Brooklyn Zen Center

Recorded on December 12, 2025 during Rohatsu Sesshin—an intensive multi-day Zen meditation retreat commemorating the Buddha's enlightenment—at Boundless Mind Temple, Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive.

If these teachings have benefited your life, please consider supporting the program with a donation (suggested $2-7/episode, or whatever feels right for you!). You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on December 11, 2025 during Rohatsu Sesshin—an intensive multi-day Zen meditation retreat commemorating the Buddha’s enlightenment—at Boundless Mind Temple, Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If these teachings have benefited your life, please consider supporting the program with a donation (suggested $2-7/episode, or whatever feels right for you!). You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!er ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on December 10, 2025 during Rohatsu Sesshin—an intensive multi-day Zen meditation retreat commemorating the Buddha's enlightenment—at Boundless Mind Temple, Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive.

If these teachings have benefited your life, please consider supporting the program with a donation (suggested $2-7/episode, or whatever feels right for you!). You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded during Three Day Sesshin on October 25, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If these teachings have benefited your life, please consider supporting the program with a donation (suggested $2-7/episode, or whatever feels right for you!). You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!er ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on October 11, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

Technical Note: Low audio levels at the very beginning and increases to normal levels after 30 seconds

Resources Referenced in This Talk

https://www.kairajewel.com

https://www.normawong.com

Joanna Macy, The Milling Exercise

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If these teachings have benefited your life, please consider supporting the program with a donation (suggested $2-7/episode, or whatever feels right for you!). You can donate to B...

Recorded on October 6, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple, Brooklyn, NY.

Technical Note: Low audio levels at the beginning and increases to normal levels after 90 seconds

Resources Referenced in This Talk Bodhisattva Precepts

Jewel Mirror Samadhi

The Dogen story and quote from Shunryu Suzuki Roshi are from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive.

If these teachings have benefited your life, please consider supporting the program with a donation (suggested $2-7/episode, or whatever feels right for...

Recorded on September 20, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

Resources Referenced in This Talk

Hospicing Modernity: Facing Modernity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism by Vanessa Machado de Oliviera

Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging Through Collapse by Kazu Haga

"Death Doula to a Dying Empire" by Kazu Haga Published on One Earth Sangha

"How I Became a Localist" by Deborah Frieze TED Talk

In the Absence of the Ordinary: Soul Work for Time of Uncertainty by Francis Weller

No. 92 of 108 by Norma...

Recorded on September 6, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple, Brooklyn, NY.

References mentioned in the talk:

Abuse, Sex and the Sangha: a Series of Healing Conversations: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpxqAk60QqWrlqnlVVWr4IvLyv1GtBw5I

Resilient Sangha Project: https://bostonzen.org/resilientsangha/

Buddhist Healthy Boundaries: https://www.buddhisthealthyboundaries.org/

"Sexual Ethics and Healthy Boundaries in the Wake of Teacher Abuse" by Ann Gleig and Amy Langenberg: https://www.lionsroar.com/sexual-ethics-and-healthy-boundaries-in-the-wake-of-teacher-abuse/

Book by Julie Seido Nelson, "Practicing Safe Zen: Navigating the Pitfalls on the Road to Liberation": https...

Recorded on July 26, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If these teachings have benefited your life, please consider supporting the program with a donation (suggested $2-7/episode, or whatever feels right for you!). You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on July 12, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

Please note: The first 50 seconds of the dharma talk is not audible due to technical issue.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on June 28, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on June 21, 2025 during the One Day Sit at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on June 7, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple, Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

A Dharma Conversation about sacred activism and environmental justice as a Bodhisattva practice with Rev. Chelsea MacMillan and Matthew Menzies 

Chelsea MacMillan is an interspiritual minister, the Senior Organizer at GreenFaith, and founder of Brooklyn Center for Sacred Activism. Between 2019-2021, she led direct actions and facilitated regenerative culture with Extinction Rebellion. You can find her writing in Order of the Sacred Earth by Matthew Fox, and at revchelseamac.substack.com.

Matthew—born in Harlem in ‘93, by way of Belize, Central America—is an indigenous Yucatac Mayan Activist-Organizer. Through his spiritual animist roots, formal training in Soto...

