zen is one of the most influential texts of Chan Buddhism. According to Hui-Neng, Buddha nature is the true nature of all beings. We therefore don't need to purify our minds, rather we need to shift our perspective so we can see our...
-
Acknowledging Our Silent Metamorphosis
How can we let go of judgments and self-judgments, living only in the present moment? Can we see this moment as sacred, accepting ourselves and others as they are, accepting and letting go of the past? We're both separate and together, perfect and complete, revealing right here, right now. What…
more -
An Appropriate Response - Living With Skillful Means
Upaya, or skillful means, is a hallmark of not only Zen practice and training, but of the entirety of the Buddha's teachings. How do we live skillfully, moment by moment, in a world on fire, a world with so much division, injustice, and strife? The Buddha's teachings are a prescription for how to...
-
The Hypocrisy Of Desire
In simple terms: we crave more, different and new. When one learns how to 'look' desire is constantly there, knocking and knocking like a sales man who has exactly what you want yet knows you don't need. This seems to be true whether it's for more love or more cars or more fear. The reality is…
more -
Choosing Gratitude
Our social contract is based on mutual respect and recognition of our common interest. There are those who have become quite adept at pitting ourselves against ourselves; against each other when we are all truly dependent on each other. There are some who find advantage in focusing on superficial...
-
The Changing Chords in the Flowing Rhythm of Life
Much like creating music, life is of the nature of change and flow. Just as chord changes and progressions constantly create and re-create the flowing rhythms of music, life too unfolds and is constantly in creation according to the ever changing nature of life's flowing rhythms. When we wrestle...
-
The Power of the Word
In our current state of the world we witness how misinformation spreads like a virus. We witness again and again how easy it is to manipulate others, create division, and spread hatred through wrong speech. In the eight fold noble path the Buddha instructed us on the importance of right speech....
-
The Lankavatara Sutra - The Form and Formless
"You are Buddha, you are perfect and complete". Most of us would vehemently disagree... for good reason too. We spend lifetimes unconsciously creating fantasies about who we think we are. Just like if you took a dog and trained it to be a killer, there would be no surprise if that were to…
more -
Becoming the Mountains and Rivers
Eihei Dogen, the great master of Soto Zen, taught that when we know something intimately, it ceases to exist in the old way and, as a result, so do we. Dogen was a lover of nature. He built his monastery deep in the mountains near streams. In the Mountains and Rivers Sutra he wrote about the...
-
The Wisdom of Zen Master Shitou
What does it mean to practice the Noble Eightfold Path's 'Right View'? How do we walk the Buddha's teaching of the Middle Way? Master Shitou shared his deep insight into these questions with two profound poems that became the foundation of the Soto Zen School: The 'Sandokai' and the 'Song of…
more -
Herding the Ox - Maturing on the Path of Practice
How does one practice without attachments to goals or gaining anything? Zen does not place an emphasis on advancing through stages of practice, or expectations of achieving anything. But when one embraces this path wholeheartedly, we mature as a result of opening the heart, seeing through...
-
The Great Zen Masters, Animals
From a Zen perspective, animals teach profound spiritual and philosophical lessons like living fully in the present moment, unconditional love, natural joy, letting go of past hurts and the wisdom of rest. Through their honest communication and mindful presence, they encourage us to be more...
-
Specters In Poem, Entangled In Rhymes. Look At Zen Poetry
For those touched by awakening, the complexities of existence allow for words to be molded like clay… and so poetry lends itself to the wonderful mysteries of what lies beyond the temporal and transitory…not allowing the reader to fully put their finger on it, for it would just be another case of...
-
The Three Tenets of the Zen Peacemakers
In 1994, the late American Zen master, Roshi, Bernie Glassman founded the Zen peacemakers; an organization of practitioners and teachers that has grown globally. He also established the Three Tenets of the Zen Peacemakers, a path of practice to relieve the suffering of all beings through...
-
The Significance of Taking Refuge
When we begin walking this path, we start the process of taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. Then, we may come to the realization that we are ready to take formal refuge as we experience the transformation that naturally happens when we make the genuine commitment to fully...
-
Eight Qualities of an Awakened Life
First, the Buddha, and then Dogen Zenji, in their final lessons to us, described eight qualities to guide us as Bodhisattvas in training. These eight are necessary to develop if we are to become true adults and to step past the un-resolved, erratic emotions that continue in the unconscious mind…
more -
Poison or Antidote - The Kleshas (Poisons) Are They Just Foes, Or Friends
In Buddhism, the three poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance are regarded as mental, afflictions, that cloud the mind, and are the root cause of our suffering and discontentment. Our conditioned reaction is to see these poisons simply as enemies that must be avoided or eliminated. But, what if…
more -
Bowing-The Expression of the Physical and Spiritual Laws of the Universe
In Zen we do a lot of bowing. But there is so much more to a bow than just bending. Bowing is a practice of gratitude and non-duality. It is a physical expression of the Buddha's teaching. The dropping away of the ego and its myriad attachments. A bow represents the merging of heart and mind,...
