Letting It Out: Extending the Love that We Receive - Nanda Nina Lynch - January 31st, 2026 - WPP26

This talk by Nanda Nina Lynch explores the Buddhist teaching that true happiness comes not from self-centered striving, but from love and compassion for others. Drawing on Shantideva, Makransky, and bodhisattva teachings, it explains that our true nature (Buddha nature) is inherently loving, open, and connected to all beings. When we act with kindness, we awaken well-being in ourselves and others; when we act from anger or self-interest, we perpetuate suffering (karma and samsara). Difficult interactions don’t “put” emotions into us but trigger what’s already inside, offering opportunities for awareness and growth. In dark times, even small acts of care matter. The session concludes with a guided meditation cultivating gratitude, self-inclusion, and boundless compassion, letting love radiate outward like sunlight to all beings.

Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action. https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

Compassion as a Liberating Power: Bring Difficulties into Compassion - Jozen Jonathon Fielder - February 7th, 2026 - WPP26

This talk marks the final week of a winter practice series based on Awakening Through Love and focuses on compassion as a liberating power. After briefly recapping earlier weeks—love as our true nature, letting be, and extending love to others, Jozen explores Mahayana and Zen teachings that emphasize non-dual compassion, compassion that makes no distinction between good and bad, self and other. Drawing on Dzogchen teachings, Zen koans, and the Dalai Lama, the talk explains that **wisdom (emptiness) and compassion must arise together, as both reveal the shared causes of suffering and the shared potential for freedom. The session culminates in a guided loving-kindness (metta) meditation, progressively extending compassion from oneself to loved ones, neutral people, difficult people, and ultimately all beings, affirming the insight that self and reality are not separate.

Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action.

https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

In this talk, originally made for Hollow Bones Zen, Ekai explains that Mondo Zen is not just a facilitation process but an ongoing path that blends genuine insight with emotional maturity, rooted in zazen, koan practice, and community support. The first set of koans deepens direct realization of clear, compassionate awareness, while the emotional koans help practitioners work skillfully with triggers by feeling what lies beneath reactions and choosing compassionate responses. Practicing with teachers and sangha keeps this inquiry alive in daily life, allowing insight and emotional wisdom to grow together and be expressed in the world.

Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action.

https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

Ekai Roshi explains the Zen koan “Does this clear, deep heart-mind come and go?” and emphasizes that while awakened awareness (clear, deep heart-mind) is ever-present, our sense of self or ego “comes and goes” and often obscures it. Meditation practices like concentration (shamatha) can quiet the mind and reveal this awareness, but deeper insight practice (vipassana) is needed to understand how our habits and conditioning interfere with it. The speaker highlights the Five Hindrances, laziness/lethargy, doubt, aversion, agitation and desire, as common mental patterns that cloud awareness. By recognizing how these hindrances arise in our own experience, practitioners can develop insight, stabilize awakened awareness, and continue the ongoing training that follows initial awakening.

Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action.

https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

Spirituality and Spiritual Identity - Roshi Ekai Joel Kreisberg - FPP25 - October 18th, 2025

The talk introduces a six-week Shining Bright Lotus series on Junpo Roshi and Keith Martin-Smith’s When the Buddha Needs Therapy, exploring how Buddhism can meet modern psychological and emotional realities. It focuses on spiritual identity, the blending of meditation and therapy, and the difference between concrete practices, subtle emotional and conceptual life, and awakened awareness itself. Emphasizing Junpo’s innovation of emotional koans, the talk frames emotional triggers as opportunities for compassion, maturity, and integration. Buddhism is presented not just as meditation, but as a holistic path of meditation, ethics, and study, all oriented toward relieving suffering and embodying the bodhisattva vow in everyday life.

https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/fallpractice25

Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action. 

https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

How to Work with Emotional Koans - Ekai Joel Kreisberg Roshi - February 21st, 2026

Ekai Joel Kreisberg Roshi explains that traditional Rinzai koan training, systematized by Hakuin Ekaku, treats awakening (kensho) as the starting point of practice. Junpo Denis Kelly Roshi recognized that insight alone does not ensure emotional maturity, so he extended koan inquiry into the realm of feelings through “emotional koans.”

These examine emotions such as anger, shame, and disconnection as learned, constructed responses that arise because we care, and for which we are responsible. Practitioners slow down, welcome emotions as information, return to awakened awareness, and respond with compassion.

The work continues through daily reflection or journaling, teacher dialogue, applying inquiry during meditation, and sharing the practice with others, uniting awakening with emotional growth.

Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action.

https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

Ekai Joel Kreisberg Roshi and Emyo Darlene Tataryn introduce their four-month Foundations in Mondo Zen Facilitation program, describing it as a structured, relational, and embodied path rooted in koan practice and emotional inquiry. They emphasize that effective learning begins with sincere curiosity, clear intention, vulnerability, and compassion, supported by dialogue, small-group work, and a steady 108-day practice container, creating a focused environment for deepening insight and skillful facilitation.

Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action.

https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

In this interview, Simha Frederick Marx recounts his Buddhist journey from beginning practice in 1988 with Nichiren Shoshu, moving to vipassana, and meeting Junpo in 2000, which led him to decades of practice with Hollow Bones Rinzai Zen. He describes attending 15–16 retreats over 26 years, his openness to all Dharma traditions despite a strong Rinzai focus, and his use of solo retreats to self-diagnose and settle recurring neuroses and anger loops. He shares his disinterest in social media, touches on themes from his recent book Confessions of a Sacred Fool, and notes that, after moving out of the city, he’s now launching a new sangha and stepping more fully into Zen teaching, something he feels is long overdue.

Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action.

https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

Letting Be: Relaxing into Natural Wisdom - Hosho Don Koehler - January 24th, 2026 - WPP26

A Dharma talk exploring “Awakening Through Love” based on Chapter 2 of John Makransky’s work. Hosho Don Koehler reflects on innate wisdom beyond self-grasping, drawing from Dzogchen and contemporary psychology to show how relaxation, receiving love, and letting be reveal our natural compassion and clarity. The talk bridges non-dual awareness with heart practices, offering a gentle path of recognition rather than striving, and prepares listeners for a guided meditation on releasing the grasping self and resting in pure awareness.

Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action.

https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/ 

This talk explains the structure and purpose of Mondo Zen facilitation as a living dialogue rather than a technique. Ekai describes how a facilitator uses precise, compassionate questioning to bring unconscious beliefs, emotional patterns, and fixed identities into direct awareness. The process relies on deep listening, embodied presence, and timing rather than interpretation or advice. Mondo Zen is framed as a way of helping students see through their own stories in real time, allowing insight to arise naturally through inquiry, silence, and resonance between teacher and student.

Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action.

https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/