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Brooklyn Zen Center
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Recorded on February 7, 2026 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.
Resources:
• Podcast about collective action in Minnesota:
• How to Survive the End of the World: An Emergency Dispatch from Occupied Minneapolis: "Intense, Frightening, Surreal and Inspiring."
• Movement Memos: Minneapolis Community Defense is "Riding on the Learning Edge of a Whirlwind"
• Norma Wong's new book "Who We Are Becoming Matters"
• And the poem played at the end fo the talk in their own voice- "I am about to do a new thing" by ALOK Viad-Menon
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 January 31, 2026 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 January 17, 2026 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.
Resources Referenced in This Talk
Article by Liz Bucar
"Proof" by Cornelius Eady
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 January 10, 2026 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.
In this talk, Sarah Dōjin Emerson and Charlie Korin Pokorny explore the Zen tradition of writing death poems in the new year. They share historical examples from Zen masters as well as contemporary poems, inviting us to engage with impermanence and clarify what matters most in our lives.
We invite you to write and share your own death poem with the sangha. Click here for details on how to submit.
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 13, 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 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 Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!er ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!
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 you!). You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!
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 Wong
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 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://julieanelson.com/2024/11/21/practicing-safe-zen/
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 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!
Our being in the world – and our karmic orientations in everything that is happening – is what makes the world around us what it is.
Reflections on Resistance and Pipeline 3: a share by Yoko Ohashi and Koan Anne Brink
How do we work through our pain, through our numbness? How do we regain a sense of aliveness?
This darkness, this mystery of who we are, and how we are together, and how we are being influenced all the time, is to be honored and to be listened to, and is necessary for our wholeness.
In the way of the Buddha, karma is always in the background. It’s like the little key that unlocks all these teachings. When you kind of understand that, as I’m sure many of you do, when we understand that karma is such an important teaching, it unlocks all these teachings. This is the teaching of karma.
[We can think of] these arising traumas, these beings as I like to think of them, as survival strategies of our ancestors. So fear, anxiety, anger, rage, or joy – these are blood memories. And we all have them, we all carry them. And if we can open them up, see and work with them, we can transform them; we can see what the wisdom is there for us.








