Zencare Podcast

“Our practice doesn't ask us how to end wars, it asks us where the wars begin. In this body. In this flash of rage. In this certainty that I am right and you are wrong.”

Amid news of global conflicts and war, Chodo Sensei offers a profound reflection on the second Buddhist precept: do not steal. But what does stealing mean when the world is organized around taking; lives, safety, homes, childhood, trust, and ultimately, humanity itself?

Drawing on Suzuki Roshi's teaching about entering the Buddha Hall with clean feet and the classic Zen story of the samurai and the master, Chodo explores how war begins long before bombs fall. It begins when we steal each other's humanity through language that turns people into targets, grief into statistics, and suffering into abstraction. It begins in the mind that divides the world into “us and them.”

With students sheltering from bombs in multiple countries, this isn't abstract philosophy, it's an urgent question: How do we sit with the sorrow of the world without collapsing into it? How do we notice our own anger without weaponizing it? How do we refuse to let suffering become something “out there” that we're not part of?

“When you encounter obstacles, do not see them as hindrances separate from practice.”

In this talk from the beginning of the year (and in preparation for the Year of the Fire Horse), Koshin Sensei reflects on what it really means to make effort. Not as self-improvement, but as a vow to be fully here.

Drawing on Dōgen’s teachings on continuous practice, he offers simple, direct questions we can live inside: How are you using your time? How are you caring for your body, (the personal and the collective)? Do your investments of time, finances, energy, etc. support what you say you value? And can you meet obstacles not as interruptions, but as the very field of practice?

This talk is both grounding and bracing: a reminder that practice and realization are not separate, that there’s no “arrival,” and the most honest measure of our practice might be how the people around us experience it.

With humor and warmth, Koshin invites us to return, again and again, to uprightness in this moment, and to a life shaped less by habit energy and more by vow.

“Many people can study lots of things, but are you living that way?”

On the 12th day of our Commit to Sit, during a winter blizzard, Koshin Sensei explores a profound question: What's the difference between talking about spiritual practice and actually living it?

Drawing on teachings from Suzuki Roshi and the 13th-century Zen master Dogen, Koshin examines how we often get caught in our thoughts; arguing with teachers in our minds, feeding our sense of entitlement, constantly debating whether we're “doing it right.”

But what would it be like to simply be ourselves, our ordinary selves, without all that noise?

At the heart of this talk is the concept of “transmission” from teacher to student, not as something claimed or awarded, but as something shown through how we live. Koshin asks us to consider: Do we practice only when it's convenient? Do we use spirituality as an identity or a lifestyle brand rather than a lived commitment? And perhaps most importantly: How do we practice when we're alone, when no one is watching?

Koshin also reflects on his own struggles with “why not me?” and shares Dogen's wisdom about safeguarding genuine practice in a world that makes it easy to dilute or neglect.

“Each in breath is bringing life into the body, and each out breath is a death. We never know if there'll be another inhale.”

On the third day of our recent Winter Sesshin (silent retreat), Chodo Sensei offers a profound teaching on the practice of bowing and the art of surrendering the constructed self.

Through the story of Gray Wolf and Zen Master Raven, he explores why true bowing leaves no self left to be humiliated; it is awakening expressing itself.

Chodo Sensei shares his own journey with body dysmorphia, addiction recovery, and the physical limitations that now prevent him from doing full prostrations.

With characteristic honesty and humor, he reminds us that sesshin is “not a spa weekend”, it's rigorous practice that asks us to surrender to the forms, the discomfort, and our resistance itself.

Drawing on Naomi Shihab Nye's poem “Kindness,” he invites us to consider: What stories are we holding onto? Can we surrender to this practice as it is, releasing our expectations of “huge awakenings” and bright lights, and instead bow to reality as it unfolds, moment by moment, breath by breath?

“The best way to observe precepts is just to be you yourself and then the precepts are always with you.”

What does it mean to “be yourself” in Zen, not as self-improvement, but as a direct, embodied intimacy with life as it is?

We were honored to recently host Jiryu Rutschman-Byler, co-abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, at our zendo in New York for this moving dharma talk on the newly released collection of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi’s teachings, Becoming Yourself, that Jiryu and the late Sojun Mel Weitsman were co-editors on.

Beginning with the simple form of upright posture, he offers vivid images; zazen as a chrysalis in which we can “melt,” thoughts like a bagel wrapper that’s useful until we keep holding it, and practice as “sharing the feeling” of right here, right now.

In the latter half of the talk, Jiryu also explores Suzuki Roshi’s radical view of precepts: not moralism or rule-following, but the natural expression of a life that remembers its place in the cosmos and a self that includes everything, past, present, and future.

We hope you enjoy this dharma talk and that you'll join us for our upcoming Commit to Sit, in which Becoming Yourself will be our guiding text!

MUSICHeart Sutra by Kanho Yakushiji – Buddhist priest and musician of the Rinzai sect and Imaji temple in Imabari, Japan. In 2003, he formed “KISSAQUO”, a songwriting duo based in Kyoto.

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NYZC PUBLICATIONSUntangled here: https://bit.ly/untangled-book
Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up here: https://amzn.to/2JTKF1t
Awake At The Bedside here: https://amzn.to/3aijXdL
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