The Berkeley Zen Center Audio Archive

Serial: BZ-02857 The talk interprets “Things fall apart” through impermanence and non-self: zazen trains practitioners to meet instability without either grasping for control or withdrawing into indifference. Its image of the empty, flexible...

Serial: BZ-02855 The talk interprets Dōgen’s teaching that “the mind of a sentient being is difficult to change” through the Bodhisattva Never Disparaging: practice means not turning away from others and meeting them with respect grounded in...

Serial: BZ-02853 The talk argues that zendo forms and everyday routines are both expressions of practice: forms become meaningful through wholehearted enactment, while disciplined repetition can bring mindfulness and personal expression into...

Serial: BZ-02851 The talk presents zazen as a practice of waking up that changes one’s relationship to thought, discomfort, and ordinary responsibilities rather than providing escape from them. Through Blue Cliff Record case 32, “Elder Jo Stands...

Serial: BZ-02864 The talk presents Sangha as an expanding community of mutual practice and responsibility, grounded in friendship, discipline, democratic governance, and shared work. It extends belonging beyond formal Buddhist practitioners to...

Serial: BZ-02848 The talk presents the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta’s four establishments of mindfulness—body, feelings, mind, and mental objects—as an integrated practice combining śamatha (calm abiding) and vipaśyanā (insight). Repeated, moment-to-moment...

Serial: BZ-02846 The talk presents sesshin as concentrated, collective continuous practice, integrating zazen with work, meals, ritual, and ordinary activity. Its central practical question is “how”: how to meet each moment—including pain,...

Serial: BZ-02844 The talk presents bodhisattva precepts not as fixed commandments but as the lived expression of zazen and an intention to reduce harm and benefit all beings. It traces their grounding in sila, the Eightfold Path, Dōgen’s teaching...

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Serial: BZ-02836 Dōgen’s Fukanzazengi presents zazen not as a means to attain Buddhahood but as the practice-expression of Buddha nature. Through the “polishing a brick” kōan, the talk holds together acceptance of one’s present condition and...

Serial: BZ-02834 The talk presents Dōgen’s Fukanzazengi as an articulation of practice-realization: zazen does not produce enlightenment but expresses the enlightenment already inherent in practice. It examines non-thinking, “dropping off body...

Serial: BZ-02832 The talk presents alignment as a moment-to-moment practice of arranging body, attention, relationships, and social responsibility, while recognizing that order is perceptual and never fixed. Zazen cultivates responsive balance...

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Serial: BZ-02828 The talk frames skillful effort in the Eightfold Path as the careful use of life energy to respond to internal and external conditions. Organized as PACE—prevent unwholesome states, abandon those that arise, cultivate wholesome...

Serial: BZ-02826 The talk presents continuous practice (gyōji dōkan) as spiritual formation: practice links aspiration, action, realization, and daily life without interruption. Drawing on Sojin Roshi’s teaching, it shifts the central question...

Serial: BZ-02824 The talk interprets Suzuki Roshi’s “Supported from Within” through grief, zazen, and the continuing influence of teachers: practice internalizes the teacher’s guidance and cultivates confidence without reliance on external rescue...

Serial: BZ-02822 The talk centers on hai and hineni (“here I am”) as expressions of attentive presence and readiness to respond. In Zen practice, this means meeting each moment freshly—especially through zazen’s repeated return to attention—while...

Serial: BZ-02820 Part of a series of online gatherings where at each meeting three long time students of Sojun Roshi share their memories of him.  -

Serial: BZ-02817 The talk interprets Berkeley Zen Center’s mountain seat ceremony as both a leadership transition and a birth of new life: the incoming abbot inherits a lineage while expressing it in a distinct way. Its central teaching is that...

Serial: BZ-02815 Rehersal for Hozan Alan Senauke's Mountain Seat Ceremony.  -

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Serial: BZ-02811 Part of a series of online gatherings where at each meeting three long time students of Sojun Roshi share their memories of him.  -