The Berkeley Zen Center Audio Archive

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Showing 3309 talks

Title	Speaker	Date
Cultivating Equanimity Serial: BZ-03387 The talk presents equanimity as an embodied, responsive presence cultivated through continuous practice, not emotional suppression or indifference. Situated within the four Brahma Viharas, it entails intimacy with feelings and... *Equanimity, Zazen, Skillful Means*	Kristin Diggs	Sep 12 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
The Four Great Awarenesses Serial: BZ-03386 The talk reframes the Four Noble Truths as four great awarenesses: suffering as change and dissatisfaction; its causes in one’s responses and attempts to escape discomfort; the possibility of its cessation; and the Eightfold Path... *Suffering, Practice Period, Zazen*	Peter Overton	Sep 05 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Deepening Practice Serial: BZ-03385 -	Linda Galijan	Aug 29 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Wood and Lineage Serial: BZ-03384 The talk examines Soto Zen lineage as a historically entangled network rather than a self-contained transmission: trade, political patronage, and cross-cultural contact shape the institutions and objects through which the... *Japan, Soto Zen, Karma*	Dana Takagi	Aug 22 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Reflecting on Buddha Nature Serial: BZ-03060 The talk presents Buddha nature not as a separate, idealized inner quality but as the connective capacity to notice experience, recognize what is absent or needed, and respond appropriately. Zazen practice extends beyond the... *Buddha Nature, Family Practice, Zazen*	Marie Hopper	Aug 15 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Showing Up To Your Life Serial: BZ-03269 The talk presents Zen practice as sustained participation in interconnected life: establishing a workable rhythm, showing up regularly, and contributing through shared tasks make practice concrete both inside and outside the... *Community, Ceremony, Suffering*	Sue Oehser	Aug 08 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Practicing Equanimity Serial: BZ-03268 The talk presents equanimity as a balanced responsiveness grounded in karma: actions of body, speech, and mind shape experience, while wishes alone cannot control outcomes. Rather than indifference or withdrawal, equanimity... *Equanimity, Suffering, Ceremony*	Linda Galijan	Aug 01 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Back to Basics Serial: BZ-03267 The talk presents Zen practice as a return to basics: rather than trying to control the mind or attain enlightenment, practitioners make room for present experience and verify Buddhist teachings through practice. Zazen also... *Enlightenment, Chanting, Zazen*	Laurie Senauke	Jul 25 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Plunge Into Sangha Serial: BZ-03266 The talk presents sangha as an essential, co-equal refuge with Buddha and Dharma, sustained through shared activity rather than zazen alone. Drawing on Dōgen’s Genjō Kōan, it frames cooking, serving oryoki, cleaning, and...	Zenshin Greg Fain	Jul 18 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Simply Continue Serial: BZ-03265 The talk reads the closing lines of the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi as an instruction to practice continuously and unobtrusively, without striving or self-calculation. Tassajara’s fire-damaged zendo illustrates how forms... *Buddha Nature, Continuous Practice, Sandokai*	Gendo Lucy Xiao	Jul 11 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
What Is It? Serial: BZ-03264 The talk presents “Zen 2.0” as the confluence of distinct Zen traditions—Japanese Soto and Rinzai, Korean Seon, Chinese Chan, and Vietnamese Thiền—without erasing their differences. Its central practice is sustained, open-ended... *Community, Poetry, Sangha*	Mushim Patricia Ikeda	Jun 27 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Connection is the First Noble Truth Serial: BZ-03263 The talk reframes the First Noble Truth—not as a replacement for the Buddha’s teaching of suffering, but as a personal interpretation—in terms of interconnection: recognizing how deluded views of a separate, fixed self generate... *Buddha Nature, Suffering, Bodhisattva*	Ryushin Andrea Thach	Jun 20 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
