The Zen Mountain Monastery Podcast
by Zen Mountain Monastery
The Mountains and Rivers Order (MRO) is a Western Zen Buddhist lineage established by the late John Daido Loori Roshi and dedicated to sharing the dharma as it has been passed down, generation to generation, since the time of Shakyamuni Buddha. Zen Mountain Monastery, the main house of the Mountains and Rivers Order, is one of the West’s most respected Zen Buddhist monasteries and training centers. Nestled in New York’s beautiful Catskill Mountains, the Monastery draws its strength from the ancient tradition of Buddhist monasticism. Since 1980, the Monastery has offered spiritual practitioners traditional and innovative ways to engage the dharma through a wide range of retreats and residential programs that unfold within the context of authentic, full-time Zen monastic training. The Zen Center of New York City: Fire Lotus Temple is the city branch of Zen Mountain Monastery. Supporting home practitioners in the metropolitan area, ZCNYC offers varied practice opportunities within the Eig
Episodes
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Dharma Encounter: The Yes and No of Buddha Nature
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 10/25/26 – Referring to Zhaozhou’s koan, “Does a Dog Have Buddha Nature?”, and Dogen’s teachings in Busshō, this Dharma Encounter explores how both “yes” and “no” can be doorways to understanding our true nature. Rather than treating these responses as…
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Pushing Down, Lifting Up
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 10/24/26 – Delving into the well-known koan of “Zhaozou’s Dog,” Shugen Roshi explores the importance of seeing one’s self-nature clearly, without the baggage and habits of our defensiveness. This early step in koan training helps us train our minds in letting...
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Fusatsu: Using Our Delusions To Awaken
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei – ZMM – 10/23/26 – How do our vows become visible through renewing them in the shared ceremony of Fusatsu? Hogen Sensei encourages us to use the words of the ceremony and the invocation of the Buddhas and ancestors to fully enter and engage them. We can practice seeing…
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It Exists from the Very Beginning
Bear Gokan Bonebakker, Osho – ZMM – 10/21/26 – Master Hongzhi offered practice instructions for zazen which place us directly in contact with our awakened nature. “The field of boundless emptiness which exists from the very beginning,” are words which can inspire as well as encourage. As Gokan…
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The Nature of Experience
Danica Shoan Ankele, Sensei – ZMM – 10/18/26 – While concepts and ideas help us to learn about and understand our world, they also have a way of limiting our ability to experience things as they really are. Don’t keep yourself in a state of numbness or emotional distance from whatever is arising,...
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Jukai Ceremony with Shugen Roshi at ZMM – October 2026
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 10/11/26 – Shugen Roshi officiates the Fall Ango Jukai ceremony at Zen Mountain Monastery. Today, two students formally receive the sixteen Buddhist precepts, taking up these living teachings, living vows in the company of the sangha with family and friends:...
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You Have “No Buddha” Nature
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 10/04/26 – Taking up a segment from Dogen’s fascicle on Buddha Nature, Shugen Roshi illuminates how we lead ourselves into misunderstanding our fundamental nature because we grasp so readily at things—at language, at meaning, and what it says about…
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Fusatsu: Be Still and Heal
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei – 10/4/26 – In this Fusatsu talk, Hojin Sensei explores atonement as a way to acknowledge harmful karma, renew our vows, and begin again. The Buddha called healthy shame and fear of wrongdoing “bright guardians, a noble treasure of the world.” How can we take...
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Dharma Encounter: Bringing Our True Nature to Life
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei – ZMM – 9/27/26 – Drawing on Dogen’s teaching that all beings are Buddha nature, Hogen Sensei asks how we bring this truth to life through practice. What inner resources do we draw on in difficult times, and where do they come from? In facing illness, navigating...
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Beyond Yes and No
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 9/26/26 – Drawing on Dogen’s Bussho, Shugen Roshi explores the seemingly contradictory teachings that all beings are, have, or have no Buddha nature. If Buddha nature isn’t something we can possess or acquire, what are we realizing through practice? These...
