Claim OwnershipZen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks
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© 2026 Zen Community of Oregon
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New podcasts every Tues, Thurs and Sat. Here you can find talks from various teachers involved with the Zen Community of Oregon. We share talks from our retreats, as well as our different weekly offerings between Great Vow Zen Monastery and Heart of Wisdom Zen Temple.
Zen Community of Oregon's purpose is to express and make accessible the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha’s teachings, as transmitted through an authentic, historical lineage. To support and maintain Zen Buddhist practice in order to realize and actualize our Buddha nature in everyday life.
For more information, please visit zendust.org.
Zen Community of Oregon's purpose is to express and make accessible the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha’s teachings, as transmitted through an authentic, historical lineage. To support and maintain Zen Buddhist practice in order to realize and actualize our Buddha nature in everyday life.
For more information, please visit zendust.org.
751 Episodes
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In this New Year Dharma talk, Kisei reflects on the Zen koan of stepping from the top of the hundred-foot pole, exploring what it means to move from insight into lived, embodied practice. Weaving together koans, tarot imagery, and reflections on aspiration, habit energy, and curiosity, she invites listeners to examine where they hold back from life and how playful, resourceful engagement can become a path of awakening. Through images of the Fool, the lotus in fire, and the bodhisattva archetypes, the talk encourages a wholehearted leap into intimacy with experience and a renewed connection to personal vow as the year begins.
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In this retreat talk, Jogen explores the inner disturbance that drives spiritual practice and the ways mistaken perception, fixed beliefs, and self-image shape our suffering. Drawing on Zen teachings, poetry, and personal reflection, he examines how we live in mental representations rather than direct experience, and how practice invites us to shed accumulated knowledge and see more clearly. The talk points to deep yielding and decisive, wholehearted engagement as gateways to freedom, inviting practitioners to soften resistance, question the reality of the separate self, and fully inhabit the living moment of practice as it unfolds. This is talk 4 of the 2026 Dharma Gates Retreat.
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In this opening talk of a series, Hogen introduces the Dharma as a practical path for transforming life’s challenges into wisdom, compassion, and clarity. Drawing on the Four Noble Truths, he reframes suffering as “challenge” and emphasizes that everything in our inner life is workable when met directly. The talk focuses on cultivating a clear mind through slowing down, presence, and discernment, learning to distinguish facts from problems, and understanding what is truly ours to carry. With humor and plainspoken examples, Hogen outlines how practice helps us meet fear, confusion, and dissatisfaction at the root—laying the foundation for real, lived transformation rather than quick fixes or abstract solutions. From Heart of Wisdom Sunday night on January 11, 2026.
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In this talk, Kisei explores the Bodhisattva path as a life oriented toward love for the world and responsiveness to suffering. Drawing on Mahayana teachings, Shantideva’s Way of the Bodhisattva, and contemporary reflections, she distinguishes between boundless compassion as our true nature and active compassion as a practice we cultivate. Introducing the “five compassions”—wise, fierce, patient, joyful, and unified—Kisei offers practical guidance for living the Bodhisattva vow with discernment, humility, and sustainability, while avoiding the pitfalls of burnout, righteousness, and pity. The talk invites practitioners to embody compassion in ways that are grounded, aligned, and responsive to real conditions.
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In this retreat talk, Jogen explores love, yielding, and aimlessness as essential dimensions of Zen practice. Beginning with love as the ground of awakening—from kindness toward oneself to devotion to ending suffering—he offers practical guidance for integrating warmth, relaxation, and embodied presence into meditation. The talk unpacks distraction and return as the natural texture of practice, introduces the Mahayana teachings of signlessness, wishlessness, and aimlessness, and points to how releasing the habit of striving opens timelessness and freedom. Throughout, Jogen emphasizes sincere effort, deep yielding to the present moment, and the way an awakened heart-mind naturally interpermeates and benefits the wider world. This is talk 3 of the 2026 Dharma Gates retreat at Great Vow.