-
There Is But One Reality With Two Possibilities
These two possibilities are relative and absolute or if you like, awareness and ignorance…the point of speaking about the one reality is to help an individual pull himself out of the one-sided relative reality that 99% of us live in—me and you. Like everything in life, this requires balance,...
-
Effortless Effort - The Dharma Gate Of Ease And Joy
We have largely been conditioned to believe that we need to constantly push ourselves very hard and make strenuous efforts to attain, achieve, or become this or that. We often bring this same mentality to our spiritual practice, believing that we must make strenuous efforts to awaken and realize...
-
Great Determination - There Is No App For This!
There is a frequently quoted Zen saying - Seven times knocked down, eight times get up - that speaks to a core aspect of practice and training: namely, the cultivation of unflagging perseverance, even in the midst of the most difficult circumstances. The dharma points to the essential nature of...
-
Breathing Into Silence
Attending to the breath is the simplest of instructions for marshaling our attention into the current moment. Yet we tend to fall back again and again into thinking about, musing, judging and projecting our wants and needs upon our experience of it. Fortunately we can train the mind with a…
more -
Embracing Great Doubt With Great Faith
For many traditional religions, doubt is often seen as a weakness, a lack of faith, or the very antithesis of faith. Seen in this way, mere belief can harden into unquestioned dogma or doctrine. However, in Buddhism, and perhaps especially in Zen, Great Doubt is one of the foundations of…
more -
War, Wisdom and Compassion
It's been 50 years since the fall of Saigon, the moment that ended the Vietnam War. The fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, signaled the end of South Vietnam. In the chaos leading up to that day, hundreds of thousands fled, many by sea, in search of safety and a future. The total loss of human life...
-
Ambition Vs. Passion
Conditioned by a world that strives to "win," it's not easy to see how this sense of "I must become something or someone" is the underlying cause of suffering. For many reasons, it's rare for us humans to recognize that what we are, at any given moment, is enough...and so ambition becomes the...
-
The Four Foundations Of Mindfulness (The Satipatthana Sutta)
"There is, monks, this way that leads only to the purification of beings, to the overcoming of sorrow and distress, to the disappearance of pain and sadness, to the gaining of the right path, to the realization of Nirvana – that is to say the four foundations of mindfulness". These are the…
more -
Knowing A Better Way To Catch A Snake
This sutra is a wonderful example of how easy it is to misunderstand teachings of the Buddhadharma. The sutra recounts a story of one of the Buddha's monks, Arittha, who lived in the Anathapindika Monastery in the Jeta Park with the Sangha...Arittha was heard by his brothers to say that 'sense...
-
The Great Way - By Master Seng Tsan
"The Great Way is not difficult, it only avoids picking and choosing." These are the words of the Third Patriarch of Chan, Seng Ts'an. This phrase is perhaps the greatest single-sentence summary of Zen practice. In other words, if we transcend all preferences, distinctions, and opinions or...
-
The Virtues of Humility
Humility, the feeling that we all share common ground – feeling neither superior or inferior to others – is both a prerequisite to awakening and an expression of mature spirituality. Central to our practice is the phrase "I don't know" which permeates every aspect of Zen. It stands as a powerful...
-
Great Faith - The First Pillar of Practice
In Zen Buddhism, faith and doubt are inseparable. Along with determination these three make up what are known as the three pillars of practice…. Great Faith, Great Doubt and Great Determination. Faith in Buddhism has nothing to do with believing in anything outside of ourselves. It's faith in our...
We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.
No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.
No topics indexed yet for this podcast.
Loading reviews...
ABOUT THIS SHOW
Teachings, Dharma talks, Zen studies, and reflections from the Jizo-an Zen Community.
HOSTED BY
Jizo-an Zen Community
CATEGORIES
Loading similar podcasts...
Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Jizo-an Zen Community Podcast have?
The Jizo-an Zen Community Podcast currently has 153 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Jizo-an Zen Community Podcast about?
Teachings, Dharma talks, Zen studies, and reflections from the Jizo-an Zen Community.
How often does The Jizo-an Zen Community Podcast release new episodes?
The Jizo-an Zen Community Podcast publishes regularly with 153 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to The Jizo-an Zen Community Podcast?
You can listen to The Jizo-an Zen Community Podcast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Jizo-an Zen Community Podcast?
The Jizo-an Zen Community Podcast is created and hosted by Jizo-an Zen Community.
URL copied to clipboard!