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.

This talk was given in January 2021 to kick off an 8-week practice course called "Transformative Practice". It reflects on the nature of transformation and shows how it is grounded in what Zen calls the inmost request. The inmost request is what we truly want in life. It's not our calling, not our purpose; it's not about WHAT we are doing in our life but HOW we are doing it moment by moment. What we truly want is not exactly happiness, but to feel fully alive. While happiness is about feeling BETTER, aliveness is about FEELING better. Practicing meditation can strengthen this ability to be unconditionally open to our experience as it is at this very moment--whether we like it or not. It can help us access the joy of being alive for no other reason than being alive.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

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

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

Become a Boulder Zen Center Member! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

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 continues the inquiry into wisdom. It introduces the Five Dharmas (an ancient teaching from the Lankavatara Sutra) and makes it available as a practice for our everyday lives. In a first step, we need to understand how the human mind produces delusion through ordinary mental activities like sense perception, naming, discrimination, and story-telling. In other words, the mind creates a sensorial and conceptual map that it then mistakes for reality. Based on that understanding, we can then interrupt this process with "right knowledge" and develop a feeling for suchness, the ungraspable mystery of reality, in which each of us is an active participant.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

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

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

Become a Boulder Zen Center Member! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

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 as the opening talk to the third course in the Foundational Zen Teachings series. It presents wisdom as the ability to respond appropriately to the ever-changing circumstances of our lived situations. This orientation toward appropriateness requires us to shift from knowing (our accumulated concepts and habits) to not-knowing (a non-conceptual, non-habitual openness to how things present themselves in this very moment).

Welcome to Zen Mind!

There's still time to join the Oct 21–23 Weekend Seminar "Navigating Self and Non-Self".

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

THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!

Become a Boulder Zen Center Member! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

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 yogic embodiment.

This talk explores the importance of the body in mindfulness practice—not just as a target of attention but as a way to be attentive. Practicing mindfulness as bodyfulness means to shift from attending TO the body to attending WITH the body. By first joining breath and attention into breath-attention and then bringing breath-attention to the parts of the body, we discover our bodymind as a “sphere of attention” that is in resonance—a constant felt dialogue—with objects and other people. This resonance is our original connection with the world and the source of compassion.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

THE PATH OF ALIVENESS is now on sale!

Become a Boulder Zen Center Member! It is the best way to support Zenki Roshi and the continuation of this podcast.

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 yogic embodiment.