It’s Not What You Think (Day 5 Sesshin) Serial: BZ-03262 -	Linda Galijan	Jun 14 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Thinking, Not-thinking, Non-thinking (Day 4 Sesshin) Serial: BZ-03261 The talk interprets Dōgen’s Fukanzazengi as joining precise bodily forms with “think not-thinking” (hishiryō): zazen neither suppresses thought nor follows it, but allows thoughts to arise and pass. Formal practice creates a... *Zazen, Suzuki Roshi, Dogen*	Linda Galijan	Jun 13 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
The Gift of Losing Things (Day 3 Sesshin) Serial: BZ-03260 The talk presents Zen practice as the continual practice of losing: meeting impermanence and grief without rejecting experience or hardening the heart. Reading Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” alongside Dōgen’s Genjō Kōan, it holds... *Tassajara, Koan, Poetry*	Colleen Busch	Jun 12 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
The Form of Zazen as Actualization of True Reality (Day 2 Sesshin) Serial: BZ-03259 The talk presents zazen as the immediate actualization of Buddha nature: practice neither pursues mental purity nor rejects arising thoughts, but notices and releases grasping and aversion. Reading Dōgen’s Fukan Zazengi alongside... *Buddha Nature, Suzuki Roshi, Zazen*	Linda Galijan	Jun 11 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Tending the Garden of Sesshin Practice (Day 1 sesshin) Serial: BZ-03258 The talk frames sesshin as sustained cultivation: practice requires daily attention, and its harmony emerges through attending both to individual characteristics and to relationships within the sangha. Drawing on Suzuki Roshi and... *Suzuki Roshi, Enlightenment, Koan*	Linda Galijan	Jun 10 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Love is All We Ever Talk About Serial: BZ-03257 The talk presents Zen practice as the gradual loosening of attachment to personal stories, opinions, and reactive thoughts, enabling greater presence and openness to others. Through observing bodily sensations and repeatedly... *Study*	Ellen Webb	Jun 06 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
The Koan of Everyday Life (Class 5 of 5) Serial: BZ-03006 The talk reads Dōgen’s Genjōkōan through the interdependence of time, being, and particular circumstances: practice and realization occur in the present, as each person responds to the myriad things. It also stresses that... *Dogen, Dharma Position, Koan*	Shinshu Roberts	Jun 04 2026 Class 5 of 5 Berkeley Zen Center
Buckets of Loss and the Joy Train Serial: BZ-03256 The talk presents awakening as recurring openness to impermanence, loss, and interdependence rather than a permanent state. Through Dōgen’s Genjō Kōan, formal practices of vow renewal and oryoki, and experiences of grief,... *Dogen, Koan, Sangha*	Colleen Busch	May 30 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
The Koan of Everyday Life (Class 4 of 4) Serial: BZ-03005 The talk concludes a study of Dōgen’s Genjō Kōan, presenting practice as the immediate enactment of nonduality by a limited, impermanent self: realization is not separate from everyday activity, and Buddha-nature does not... *Koan, Buddha Nature, Soto Zen*	Linda Galijan	May 28 2026 Class 4 of 4 Berkeley Zen Center
Everything I Encounter is My Life Itself Serial: BZ-03057 The talk interprets Dōgen’s Genjō Kōan as the realization of nonduality through ordinary activity: practice does not produce Buddha nature but gives it expression, as self and world actualize one another. Practice consists in... *Study, Koan, Practice Period*	Linda Galijan	May 23 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
The Koan of Everyday Life (Class 3 of 4) Serial: BZ-03004 The talk reads the second paragraph of Dōgen’s Genjō Kōan as a teaching on selfing and nondual realization: carrying the self toward phenomena is delusion, while allowing phenomena to come forth and “experience themselves” is... *Delusion, Koan, Enlightenment*	Linda Galijan	May 21 2026 Class 3 of 4 Berkeley Zen Center
No Water, No Moon Serial: BZ-03254 The talk reads Chiyono’s “No Water, No Moon” as an account of awakening through wholehearted practice within ordinary labor, rather than through special circumstances. Its images of the broken bucket and disappearing moon frame... *Koan, Buddha Nature, Enlightenment*	Colleen Busch	May 16 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
The Koan of Everyday Life (Class 2 of 4) Serial: BZ-03003 The talk reads the opening passages of Dōgen’s Genjō Kōan as three complementary ways of seeing: phenomena as distinct, as empty of fixed self and interdependent, and beyond the opposition between the many and the one. Practice... *Delusion, Hate, Heart Sutra*	Linda Galijan	May 14 2026 Class 2 of 4 Berkeley Zen Center
