This dharma talk was offered by Brooklyn Zen Center’s root teacher Teah Strozer during a three-day sesshin in 2017.

We have this war inside, because we think of ourselves as an object. Good and bad, right and wrong.  And we think of it as ‘my life’, which is eventually seen to be a mistake.  It’s not my life. It is Life, in fact, living itself as me for a moment; for like a blink of an eye.

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.

Kaira Jewel Lingo teaches meditation and mindfulness, with a focus on activists, people of color, artists, educators, families, and youth. She began practicing mindfulness in 1997 and she is an ordained nun in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing.

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.

Kaira Jewel Lingo teaches meditation and mindfulness, with a focus on activists, people of color, artists, educators, families, and youth. She began practicing mindfulness in 1997 and she is an ordained nun in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing.

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.

The Bodhisattva path is a counterintuitive approach. It’s a method to help us let go of this obsession over ourselves. This is very different from our usual mode of operation, if you think about it. That is why it feels counterintuitive, and it can take a really long time for us to really understand and to get into it. We are very much conditioned by the world around us, by the opposite way of being.

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.

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.

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.

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.

These precepts are received and practiced in a conversation face to face. Just like I suggest that justice is received and practiced in a conversation face to face. Hating people is not justice. Being angry can be justice — sometimes it is justice — but that anger is a conversation, where everybody is participating.

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.

Some people aspire to do practices for themselves, and they don’t aspire to do practices for others — that’s called individual practice. And other people aspire to practice with others, and by others, and for others, and as others, and that’s called the Bodhisattva path. And they’re both good. And there’s a third way: which is saying the two are the same.

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.