"Systems of oppression keep us divided, keep us in fear of each other."

"The dualities that I suffer with—and that we collectively suffer with—are living in and through the body and my whole being."

"What is my relationship to that practice of doing actions and seeing actions through to their end? Like closing a door all the way or closing a drawer all the way? This opens up thick time and is a prelude to devotion and care because we enter into a different relationship with the world."

The BZC Summer Reading Program concluded in September with a conversation with Chenxing Han, author of  Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists. Dharma Teacher Sarah Dojin Emerson introduced the event, and Chenxing was in conversation with Kaishin Victory Matsui, Director of Ancestral Heart Temple.

In this brief introduction, which preceded a conversation with the BZC sangha at Boundless Mind Temple, Sarah Dōjin Emerson and Charlie Korin Pokorny talked about the theme for the Fall 2023 Ango: non-duality.

“Introducing a practice of building in rest — as a community and as a practice in engagement. What does it mean to pace ourselves, to live sustainably, to have engagement and intensity and also to have rest, ease, and time away?”

"Letting contradiction live is part of not making life small and allowing for complexity, a fuller sense of meaning and value."

"Caring for this posture: balanced, awake, present, and relaxing into stillness. In this practice I’m not trying to make anything happen—simply be present with what’s here. Trusting that this presence is, itself, a force of transformation."

"Are our thoughts or actions moving in the direction of healing the delusion of being separate? Or are they deepening that wound?"

BZC‘s administrative director Ryan Lee Wong in conversation with author Chenxing Han on her book one long listening: a memoir of grief, friendship, and spiritual care.

Image by Lan Le

"The truth in Zen is not something we can know, or grasp. But it’s a liberating truth, one that we experience in relationality—we open to it."