Nothing is Hidden Serial: BZ-03253 The talk reads Dōgen’s Genjōkōan and Sandōkai as describing self-study, forgetting the self, and realization as simultaneous rather than sequential. Through the shuso’s entering ceremony and reflections on identity, belonging,... *Study, Koan, Sandokai*	Mary Duryee	May 09 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
The Koan of Everyday Life (Class 1 of 4) Serial: BZ-03002 The talk frames Dōgen’s Genjō Kōan as an inquiry into how practice-realization manifests in ordinary life, not only in zazen. Its central teaching holds particularity and interdependence together: each phenomenon occupies its own... *Koan, Dogen, Class*	Linda Galijan	May 07 2026 Class 1 of 4 Berkeley Zen Center
Practice and Everyday Life Serial: BZ-03252 The talk presents Dōgen’s Genjō Kōan as the koan of everyday life: practice realizes the unity of absolute and relative reality through ordinary activity, relationships, and ethical conduct. The practice period therefore... *Practice Period, Koan, Zazen*	Linda Galijan	May 02 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Inside the Flower Garland Sutra (Book Talk) Serial: BZ-03251 The talk presents Huayan’s Flower Garland tradition as a practice of seeing abundance, interdependence, and the significance of particular actions. It connects these teachings to mutual aid, nonviolence, and care in collective... *Sangha, Liberation, Community*	Ben Connelly	Apr 30 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
What Does it Mean to Be a Zen Priest? Serial: BZ-03250 The talk interprets priest ordination as a communal enactment of the bodhisattva precepts, in which ceremony, vows, and lineage make gratitude, repentance, renunciation, and service concrete. A Zen priest is not defined by a... *Priest, Ceremony, Ordination*	Linda Galijan	Apr 25 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Mindfulness in a Time of Muck Serial: BZ-03274 The talk argues that mindfulness and sangha practice can meet contemporary “muck”—including polarization, oppression, war, and inequality—by joining personal practice with compassionate, engaged action. It proposes community... *Community, Sangha, Generosity*	Rhonda Magee	Apr 18 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Miraculous Stories of the Buddha’s Birth Serial: BZ-03055 The talk presents the Buddha’s miraculous birth narratives as expressions of devotion to an extraordinary teacher understood both as human and transcendent. It recounts his bodhisattva lifetimes, Queen Maya’s dream, the birth... *Wisdom, Great compassion, Emptiness*	Linda Galijan	Apr 11 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Awakening to Full Aliveness Serial: BZ-03249 The talk presents an engaged, restorative interpretation of the Four Noble Truths: recognize harm, investigate its causes and conditions, support individual and collective agency, and follow the Eightfold Path toward wholeness.... *Eightfold Path, Suffering, Soto Zen*	Lien Shutt	Apr 04 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
The 10,000 Marks of Existence (Women’s Sit) Serial: BZ-03248 -	Kristin Diggs	Mar 29 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Fire, No Kings, and Being OK and Not-OK Serial: BZ-03247 The talk uses the burning of Tassajara’s zendo and the No Kings demonstrations to examine how Zen practice holds grief, fear, and injustice without denying their reality or becoming overwhelmed by them. It frames this as an... *Suffering, Practice Period, Sangha*	Linda Galijan	Mar 28 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Regulate Your (Unregulatable) Life Serial: BZ-03246 The talk presents Zen practice as a balance between regulating life through discipline and ritual, and relinquishing control over what arises. Drawing on Dōgen’s commentary and teachings attributed to Dongshan, Yunmen, and Master... *Zazen, Effort, Dongshan*	Hondo Dave Rutschman	Mar 21 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Practicing the Precepts in Dangerous Times Serial: BZ-03245 The talk argues that in dangerous times, Buddhist precepts offer a basis for acting from vow rather than habitual karma. Through zazen, practitioners observe and release anger without denying harm, while recognizing... *Karma, Precepts, War*	Karen Sundheim	Mar 14 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Practicing the Bodhisattva Precepts (Class 2 of 4) Serial: BZ-03008 The class examines the three bodily precepts—non-killing, non-stealing, and non-misusing sexuality—as practices of attention to how desire, aversion, and perceived lack shape harm. Through Bodhidharma’s One Mind Precepts and... *Precepts, Study, Class*	Karen Sundheim	Mar 12 2026 Class 2 of 4 Berkeley Zen Center
