Zen Mind

Zen practice can be thought of as a craft of opening our minds to complexity—to the complexity of our lived lives that cannot be conclusively grasped by our thinking minds. It is common to feel overwhelmed by complexity and frustrated that it cannot be reduced to black-and-white concepts. This talk continues the discussion of the teaching of the Five Skandhas (see March 8, "Empty of Separate Self"). By becoming familiar with the non-thinking experiential domains of perception and feeling, a new way of living with and from complexity can emerge. This is called wisdom.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

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Learn more about our upcoming Weekend Seminar, An Appropriate Response — The Essence of the Buddhist Path. Available online and in person.

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom, and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk was given at the beginning of a weekend intensive. It provides a framework for how to cultivate attentiveness—on an off the cushion. The fundamental mental posture in meditation and mindfulness practices is to allow one's experience to be exactly what it is at this very moment. However, to be able to be present to the present in this all-encompassing way, we need a path to cultivate our attentional skills.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Learn more about our upcoming Weekend Seminar, An Appropriate Response — The Essence of the Buddhist Path. Available online and in person.

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

The dis-ease with our existence often manifests as a lingering feeling that there is something wrong with us and/or the world. The first sentence of the Heart Sutra gives an instruction for how to liberate ourselves from this kind of suffering. It asks us to practice the realization that the five skandhas—the experiential domains of form, feeling, perception, conditioning, and consciousness—are empty of a permanent, independent self. When we empty these domains of our desire for permanence and separateness, they reveal themselves to be "full" of change and interdependence. This talk is about how to explore this shift in our meditation practice.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Learn more about our upcoming Weekend Seminar, An Appropriate Response — The Essence of the Buddhist Path. Available online and in person.

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk explores the relationship between zazen mind, awakening, and everyday activity. In Zen, we use bodily markers and shifts to create a sense of continuous practice. Essentially, this is about finding a way to maintain the presence of the FIELD of mind in the midst of the ever-changing CONTENTS of our lived life.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Learn more about our upcoming Weekend Seminar, An Appropriate Response — The Essence of the Buddhist Path. Available online and in person.

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

In Soto Zen practice we say, "Zazen is good for nothing." Or we say, "You should sit without any gaining idea?" There is a disturbing paradox here: We all start to practice because we want an answer to an existential question or a solution to a deep-seated problem, and yet the teaching tells us to just sit and allow our moment-to-moment experiencing to be exactly what it is—not expecting any improvement, not even enlightenment. This talk explores how this good-for-nothing approach to zazen helps us have confidence in our true nature. Rooted in this confidence, we can begin to treat our seemingly existential problems as practical issues that inevitably come with being alive as a human being.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

What if we (like Bodhidharma) refrain from answering the question ‘Who am I?’ with the concepts and categories our culture provides and expects? What if we allowed ourselves to exist outside of the culture—not functionally, but fundamentally? Instead of trying to define our identity, we can practice being intimate with the basic ingredients of our existential activity (attention, sensation, intention, and cognition) and learn to use and mix them differently. What does that have to do with becoming a buddha?

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now available in both hardcopy and audiobook formats! We appreciate you leaving a rating on Amazon, and if you have time, a review is even better!

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

Around the transition from one year to the next, many people engage in the practice of year-end reflection and new-year resolutions. This talk, given on New Year's Eve, asks about the source from which intentions arise. What makes them stick or not stick? It explores the wisdom phrase 'If it's your intent, it's not pure intent," and asks about the role of the wider field, in which our individual lives are embedded. Finally, it looks at the role of hope and how different types of hope shape our relationship with the future differently.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Support our annual fundraiser by becoming a Boulder Zen Center Member or through a one-time donation! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, in person or online.

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk was given during a Weekend Meditation Intensive. It begins by exploring zazen as a way of noticing layers of inner bracing and discovering a willingness to soften, accept, and be intimate with experience as it is, not as we desire it to be.

Our modern culture of control conditions us to relate to the world more and more as a "point of aggression" (Hartmut Rosa's term). Zazen can help us to rediscover the world as a partner of resonance—and it is resonance that we truly long for, not control. Control makes resonance impossible.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Support our annual fundraiser by becoming a Boulder Zen Center Member or through a one-time donation! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks, available in person or online.

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk relates the details of a particular koan story ("Don't try to control the 10,000 things") to the societal conditions of late modernity. Our culture has the means to bring more and more aspects of our daily lives under control and therefore implicitly, as well as explicitly, expects us to participate in that dynamic. Paradoxically, the more we live in a controlled world, the less alive we feel and the more we are prone to experience anxiety and depression. So what's the antidote? Deliberately give up the desire for control and cultivate the ability to resonate. This means to be willing to be vulnerable to the uncontrollable aspects of being alive!

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Support our annual fundraiser by becoming a Boulder Zen Center Member or through a one-time donation! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

Join us live for our Saturday Dharma talks! Check our website for the schedule and Zoom link.

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

This talk was given in October 2021 to kick-off the second 8-week practice course in the Foundational Zen Teachings Series called "Liberation from Suffering".

Generally speaking, we tend to interpret freedom from suffering as personal happiness (feeling good) and, on a societal level, as a world, in which big problems such as poverty, inequality, war, and the climate crisis are solved. Buddhism is more pessimistic, or shall we say realistic. It assumes that there will always be problems. Does this mean we don't care about improving our situation? Not at all. It means we need to learn to get the order right: If we first learn to not have a problem with having problems, we can then be better at solving them.

The talk presents a guided body scan that directs attention to the freedom of "unconditional aliveness" and makes suggestions for how to fold this freedom into our daily lives.

Support our annual fundraiser by becoming a Boulder Zen Center Member or through a one-time donation! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

Click here for information on the Foundational Zen Teachings course series.

Zenki Roshi's book, THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected] or give us a call: (303) 442–3007.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.