Recorded on April 27, 2025 at Millerton Zendo, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on May 10, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple, NY.

Guest Speaker, Willie Mukei Smith gave a powerful talk on based on the Bearing Witness to Racism Retreats in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, asking what kind of people of "the way" are we going to be? We are honored to share a recording of his talk on our podcast

Willie Mukei Smith is a Senior Student and Novice Zen Priest at The Village Zendo. He leads The People of Color Group at The Village Zendo and is a Member of the Buddhist Council NYC. Mukei is a Boar...

Recorded on May 3, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

The ground that we’re on, all the time, is one that has wounds in it. There are bodies in it, there are stories in it, there are injuries in it, wherever we’re moving.  The ground of our sangha has wounds in it. We’re going along, we think we’re fine, and then we trip, and there’s a gash in the ground. Our country, this country, the ground of this country has wounds in it. Big holes, gaping gashes in it. (…) What if we become all abou...

"Fields are greener in their description than they are in their actual greenness." - Fernando Pessoa

"Yes, we want to clarify the stories that are keeping us separate and maybe causing harm for ourselves and others. That doesn't mean that we don't need stories that support community that keep us in touch with ancestors that help us make meaning of the world. I think Pessoa is talking about the power of our descriptive faculty, our imagination to make meaning of greenfield that we experience. So I want to lift up both of those aspects of stories."

Selected quotes:

"Meditation is not about taming anything. It's about trusting. Trusting our bodies, trusting our breaths, trusting our minds, just trusting everything. And that releases tension. And when we do that we create the conditions to be able to see, or have the dharma reveal itself in the sitting." 

"Tension is karma in the form of the body."

"Something comes into our environment, and our body is fine with it, but our minds, or our histories, our experiences resist it. There’s almost like a body inside a body, or an egoic bod...

The intersection of mindfulness and the Bodhisattva practice of patience, as a physical, somatic practice.

Recorded at Millerton Zendo in Millerton NY on March 2, 2025.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on April 19, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple, Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on April 5, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on April 26, 2025 during the Three Day Sesshin at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on March 29, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on March 22, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple, Brooklyn, NY.

"What is the ground of my life? What am I really here for? What is the ground of our life together with all beings? How do I care for this ground?"

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on March 8, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

"Can we picture it? 100 years from now, 200 years from now (...) that 'operational worldview of interdependent thriving[1]' becomes the norm...becomes the ground that everybody stands on.

AND—I would say—that to get there, we have to include impermanence and not be afraid of it...and not be afraid of things changing, not be afraid of things shifting and becoming unfamiliar.  Right down to the stuff that we depend on and gives us comfort."

[1] From Norma Wong, When No Thing Works: A Zen and I...

Recorded on March 1, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple, NY.

"If we say there's a right, there must be a wrong? But if we say harmonious perspective, we can embody the middle path and we don't have to make others wrong. We have to figure out how we can be harmonious with other people that we interact with. It's a radically different approach. It's non-american, and if it's non-american, it means it's subversive. And if it's subversive, it means it could be transformative. And if it's transformative, it could be revolutionary." "Who are you? Are you who the society...

Recorded on February 22, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple, Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on February 23, 2025 at Millerton Zendo, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on February 15, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on February 8, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

"The whole point of Buddhist practice is so we can help people. That’s the whole point. We clean up our mess a little bit, open up our heart, and then we can extend our hand out into the world that is utterly insane. And we can go into the world without needing to dominate because we understand that we’re not separate and that everyone is suffering. This is the wellspring of joy". 

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the...

We had the honor of hosting Won Buddhist Minister, Rev. Doyeon Park, for our Saturday Morning Program. Her dharma talk explored what happens when we open ourselves up to our awareness of karma and causality. Recorded on February 1, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on January 25, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

"Reckoning with the fact that our time to be in an embodied form is limited is a A practice that helps us with what matters, what we feel responsible to, what we want to do with the limited time we have. even though it is uncomfortable…and how we care for ourselves around death."

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your gene...

Recorded on January 4, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on January 18, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

"The meaning of life is not something I can get, think, attain, gain, own or grasp. And until I'm totally here, in this moment, there is something really deep and important that I'm not really appreciating about being alive."

