Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM 5/28/2023 - How do we live in the context of the teachings of identity of relative and absolute, that the nature of things is fundamentally empty, and non-dual? How does realizing these teachings liberate us? How do we live in the truth of "Birth-and-Death"? How do we live and understand "Every Day is a Good Day"? How do we understand "Ordinary Mind"? Shugen Roshi invites students to take up these questions and engage with him in Dharma Encounter.

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM 5/27/2023 - From The Blue Cliff Record, Case 6 - Yunmen's "Every Day is a Good Day" - How is that possible? From what perspective is that so? Can we free the idea of good from our idea of good? And from Master Dogen's teaching "The Great Way of all Buddhas, thoroughly practiced is emancipation and realization." What does it mean to thoroughly practice?

Katie Yosha Scott-Childress, Senior Lay Student - ZMM 5/26/2023 - Yosha offers her insights and shares her heartfelt appreciation of this Spring's Ango practice and study of the Maha-Parinirvana Sutra and two of Dogen's Fascicles Shoji (Birth and Death) and Zenki (Undivided Activity).

Ron Hogen Green, Sensei - ZMM 05/25/2023 - From Dogen's Extensive Record, # 391: "Life and Death Without Abode" - Hogen Sensei asks... Can we directly look at our life? Which is what we mean when we say "Strive to Awaken"....

Danica Shoan Ankele, Senior Monastic and Dharma Holder - ZMM 05/24/2023 - Shoan talks about 'entering', 'doorways', 'passing through'. To where? Can we see and take up the abundant opportunities offered to us? And how do we actually do that?

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM 05/21/2023 - From Master Dogen's Treasury Of The True Dharma Eye, Case 289, Daowu's "Alive or Dead" - Shugen Roshi reflects on our understanding of birth-and-death in the context of the Buddha's profound teaching of dependent co-origination.

Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei ZCNYC 05/21/2023 - How should we regard and love one another? In the Vimalakirti Sutra, Vimalakirti begins by describing to Manjushri about the insubstantiality of beings. What kind of teaching is this? If people are like balls of foam, bubbles of water, and if, as the Buddha and Vimalikirti say, the nature of the self, of all beings are “empty of own-being,” why and how should we love one another?  We can jump to a very nihilistic conclusion if we don’t inquire about this. Most of us, like Manjushri, know intuitively that compassion is the essence of life,  that not caring cannot be the right understanding. In this talk, Hojin Sensei explores the non dual life of the Bodhisattva and the many forms this can take.

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - Zen Mountain Monastery - 05/13/2023

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi, ZMM 05/14/2023 - Shugen Roshi speaks about Liturgy and in particular how Oryoki and the Meal Gatha illustrate its beauty, its purpose, and the reality and challenges of our practice in these times.

Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei - ZCNYC 5/14/2023 - For Mother's Day Hojin Sensei introduces us to Ambapali, one of the important female figures in the Buddhist tradition alive during the time of the Buddha. Her enlightenment poem is found in the Therigatha (awakening poems of the elder wise women at the time of the Buddha) where she directly faces and expresses the questions we are inquiring into this Ango about our lives: the questions of birth, aging, sickness, and death. How do we live these realities—these simple recognitions that are with us every moment? How might she show us how to gain access to our heart from her heart? How might the insight she sang in this poem 2,600 years ago in India, reach across time and place and infuse our hearing it sung today?