Zen Center of Los Angeles Podcast

What if the way we see the world is closer to a dream than we think? In this dharma talk, Head Teacher Sensei Katherine Senshin Griffith takes up Nansen and the Peonies, a Zen koan Hakuin counted among the hardest to pass through. A longtime student quotes a beautiful teaching to his teacher, Nansen (Nanquan): heaven, earth, and I share one root. Nansen points at the peonies in the garden and says people see these flowers as if in a dream. Senshin asks what it takes to see directly instead of...

We can all agree that life seems to be a mixed bag. There are blessings and there are unfortunate occurrences. There are days where everything feels like your good merit is coming to fruition and days where nothing seems to be going right. Master Yunmen, one of the most revered Chan masters of the Tang Dynasty, challenged his students to see that "every day is a good day," regardless of relative circumstances. This teaching can be found in Case 6 of the Blue Cliff Record koan collection, and ...

Here's a teisho (Dharma talk) from our archives by founding Abbot Maezumi Roshi. The recording was made in 1993 as Maezumi Roshi was about to depart for a teaching tour. He left the sangha with some reflections on Sandokai: Identity of Relative and Absolute. Maezumi had given two series of talks on this topic previously, once in 1973 and again in 1988. We're posting this talk in conjunction with our current summer intensive which also focuses on Sandokai, in part by making use of these record...

"Here there is aim, but no target. So we just sit in the midst of this contradiction." In this Dharma talk, delivered during our Sunday program, Sensei Dharma-Joy illuminates the agenda-less goal of zazen practice. Whether we are counting the breaths, doing shikantaza, or working with koans, he says, our task is not to contemplate, solve a problem, or meditate on any thing because this enacts a separation. “We’re just letting go. And in letting go, we can just be completely present, and...

Today we're inaugurating a new podcast series we're calling LA Zen: a series of conversations with Buddhist practitioners investigating the question(s) of how to live in these times (of poly-crisis) and in this place (of Los Angeles) without falling into despair on one side, or let's say self-satisfaction on the other. Our first guest is Bill Earth-Mirror Corcoran. When Earth-Mirror received his English language dharma name from Roshi Egyoku Nakao around the turn of the century, the meaning c...