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Fusatsu: Renewing Our Humanity
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei – ZMM – 9/25/26 – In this Fusatsu talk, Hojin Sensei explores renewing our bodhisattva vows and practicing loving-kindness through the Three Pure Precepts. What does it mean to live by vow rather than be driven by our habitual karma? When we’re hurt or in conflict, can…
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Living Beings Are Buddha Nature
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 9/24/26 – The Buddha realized that all beings are capable of awakening to their true nature. Dogen echoed this truth by saying that all beings are Buddha nature, emphasizing that this is our very nature, not something we can gain or lose. If we could “have”...
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Offering This Buddha Nature
Danica Shoan Ankele, Sensei – ZMM – 9/23/26 – The path of the bodhisattva is not always a convenient one, and probably not as we imagine it to be. We may struggle; it may feel prickly. So how do we stay on the path of unburdening ourselves and waking up? Transformation means getting very clear...
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Transform A Vow Into Action
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 9/20/26 – What is the cause of suffering, at its root? The bodhisattva vow is to put an end to suffering and its causes—but how do we put that vow into action? First, we have to see clearly what is causing harm: to see into our delusions and the ways in which...
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The Form of Buddha Nature
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 9/13/26 – This formless Buddha Nature, how does it manifest? Is it large or small? Shugen Roshi quotes the great teacher Nagarjuna, “If you want to see buddha nature, first, let go of your pride,” first let go of the certainty with which we bestow value on...
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Jukai at Fire Lotus Temple with Hojin Sensei
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei – ZCNYC – 9/13/26 With Hojin Sensei officiating, four students formally receive the sixteen Buddhist precepts, taking up these living teachings, living vows in the company of the sangha with family and friends. Alexis Waller: Myokan (“Wondrous Intuitive Wisdom”) Joan...
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Ch’ien and Her Soul are Separated
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 9/6/26 – Stories are one of the primary ways that we create and re-create suffering in our own minds, and this folk tale of Ch’ien and her soul in a Zen koan lends itself well to the study of mind and reality. With practice comes a fresh awareness of the...
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When the Word ‘Should’ Begins to Shine
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei – ZCNYC – 9/6/26 – Taking up Emily Dickinson’s practice—“I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine”—Hojin Sensei stares into the words should and shouldn’t. “We should observe…
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Ango Opening Talk at ZMM with Shugen Roshi
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – 8/30/26 – Shugen Roshi introduces the theme of the MRO 90-day Fall Ango 2026 training period: “Buddha Nature.”
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Ango Opening Remarks at Fire Lotus Temple
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei – ZCNYC – 8/30/26 – Join Hojin Sensei offering opening remarks to the practitioners at Fire Lotus Temple in Brooklyn to begin the Fall Ango Practice Period: “Now the hundreds of grasses are actually gathering for the Fall. Plucked from the entire earth, there would be…
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Taking Up Zen Training
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 8/29/26 – Breathing, sitting, walking, all of these ordinary activities offer the capacity to train the mind. But in what? Awareness, non-grasping, insight, stability, all these good qualities essential for liberating ourselves and others. Training is a…
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Standing in the World
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei – ZCNYC – 8/29/26 – The Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta is where Buddha gives the four postures: walking, standing, sitting, and lying down. The instruction is essentially to know the body as it is disposed: “when standing, one knows, ‘I am standing.’” walking they know: ‘I am...
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Inspiration, Aspiration
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 8/23/26 – Breath is the quality that brings and sustains life–an inspiration of what enters us and provides nourishment. To have aspiration, in a sense, is the desire and motivation inspired by the Dharma which brings us into practice, inspired by our own...
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Can you Relate?
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei – ZCNYC – 8/23/26 – Someone asked the teacher: “Are you lonely”? Hojin takes up these senses of loneliness, solitariness and aloneness. The Buddha taught, “All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely...
