Claim OwnershipThe Zen Mountain Monastery Podcast
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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 Eight Gates training matrix.
514 Episodes
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Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 8/31/25 - Shugen Roshi introduces the theme of the MRO 90-day Fall Ango 2025 training period, "The Way of Everyday Life: Genjokoan."
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 8/30/25 - While many people search outside for the causes of feeling constrained and limited, the radical step toward transformation is to turn the light around. Coming close enough to see clearly our own constraining, deluded thinking—to see the truth in our own delusions— takes great courage and honesty. Before we can heal the world, we need to get clear about our own thinking and go beyond what appears to us as the limits of our freedom. This empowerment is always ultimately in our own hands. - From the Transmission of the Light, 32nd Zen Ancestor: Daoxin
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 8/24/25 - What is it to pass through something? Or to not pass through? In koan practice this image is utilized over and over again, and here a buddha made of wood cannot pass through a fire. To pass through or not presents a dilemma, the duality of good or bad, easy or difficult. How does the dharma help us to reach true freedom of mind? Shugen Roshi reminds us that suffering is always in the mind, and the end of suffering is the miraculous activity of our life itself. - Part 3 of 3. From the Blue Cliff Record, Case 96: Chao Chou's Three Turning Words
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 8/23/25 - The discriminating function of our minds has many benefits, and at the same time we need to reveal how it can become weaponized against ourselves. The furnace of a gold buddha might be seen as the more difficult entanglements of our lives, and yet within these circumstances we are empowered to completely transform the mind that resists and defends. Liberation takes determination and commitment to release our own obstructions. - Part 2 of 3. From the Blue Cliff Record, Case 96: Chao Chou's Three Turning Words
Danica Shoan Ankele, Osho - ZMM - 8/22/25 - As we practice over time, we mature in our practice and if we’re lucky we can also experience and appreciate that ripening in each other. Sharing the words of realized women and men from six centuries ago, Shoan Osho brings home our common commitment, shared questions and aspiration within ourselves and our dharma ancestors. Engaging our minds is the simple and direct way to deepen our understanding of our commonality, as well as our own unique ways of walking the Path.
Prabu Gikon Vasan, Senior Lay Student - ZMM - 8/21/25 - Understanding the many negations in the Heart Sutra, and the concept of “emptiness,” requires effort and faith. It asks us to examine what we take as true, and to verify that through practice. Buddhism does not limit this inquiry to abstract concepts; it directly engages our lived experiences and beliefs in order to ease suffering. If there is no value put on something--like a coin before it’s stamped--then what is it worth? Senior lay student Gikon takes up the path of practice, clarifying the essential teachings of form and emptiness.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 8/20/25 - In the language of koans, we are invited to step right into the embodied experience of the koan, which in this case is a Buddha made of mud which cannot pass through water. Can you immerse your mind in the muck and entanglement of a mud buddha? Is this mind trustworthy? To reveal our minds to ourselves, we can take up the method of focusing our own “miraculous awareness” within zazen, to bring forward the freedom and generosity to which we aspire. - Part 1 of 3. From the Blue Cliff Record, Case 96: Chao Chou's Three Turning Words
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 8/17/25 - Shugen Roshi reminds us that mind is the basis of all conflicted action, and so it is to mind that we direct our aspirations and intentions to bring goodness and ease into the world. Using mind to intentionally bring a joyful, generous state of being forward, as Shantideva’s verses encourage, can shift even the most divisive moments we encounter in our world of activity. Our willingness to practice this edge makes all the difference.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 8/10/25 - Living within the present world, surrounded by many acts of cruelty and hatred, each of us is called to recognize, liberate, and transform samsara as we are able to. The path to creating peace requires that we live within this reality, meeting our own strong emotions like frustration and despair and making use of the dharma to bring renewed energy and aspiration to the path. We can each ask: “What does my sphere of influence include?” What does this mind of practice encompass as a “Buddha Field,” and how within that reality can each of us serve?