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This talk explores the Buddhist teaching of impermanence as the foundation of liberation and ethical living. Reflecting on the meaning of a “new year,” it examines how fixed ideas about self, time, and identity create suffering, and how seeing the fluid, moment-to-moment nature of experience opens creativity, responsibility, and freedom. Through teachings on letting go, vow, and integrity, the talk invites practitioners to align their deepest intentions with daily life, discovering how personal practice naturally becomes service to the world.
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In this opening retreat talk, Jogen explores the nature of effort in zazen, describing practice as a living, responsive correction of the mind’s continual drift from intimacy with body, breath, and present awareness. Using the image of driving a car, he shows how meditation requires both gentle steadiness and, at times, wholehearted intensity, always guided by sincerity rather than force. He unpacks the “discriminating itch” that divides experience into right and wrong, and invites practitioners to trust their innate diamond wholeness and big tender heart through unwavering attention, prayer, reflection on impermanence and death, and a deep commitment to stay on the path that leads beyond habitual suffering into freedom. This is talk 1 of the 2026 Dharma Gates retreat at Great Vow Zen Monastery.
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In this opening sesshin talk, Jogen welcomes practitioners into the deep work of gathering the heart and aligning with true nature through the simple, demanding forms of Zen retreat. He speaks of awakening as the end of unnecessary suffering and the discovery of a deeper truth than personality, a shared root of all beings that softens division and reveals a “diamond kinship” with life. Emphasizing both character formation and mind training, he encourages sincerity, steadiness, relaxation, and intimate attention to the breath, reminding us that we need not be perfect or special to practice—only willing. Through yielding to structure, meeting ourselves honestly, and trusting the immediacy of this very moment, we cultivate freedom, compassion, and the clarity that naturally serves the world. This is from the 2026 Dharma Gates at Great Vow Zen Monastery.
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In this New Year’s talk, Hogen reflects on impermanence as the ground of freedom, showing how the fluid, flickering nature of body, mind, and world makes transformation always possible. Through the traditional elements of letting go, clarifying vow, and living with ethical integrity, he points to the deep creativity inherent in each moment and the unique aspiration alive in every person. By trusting direct experience, releasing fixed self-images, and aligning our actions with our deepest heart, we discover that a new year is not merely a date on a calendar, but an ever-present opportunity to awaken, to serve, and to allow the world itself to become a place of greater clarity, kindness, and possibility.
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Drawing on the teaching “Appreciate Your Life” from Taizan Maezumi Roshi, Jomon weaves together the Zen story of Gensha with the lives and insights of Carl Rogers, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Marsha Linehan, showing how trust in direct experience, mindful presence, and compassion reveal the same truth across traditions. Through breath, awareness, and the courage to meet life as it is, she points to a lived understanding that this very life is the life of Buddha, that each moment is complete, and that learning to rest in “this is it” allows gratitude, healing, and confidence in our own true nature to naturally arise. This talk was given at the Plum Blossom Zendo in Vancouver, WA.
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In this talk on the Faith in Mind chant, Jogen explores acceptance, frictionlessness, and the deeper wisdom that lives beneath ordinary discriminating thought. He reflects on how suffering arises from clinging to opinions, identities, and habitual stances, and how Zen practice reveals a naturally fluid, responsive mind that does not grind against experience. Pointing to prajna—intelligence before thought—he invites us to trust the heart-mind that meets each moment freshly, allowing action and understanding to arise from the bare ground of presence rather than from fear, preconception, or self-doubt. This talk was given at Heart of Wisdom Zen Temple on December 17 2025.
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In this closing sesshin talk, Hogen reflects on faith not as belief, but as the lived courage to step into the unknown moment by moment. He speaks of karma as an unfolding stream, of practice as learning to trust the next step without grasping at outcomes, and of life’s purpose as simply being fully alive in what is. Through images of walking, breathing, and letting go of fixed identity, he points to a deep confidence in the present moment and in the heart’s aspiration, inviting us to meet the future with clarity, curiosity, and a faith grounded in direct experience.