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Good Qualities
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 8/22/26 – Many times our practice can be simple and straightforward. But when conditions become adverse, how do we stay on the path? The Dharma points us toward beneficial qualities within ourselves that we can cultivate and draw upon for strength—to support...
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Look! Look!
Danica Shoan Ankele, Sensei – ZMM – 8/21/26 – What do we aspire to in our practice? What are we looking for? This deeply personal question can help us find our way among the many Dharma offerings we encounter, which can sometimes feel difficult to take up. In this vast, wide world, why practice?...
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This Life
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – 8/19/26 – What are the qualities that help, or hinder, our ability to enter and sustain practice on a path of liberation? What to cultivate, what to mindfully let go of? The Buddha and later practitioners studied and taught these ways to support our practice, to…
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Just Walking
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei – ZMM – 08/16/2026 – Drawing on Dogen’s Mountains & Rivers Sutra and various texts on walking meditation, Hojin Sensei brings alive a study of how we move through space and time. Drawing on the “virtue of walking” as a constantly alive practice , she asks: how does...
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Effort And Aliveness
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – 8/9/26 – With effort in practice, we bring forth our natural aliveness. To do this we make an effort to let go of self-clinging and other ways we deplete our energies. Even with expectations of the way we imagine “letting go” to be, when we encounter the reality of...
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The Five Remembrances – Wise Reaching Outs
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei – ZCNYC – 8/9/26 – The Buddha said that all conditioned things—all things that begin to exist at a particular time—are impermanent, and will eventually decay and disappear. Aging is normal. Illness is normal. Death is normal. Yes, I will be separated from what I hold…
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Taking Up Mind Training
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – 8/2/26 – Koan study can turn our minds inward, showing us where we get stuck in our own habitual tangles and ways of thinking about reality. What is the true nature that ’mind training’ can reveal? Shugen Roshi brings alive the subtle teachings of Zhao Zhou with…
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Avian Traces
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei – 8/2/26 – “A bird flies in the sky, and no matter how far it flies, there is no end to the air.” Following a retreat at the temple, Avian Traces, Hojin Sensei speaks about being with her mother recently in her dying process, and a bird showing up on the windowsill…
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Faith In Our Totally Free Nature
Danica Shoan Ankele, Sensei – 7/26/26 – In sesshin, the deep work of transformation is held within a supportive container. Yet each of us must still discover the capacity for faith as we learn to settle the mind and realize our true nature—our fundamentally free nature. This cultivation of faith...
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In Silence There Is Illumination
Bear Gokan Bonebakker, Osho – ZMM – 7/25/26 – Zazen practice of shikantaza, “just sitting” comes from the Chan practice of Silent Illumination. In solitude we find our way, in the support of the teachings and learning to allow our minds to settle and come to rest. How we can understand this...
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In Daytime The Sun, At Night The Moon
Bear Gokan Bonebakker, Osho – ZMM – 7/12/26 – Ancient masters offer us teachings that speak to us in subtle ways, communicating insights that can be transformative even though they may not yet be our conscious experience. Hongzhi’s guidance speaks directly to our practice, toward how we can let…
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Painting the Whole Picture
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 7/5/26 – Celebrating July 4th by looking at the dharma teachings on interdependence, Shugen Roshi leads us through the fundamental question of how suffering is created, and our personal and collective ability to heal as we affect the reality—the whole...
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Every Day Is A Good Day
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 6/28/26 – This teaching from ancient master Yunmen calls us not to ignore the strife around us, but to see it all through the eye of wisdom and compassion which does not get entangled by it. Even when the outer circumstances are not favorable—which is typical...
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Actualizing Buddha Ancestors
Danica Shoan Ankele, Sensei – ZMM – 6/27/26 – Practicing zazen, seeing into our minds, is what makes it possible to loosen the grip and let our true self be known. We are called to actualize in our present bodies, in this life, the actual body and life of Buddha. On the path of awakening to the...
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Impermanence And Ease
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 6/25/26 – Resistance to change often underlies our suffering and shows up in feelings such as anxiety, irritation, impatience and so on. As an essential teaching of the Buddha, impermanence calls on us to reflect and study this as the condition of all life,...