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on January 11, 2025 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on December 1, 2024 at Millerton Zendo in Millerton, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on November 23, 2024 at Ancestral Heart Temple in Millerton, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on December 7, 2024 during Rohatsu Sesshin at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on December 6, 2024 during Rohatsu Sesshin at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on November 23, 2024 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on November 17, 2024 at Millerton Zendo.

Our practice is to turn around and welcome what hurts, and when we do that, that’s healing—wholeness and healing.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on November 16, 2024 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on November 6, 2024 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

A reading to launch two new poetry books by BZC friends and acclaimed poets: Granny Cloud by Farnoosh Fathi and Through a Window by Zoketsu Norman Fischer. BZC Administrative Director Ryan Lee Wong reads from his novel, Which Side Are You On?, and the three discuss Zen, poetics, and Eihei Dogen’s “grandmotherly” or “parental” mind.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank...

Recorded at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY on November 9, 2024.

We’re going to heal through a community that is grounded in our non-separateness, in our tender vulnerable, non-separateness. A community that values human life, period. A community that can grieve. A community that accepts that sometimes we’re brokenhearted. A community that sees that the violence in our culture is not evenly distributed and that some of us are more vulnerable than others. 

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Cen...

Recorded at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY on November 2, 2024.

In our tradition, we lift up an understanding of impermanence and a close relationship with that, so that we also have a sense that we will be ancestors, that already there are descendants, seeds of them in our actions, in our decisions, in our efforts, and as a way to care for all of the living now, and all of those to come.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Ce...

Recorded at Millerton Zendo in Millerton NY on September 22, 2024.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded at Millerton Zendo in Millerton NY on September 8, 2024.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY on October 26, 2024.

"When buddhist modes of being becomes fused into the foundation, home becomes a refuge for healing."

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY on October 19, 2024.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY on October 12, 2024.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY on October 5, 2024.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to BZC at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY on July 27th, 2024.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to BZC at brooklynzen.org under 'Giving.' Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY on June 15th, 2024.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to BZC here. Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY on July 6th, 2024.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. Visit brooklynzen.org for more information. Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded as part of BZC’s Fall Practice Period at Boundless Mind Temple

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to BZC here. Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded as part of BZC's Fall Practice Period at Boundless Mind Temple

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to BZC here. Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded as part of BZC's Fall Practice Period at Boundless Mind Temple

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to BZC here. Thank you for your generosity!

"What is saying a word, when our foundation is sitting? What do we say - can you hear it?"

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to BZC here. Thank you for your generosity!

“The faith comes afterwards. It’s not like we have to muster a full body of faith until we go into practice. The practice and the faith happen together.”

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to BZC here. Thank you for your generosity!

"Practice, what's that? This is not practice, this is their lives, this is not just their way of living, this is the life that wells up within, the life that's forming and moving in the world. Your practice is your life. This is you living." 

This talk was offered as part of SZBA's Celebrating the Voices of Women in Buddhism series.

The Teaching of Thus: the Avatamsaka Sutra as a Root of Zen Practice

The Teaching of Thus: the Avatamsaka Sutra as a Root of Zen Practice

The Teaching of Thus: the Avatamsaka Sutra as a Root of Zen Practice.

The Teaching of Thus: the Avatamsaka Sutra as a Root of Zen Practice

The Teaching of Thus: the Avatamsaka Sutra as a Root of Zen Practice

"How is what it means to be human transformed, or expanded, by allowing or imagining another perspective?"

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to BZC here. Thank you for your generosity!

"Let the rage and the hurt and the righteous anger be one of the things that we affirm in this wide, life affirming embrace."

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to BZC here. Thank you for your generosity!

"Sometimes it can look like the project is not to feel and not to listen to pain. But can we start, instead, to regard our pain as a kind of superpower?"

"Let’s encourage each other to dance with our vows, to dance with the taste of our freedom."

"When you walk in the door for the first time, there is already an aspiration to free all beings from suffering. Within the beginner's mind is the Bodhisattva vow, which for us is the heart/mind, the motivation that allows us to sit and be uncomfortable, because within the vow there is a spark of our natural wish to care for other beings."

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to BZC here. Thank you for your generosity!

"In the stability of practice, we have to humanize everybody."