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 8/3/25 - How do we meet our conscious mind, skillfully? Mind training offers us ways to see our self-centered thinking habits, meeting our minds directly, and using this quality to learn about ourselves and to experience humility. In this way, our capacity for compassion can increase and we can hold the world in an unconditional way. - From the Book of Serenity - Case 14 - "Attendant Huo Passes Tea"
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei - ZCNYC - 8/3/25 - Often overlooked, kinhin (walking meditation) is a most important, exquisite practice of the transition of rising up off our mountain seat and walking into our everyday lives in an undivided manner. How do we walk in accord with the Dharma—touching this great earth with wisdom and care, amidst all that life presents to us? Are we walking towards or away greater understanding? Are these different? Hojin Sensei begins by sharing her own daily ritual for maintaining harmony and offers the teaching of Master Dogen, "We must devote ourselves to a detailed study of this virtue of walking.”
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei - ZMM - 7/27/25 - The wisdom of our bodies can be invoked precisely because it is always present, within, as our inherent Buddha nature. How then does the bearing of the body at ease enable us to meet the cries of the world? What is it to be a noble being? And how, through practice, can we verify this for ourselves? Join Hojin Sensei for this Dharma talk at the end of Interdependence Sesshin.
Suzanne Taikyo Gilman, Senior Monastic - ZCNYC - 7/27/25 - Letting go of being right can be one of the hardest things to do. What happens if, instead of defending our views, we notice the suffering underneath and ask, Where is compassion right now? Becoming conscious through our zazen, on the street or in the zendo, allows us to heal ourselves and benefit others.
Danica Shoan Ankele, Osho - ZMM - 7/26/25 - Invoking is more than simply using words. It is bringing forth all of our life energy and intention in a way that is transformative. Liturgy can be an entryway to this whole-body practice, expanding and opening our consciousness. When free of storytelling about the “self,” we are not at all separated from that “vastness of mind” that pervades the whole universe. In this way we open our whole selves to giving—and receiving—a vast love for all the world.
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei - ZMM - 7/25/25 - What we do, how we use our minds and our time, can transform our lives. When we can quiet the constant referencing of a “self,” our internal preoccupations and obsessions, we begin to find the still point and rest there. In this Sesshin talk, Hojin Sensei invokes the stillness of a mountain range, and the stilling of turbid water as it settles, and the whole of reality that this can reveal.
Bear Gokan Bonebakker, Osho - ZMM - 7/24/25 - The wisdom aspects of the Eightfold Path include Right Intention, or Right Thought. What is it to take full responsibility for our lives by practicing our intentions, our thoughts? How do we access the joy and ease through the Path? We practice zazen as instructed, and we also have to study and understand the truth of cause and effect, action and result, to understand the power of Right Intention and it’s impact on our lives.
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei - ZCNYC - 7/20/25 - What is this we think of as ‘my body’? Hojin Sensei brings in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutra focusing on Buddha’s teaching to meditate on ‘the body in the body.’ Our culture already encourages a focus on the mind and the intellect, and because we’re educated to be in our heads, it can be really hard to include the body in our awareness as we’re developing the capacity for more presence. Hojin offers this talk as a tribute to poet and performance artist Andrea Gibson —who passed earlier this week— and delivers her poem, "I Sing the Body Electric, Especially When My Power’s Out."
Michelle Seigei Spark, Lay Senior MRO Student - ZMM - 7/20/25 - Our six senses can be an entry to the whole entire mind of practice and provide us direct dharma teachings of the world in which we exist. While our thinking minds might hurry right past what our senses are perceiving, we have the capacity to take in much more. Immersing ourselves in the wonders of sound, touch, taste—and even awareness of our aging bodies, illness, and the impermanence of all life—we can allow pure perception help consciousness shift.
Bear Gokan Bonebakker, Osho - ZMM - 7/13/25 - Many people describe a deep sense of “being home” when they arrive at a practice center. But how can we make the Noble Path our true home—wherever we are, whatever our circumstances? In this talk in his series on the Noble Eightfold Path, Gokan Osho reflects on the practice of Right Intention.
Sarah Taisho Sands, Senior Lay Student - ZCNYC - 7/13/25 - See the thought, acknowledge it, let it go. Almost everyone knows this central teaching on how to work with thoughts and ideas we get attached to or distracted by. Taisho looks at the many ways this can show up in our life away from the cushion, and how changing the emphasis from 'let it go' to 'let go of it' can give us a fresh perspective on its meaning. And perhaps most importantly, how letting go is intimately connected to what we can invite in, and the ways that can nurture compassion and break down barriers.
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