The Living Zen Podcast
Monthly dharma talks exploring Zen practice, awakening, and how to bring clarity and compassion into daily life.
A Thousand Buddhas Don’t Know
From the October 2022 Long Beach Meditation “Mountain Refuge Retreat”
Awareness is the Root Experience of All
The Blue Cliff Record, Case 40, from Insight Community of the Desert’s Tuesday Meditation As Refuge class.
As You Are. Here. Now.
Case 1 of the Gateless Gate: “Ordinary Mind is the Way” from Insight Community of the Desert’s Tuesday Meditation As Refuge class.
The Essential Practice of Just Sitting
Case 1 from the Book of Equanimity “The World Honored One Ascends the Platform” from the May 2025 sesshin at Yokoji Zen Mountain Center
Pointing to the Human Mind
From the September 2024 7-Day Sesshin at Yokoji Zen Mountain Center
Trust Your Heart
Return to What is Most Vital
The Heart of the Matter
From the Summer 2023 Beginner’s Mind Sesshin at Yokoji Zen Mountain Center
This Mysterious Life
From Beginner’s Mind Sesshin, January 2023
The One Behind the Name
You have to break through to this.
The Three Essentials
Great faith, great doubt, and great determination are considered to be three essentials for Zen practice. If any of these essentials are absent, we may not accomplish our aim.
Call and Response
Yes!
The Meaning Finds You
How can it be understood?
How to do Nothing
Doing nothing can be surprisingly difficult.
Feeling the Heat
The Practice of Active Acceptance.
Searching for the Mind
Exploring the island.
The Exploration of Self Nature
Leaping Clear of the Many and the One.
The Role of a Lifetime
Are we really who we think we are?
The Oak Tree
What is the Essential meaning?
Who Is That One?
Who is taking care of who?
The Great Silence
The non-dual principle.
Who’s Understanding is it?
Another person can’t enlighten you.
How To Sit
Sitting all the way down
The True Person Of No Rank
When identities are dissolved, who speaks?
The Most Important Question
Realization beyond words or no words.
Without Deluded Thought
The Sutra of Complete Awakening.
Taking the Backward Step
Going Beyond the Witness.
The Three Pure Precepts
Simple, profound instructions for an upright life.
Where are you going?
Iron Grindstone Lu shatters the bamboo ceiling.
Breathing In, Breathing Out
How do we bring the ancient teachings to life?
Not Knowing
Not-knowing, being intimate with the intrinsic principle
Going Beyond the Witness
The art of just sitting goes beyond all method.
Encouraging Words
Applying skillful effort we find our true nature in every expression.
Everyday Mind
Zen Master Dogen’s skillful words point directly at the true reality of self.
Call and Response
How do we avoid being deceived, even by ourselves? A talk on Case 12 of the Gateless Gate.
Neither Good Nor Evil
The 6th Ancestor of zen points to our original nature and helps his pursuer realize it. Talk based on Case 23 of the Gateless Gate.
Bodhidharma Pacifies the mind
A talk on the first Ancestor of Zen's strong medicine for his student and eventual successor. Taken from Case 41 of the Gateless Gate.