Reflections on the Mountain Seat Serial: BZ-03244 -	Linda Galijan	Mar 07 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Practicing the Bodhisattva Precepts (Class 1 of 4) Serial: BZ-03007 The class frames the Bodhisattva precepts as living vows that redirect habitual karma rooted in greed, hate, and delusion, rather than as fixed prohibitions. It links their practical application to Mahayana skillful means,... *Precepts, Class, Jukai*	Karen Sundheim	Mar 05 2026 Class 1 of 4 Berkeley Zen Center
Prelude to the Mountain Seat Serial: BZ-03243 -	Hoitsu Suzuki Roshi	Feb 28 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
The Buddha’s Final Reflections on Life and Practice Serial: BZ-03242 The talk reads the Pali Mahāparinibbāna Sutta as the Buddha’s effort to prepare the sangha for his death: practitioners must rely on themselves and the Dharma, cultivate the 37 factors of awakening, and persist in practice amid... *Nirvana, Happiness, Suffering*	Linda Galijan	Feb 21 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
The Heart in the Heart Sutra Serial: BZ-03241 The talk reads the Heart Sutra as a living practice rather than a philosophical artifact: its wisdom is enacted through faith, renunciation, chanting, and embodied practice, not exhausted by conceptual understanding. Through... *Heart Sutra, Suffering, Wisdom*	Mark Copithorne	Feb 14 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Caring for Zazen Serial: BZ-03240 The talk reframes the question “How is your zazen?” as “How am I taking care of zazen?”: attending to bodily arrival, sensory and informational inputs, and a non-grasping relationship to thought supports beginner’s mind as a... *Zazen, Suzuki Roshi, Buddha Nature*	Eli Brown-Stevenson	Feb 07 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Appropriate Response (Class 4 of 4) Serial: BZ-02950 Class on Appropriate Response: Speech as a Field of Intimate Practice The class treats difficult conversation as a field of intimate practice: first assess whether speaking is useful, then approach it with curiosity, clarity, groundedness, and attention to power and harm. Active listening,... *Listening, Class*	Linda Galijan	Feb 05 2026 Class 4 of 4 Berkeley Zen Center
practicing with illness and the eight qualities of a great person Serial: BZ-02949 The talk presents sudden illness as a practice of loss, letting go, and adapting to an altered life. Through Dōgen’s eight qualities of a great person, it emphasizes few desires, knowing what is enough, quietude, compassion,... *Compassion, Zazen, Wisdom*	Carol Paul	Jan 31 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Appropriate Response (Class 3 of 4) Serial: BZ-03001 Class on Appropriate Response: Speech as a Field of Intimate Practice The class connects the five skandhas with the “feelings” and “identity” conversations in Difficult Conversations, emphasizing how bodily sensation, interpretation, and conditioned mental formations shape difficult exchanges. It... *Five Skandhas, Emotions, Consciousness*	Linda Galijan	Jan 30 2026 Class 3 of 4 Berkeley Zen Center
Buddha Sutras Are All the Worlds in the 10 Directions Serial: BZ-03052 Dōgen’s “Buddha Sutras” presents sutras not as written texts alone but as the whole field of experience: teachers, practice, realization, and all worlds in the ten directions. Aspiration, continuous practice, and enlightenment... *Dogen, Enlightenment, Lotus Sutra*	Linda Galijan	Jan 24 2026 Berkeley Zen Center
Appropriate Response (Class 2 o f4) Serial: BZ-03000 Class on Appropriate Response: Speech as a Field of Intimate Practice The class applies the Heart Sutra’s teaching on emptiness to difficult conversations: because the causes and conditions shaping a conflict are not fixed, responses can change and reduce suffering. Drawing on a communication... *Suffering, Doubt, Class*	Linda Galijan	Jan 23 2026 Class 2 Berkeley Zen Center
I’m Nobody, Who Are You? Serial: BZ-03239 The talk interprets Kakuan’s ten Oxherding Pictures as a spiral of practice rather than a linear path to completion: practitioners repeatedly encounter searching, insight, discipline, emptiness, and compassionate return to... *Enlightenment, Wisdom, Compassion*	Penelope Thompson	Jan 17 2026 Berkeley Zen Center

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