"Is the mind that we are living with going to be one of division and aggression? Are we going to give in to that mind? Or is there another mind? The mind of the whole earth, the mind of all beings that doesn't make those kinds of divisions?"

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. You can donate to BZC here. Thank you for your generosity!

"Sometimes, when we are trying to understand how to work with the suffering of the world, we might fall into the belief that, somehow, I need to build up an individual, personal capacity to hold all of the suffering of the world. Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara tried that, and her head and her arms exploded."

"We are all sensitive beings that are feeling everything that has happened."

"We train in stillness so that we can respond in the world with the possibility of healing things that previously haven't been healed."

"When we are sitting in confusion, instead of jumping to certainty, which is going to be rooted in fear, go to love—love for one's self first, as that confused being."

"The Bodhisattva vows are an affirmation of life. An open-hearted choice, a loving commitment to giving myself completely to this world of suffering with all beings."

"Though the conditioning of violence is thick—and it is old and sometimes it can feel calcified and intractable—it isn't. We are changeable, we can change ourselves, we can change how we think, we can change our habits. We can choose whether or not we are complicit in harming."

“The practice of equanimity is a practice of care, of bringing very close care to your body. What is happening right now as we sit? "

Dharma talk by Sarah Dōjin Emerson, 2023/12/09

"Each one of us has to figure out how to bring forth the wind of the Buddha house."

Dharma talk by Charlie Korin Pokorny, 2023/12/08

"If I am sitting to get something, I am not totally here. And so my love and my giving is not complete."

Dharma talk by Yoko Ohashi, 2023/12/07

"Rohatsu: this is how we are cultivating the sweetness of Buddha's fruit."

"When dualistic thinking comes up it is usually protective. We are using it as a defense, we are making the world smaller because we can't tolerate how it's messy and complex."

"Swimming in the water, there is no end to the water, no end to delusion. There is no end to swimming in enculturation and ancestral karma."

"Our deep, ongoing, loving critical inquiry is something we only do fully with the help of each other, by being open to how our interaction with others contributes to creating a community of ethical care."

“Sometimes we might think that to pay attention to our own, particular pain is too small to be part of caring for the world. But learning how to care for our own pain is how we train to care for the whole world.”

"In absolute truth, we are all one, we are all connected. What we think, what we speak, and what we act—all these things impact everyone in the world, everything in the world."

"Exploring the big dualities of separation, “self and the world/the other” and how in Dogen's Genjo Koan, there is the encouragement that the way for us to be more aligned with reality, and the truth and complexity of things, is to look at the delusions [like "self" and "other"] that we actually have, and to understand them."

"Systems of oppression keep us divided, keep us in fear of each other."

"The dualities that I suffer with—and that we collectively suffer with—are living in and through the body and my whole being."

"What is my relationship to that practice of doing actions and seeing actions through to their end? Like closing a door all the way or closing a drawer all the way? This opens up thick time and is a prelude to devotion and care because we enter into a different relationship with the world."

The BZC Summer Reading Program concluded in September with a conversation with Chenxing Han, author of  Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists. Dharma Teacher Sarah Dojin Emerson introduced the event, and Chenxing was in conversation with Kaishin Victory Matsui, Director of Ancestral Heart Temple.

In this brief introduction, which preceded a conversation with the BZC sangha at Boundless Mind Temple, Sarah Dōjin Emerson and Charlie Korin Pokorny talked about the theme for the Fall 2023 Ango: non-duality.

“Introducing a practice of building in rest — as a community and as a practice in engagement. What does it mean to pace ourselves, to live sustainably, to have engagement and intensity and also to have rest, ease, and time away?”

"Letting contradiction live is part of not making life small and allowing for complexity, a fuller sense of meaning and value."

"Caring for this posture: balanced, awake, present, and relaxing into stillness. In this practice I’m not trying to make anything happen—simply be present with what’s here. Trusting that this presence is, itself, a force of transformation."

"Are our thoughts or actions moving in the direction of healing the delusion of being separate? Or are they deepening that wound?"

BZC‘s administrative director Ryan Lee Wong in conversation with author Chenxing Han on her book one long listening: a memoir of grief, friendship, and spiritual care.

Image by Lan Le

"The truth in Zen is not something we can know, or grasp. But it’s a liberating truth, one that we experience in relationality—we open to it."