Katie Yosha Scott-Childress, Senior Lay Student

Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt Tremper, New York, Monday 12/29/2025

From Dogen’s final teachings, a commentary on passages of the Parinirvana Sutra given before the Buddha died is offered by lay senior student Yosha. These teachings focus on what the Buddha himself said were the most essential aspects of what he taught. Rather than being abstract or distant, they speak directly to our ordinary yearnings and lived experience, encouraging us to stay close to the Dharma—through both study and practice—and to discover within that closeness a reliable source of guidance and refuge.

Linda Shinji Hoffman, Senior Lay Student

Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt Tremper, New York, Thursday 10/23/2025

Central to our practice is cultivating an openness to what we don’t yet know. Sounds simple? To continuously return to this openness means to face the habits we have of thinking small, “knowing things,” and return again with an open awareness to the fullness of life. Lay senior student Shinji shares teachings and stories to bring us back to the beneficial mind of not knowing.

Katie Yosha Scott-Childress, Senior Lay Student

Zen Center of New York City, Fire Lotus Temple, Sunday 09/28/2025

The Eight Worldly Conditions are core teachings of the Buddha and provide us with some guidelines in working with the habitual energies of gain and loss, fame and disrepute, praise and blame, and pleasure and pain. Senior lay student Yosha offers ways of taking up our resistances and clinging as ways to enter a newer freedom through a close study of these habits of mind.

Prabu Gikon Vasan, Senior Lay Student

Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt Tremper, New York, Thursday 08/21/2025

Understanding the many negations in the Heart Sutra, and the concept of “emptiness,” requires effort and faith. It asks us to examine what we take as true, and to verify that through practice. Buddhism does not limit this inquiry to abstract concepts; it directly engages our lived experiences and beliefs in order to ease suffering. If there is no value put on something–like a coin before it’s stamped–then what is it worth? Senior lay student Gikon takes up the path of practice, clarifying the essential teachings of form and emptiness.

Suzanne Taikyo Gilman, Senior Monastic

Zen Center of New York City, Fire Lotus Temple – Sunday 07/27/2025

Letting go of being right can be one of the hardest things to do. What happens if, instead of defending our views, we notice the suffering underneath and ask, Where is compassion right now? Becoming conscious through our zazen, on the street or in the zendo, allows us to heal ourselves and benefit others.