Bokushu talks about the source of our suffering, and about the opportunity we bodhisattvas have to relate more skillfully to reality.

Soten explores Case 21 of the Book of Serenity, “Yunyan Sweeps the Ground,” to point to the enlightening nature of our everyday lives.

August 25, 2019 Roshi brings up our country’s painful history of land theft and slavery.  She exhorts us to see the truth both in our collective history and in the way our own minds habitually operate.  Seeing that truth, we can act more skillfully in a world that desperately needs our understanding and compassion.

August 10, 2019 Karuna Sesshin Bokushu connects the Vimalakirti Sutra with our culture of self loathing and gun violence. He urges listeners to learn to see and tolerate themselves as the foundation for cultivating compassion in all its many forms.

August 9, 2019 Karuna Sesshin Ryoshin looks at a question asked of the Buddha in the Vimalakirti Sutra: “how can we create a Buddha land?” In contemplating this question, we see that our own life is, of itself, a Buddha land, or source of the awakened mind.

Senior student JoAn offers his perspective on the Vimalakirti Sutra to those in attendance at the Village Zendo’s Karuna sesshin at Wisdom House in Litchfield, Connecticut on Thursday, August 8, 2019.

In the final talk of Dai Sesshin, Ryotan Sensei relates how master Chin Niu and the Vimalakirti Sutra remind us that our lives are boundless.

“Monks, one moment you are born, the next you grow old, the next you pass into extinction.” In the sixth talk of Dai Sesshin, Soshin inquires inquires about Vimalakirti’s illness.

In the first dharma talk of Dai Sesshin, Roshi shares the idea of sacred portals, and invites us to enter into a new way of experiencing reality.

Bokushu urges everyone to actualize the four vows as the expression of their very lives.