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Not Really Separate At All
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 6/21/26 – The sense of separation — from life, from happiness, from anything we feel apart from — lies at the root of what brings many of us to a spiritual path. The Buddha taught that suffering arises from the duality created by conceptual thinking. To truly...
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Oh! Really?
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei – ZCNYC – 6/14/26 – The Buddha said, “All things are ultimately liberated; they have no abiding place.” In this koan, the teenage Satsujo, completely devoted to practicing the Dharma, was sitting in her room when her father peeked in and saw her seated on a copy of the...
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Contemplating Buddha
Bear Gokan Bonebakker, Osho – ZMM – 6/14/26 – What is already present is the authentic form of Buddha, not different than your own body and mind. We may think there is something broken that needs to be fixed about ourselves, or that we’re lacking in some way. Zazen is the authentic form of…
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Living in Inquiry
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei – ZCNYC – 6/13/26 – When inquiry is alive within us, every thought we think can end with a question mark — perhaps even an exclamation mark — rather than a period. There is freedom in this openness, in loosening our fixed certainty and allowing experience to remain alive...
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The Inner Wilderness
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 6/7/26 – How Buddhism uses the term “attachments” is often misunderstood as being something bad, which should not happen, but our sense of self is made up of a series of attachments: to identity, position, and so on. When we see through these many ideas of…
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Dharma Encounter with Shugen Roshi
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – 5/31/26 – Mundane truth, enlightened truth, from the beginning are all together one. But there are snags that grab us, some of them repeatedly. Hongzhi describes our original mind this way: “from the beginning it is fundamentally all together complete, undefiled,...
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Does That Person See It, Or Not?
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – 5/30/26 – Zen is filled with koan stories asking this question: do they see it or not? Do you see “it”? Shugen Roshi says that we see only as far as our penetrating vision can reach at any time. And yet that is plenty. Our present experience invites us to look...
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What Can’t Be Fought For
Danica Shoan Ankele, Sensei – ZMM – 5/29/26 – The true self, what is that? It was the question put to Monk Ming by the sixth ancestor and opened for him the Way. This pivotal moment is something that makes Zen what it is, what can’t be planned, can’t be sought after, but still it’s the heart of…
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A Rice Cake. Just A Rice Cake.
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei – 5/28/26 – Going beyond our ancestors, going further than they could go, is the task of every student of the dharma. What is the ultimate truth? In other words, asks Hogen Sensei, who is this person asking the question? Going beyond conceptual thought, what is it? Here...
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Mind and Environment
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 5/24/26 – Shugen Roshi asks: “When you’re thinking of the thinking mind, what do you find there? And where will you go from there?” At the heart of bodhicitta — the wish to bring suffering to an end — are the questions: What are we contributing? What kind of...
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Fusatsu: Right Speech
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 5/21/26 – Are the words you are about to speak true? Verify them first through your own experience. Are they of benefit? Are they agreeable or disagreeable? Know your intentions and consider carefully before speaking. Drawing from the early teachings, Shugen...
About this show
The Mountains and Rivers Order (MRO) is a Western Zen Buddhist lineage established by the late John Daido Loori Roshi and dedicated to sharing the dharma as it has been passed down, generation to generation, since the time of Shakyamuni Buddha. Zen Mountain Monastery, the main house of the Mountains and Rivers Order, is one of the West’s most respected Zen Buddhist monasteries and training centers. Nestled in New York’s beautiful Catskill Mountains, the Monastery draws its strength from the ancient tradition of Buddhist monasticism. Since 1980, the Monastery has offered spiritual practitioners traditional and innovative ways to engage the dharma through a wide range of retreats and residential programs that unfold within the context of authentic, full-time Zen monastic training. The Zen Center of New York City: Fire Lotus Temple is the city branch of Zen Mountain Monastery. Supporting home practitioners in the metropolitan area, ZCNYC offers varied practice opportunities within the Eig
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