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In this Rohatsu sesshin talk, Chozen reflects on awakening, silent mind, and the constructed personality that both protects and confines us. Drawing on the Buddha’s own awakening, the teaching of “don’t-know mind” from Seung Sahn Sunim, Eckhart Tolle’s modern account of disidentification from thought, and the koan of Isan tipping over the water bottle, she points to the moment when thinking falls away and original mind reveals itself—vast, intimate, and free from entanglement. The invitation is to trust this silence, let personality become optional, and allow awakening to flow through the body and into everyday life.
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In this talk, Jogen reflects on joy not as something to be manufactured, but as a natural expression that arises when we stop getting in the way of our own experience. Drawing from Zen practice and everyday life, he explores several forms of joy: the brightness of nowness and sensory vividness, the steadiness of samadhi, the intimacy of non-separation, the ease of a clean conscience, the warmth of an undefended heart, and the quiet fulfillment that comes from generosity. Together, these point to a joy that is not dependent on circumstances, but emerges from presence, ethical clarity, and a mind at rest in itself. This talk was given at Heart of Wisdom Zen temple of December 10 2025.
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What is here before the mind contracts around thought, identity, or effort? This talk points to the moment prior to grasping—where awareness is open, unconfined, and quietly alive—and offers guidance on recognizing and resting in that simplicity.
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In this talk, Kodo reflects on Faith in Mind as a teaching on living with uncertainty and relinquishing judgment, comparison, and fixed views. Drawing on Dōgen, early Buddhist teachings, and reflections from contemporary teachers, she explores how practice shifts us from self-centered thinking into direct awareness, where impermanence is lived rather than conceptualized. Through sustained meditation, ethical living, and sangha engagement, we gradually loosen the grip of the small self and discover a boundless, compassionate mind capable of meeting life’s difficulties with clarity, purpose, and care for others.
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In this wide-ranging talk, Jogen explores spaciousness as a direct and liberating dimension of Zen practice, drawing from his own experience and from Zen and Dzogchen teachings. He reflects on how awareness of space—physical, experiential, and unconfined—can soften fixation, interrupt grasping, and provide refuge amid pain, anxiety, and self-contraction. Through stories, humor, and guided practice, he offers practical ways to cultivate intimacy with space in meditation and daily life, emphasizing that spaciousness is not an altered state but an ever-present ground that welcomes all experience and allows wisdom, compassion, and ease to arise naturally.
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In this Rohatsu Sesshin talk, Chozen reflects on the meaning of awakening—not as a one-time event, but as an ongoing opening into reality beyond self, time, and conceptual division. Drawing on classic Zen stories, Dōgen’s teaching of non-thinking, and stages of meditative settling described in the Chan tradition, she explores how sustained concentration and a quiet, even silent mind allow the constructed sense of self to loosen and fall away. Through vivid examples, humor, and practical guidance, the talk emphasizes awakening as something that must be clarified, embodied, and continually refined through committed practice, ethical living, and ongoing housecleaning of habitual patterns—revealing a way of being aligned with impermanence, intimacy, and boundless clarity.
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In this Rahatsu talk, Jomon tells the story of Siddhartha Gautama’s path to awakening, tracing his journey from royal luxury through extreme asceticism to the discovery of the Middle Way. Drawing on early Buddhist sutras and later mythic imagery, she explores the pivotal moments of nourishment, resolve, confrontation with Mara, and touching the earth as witness. The talk highlights the Four Noble Truths as lived insight rather than doctrine and emphasizes awakening as something inseparable from the great earth and all beings—an inheritance not reserved for the Buddha alone, but available to us through our own sincere practice.This talk was given at the Plum Blossom Zendo in Vancouver, WA on December 2, 2025.
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In this talk, Jogen responds to a request to explore Zen practice in relation to seasonal affective disorder and low-level depression, while distinguishing these experiences from deeper spiritual “descents” that can arise through sincere practice. Reflecting on impermanence, the “two arrows” of suffering, and being taken for a ride by conditions, he invites us to meet low mood without resistance, interpretation, or self-judgment. Through Zazen, gratitude practice, and a willingness to stay close to direct experience, even states like sadness, grayness, and powerlessness can become gateways to wisdom, intimacy, and a deeper trust in life as it is. This talk was given at Heart of Wisdom on the Wednesday night program.
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