The BZC audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support BZC, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

The BZC audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support BZC, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

Where is balance? I know from my years of yoga: you can’t hold balance.  Balance is found each moment. And the very moment that you feel like you’re falling over, is the moment of balance. When you’re leaning against something or holding onto something…that’s leaning against, or holding on. Balance is this moment right before free-fall.

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

When we observe sentient beings with eyes of compassion and that observation becomes whole hearted, each sentient being becomes a door to the Dharma. And when that door opens and we realize what we are being shown that is wisdom.

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

No matter what comes, we welcome it. This is the way of Buddha. Whatever comes, welcome it. No matter how it looks, welcome it. And in fact, in reality, whatever comes you do welcome it. That’s your original nature.

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

Each of us has the job of being the person that the universe makes us and doing that completely involves listening to the cries of the world. I can’t be fully me without listening to everybody else. Because everybody else is included in me.

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

Dharma talk offered by Laura O’Loughin during the one-day sit at Brooklyn Zen Center on May 19, 2018.

Compassion, as we practice it in Buddhism, is the most radical act a human being can do – as well as the most natural. […] In Buddhism […] we say that our natural state of being is compassion and wisdom. And what we are doing in this practice is asking ourselves to come home to ourselves, to our heart, to our birthright. So it’s an act of regaining our dignity as human beings. And then, when we regain our dignity, offering that dignity to others. As the Dalai Lama puts it: “make our own heart our temple.” So what would it be like to walk around with your heart as your temple?

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

In order to get free in this human life we have to meet these parts that are really broken at times. They are not broken out of hatred. They are broken out of a lack of love.

The bodhisattva’s job is to care for the pain of the world, not to take care of the problems of the world…. Who in the world can take care of all of this? None of us can take care of all of this, except all of us. And the way all of us take care of all of this is by caring for the pain that is here.

Let the mind be what it is. Let it be sacred and mundane at the same time. Let it be profoundly boring and sleepy and bright, glowing and brilliant. And when it’s one or the other let it be that.