Buddhist practice is wonderfully liberating because it empowers you to let go of your suffering regardless of your circumstances. However, we can also get stuck in the fallacy that conditions don't matter, thereby making it seem like helping beings (including ourselves) experience things like safety, health, freedom, justice, prosperity, and love are outside of the realm of Buddhist concern. Are we only interested in "spiritual" well-being, as if that can be separated entirely from conditions? Or do we work for the happiness of beings without worrying about distinctions like "material" or "spiritual?" You might also see this is a tension between "internal" and "external" practice. How do we balance internal work with working to make conditions more supportive and life-affirming for ourselves and others?

Mick shares his challenges to keeping a committed and confident practice at home, and reads from the Shobogenzo Zuimonki. Are we "vessels of the Dharma" even in our perceived inadequacies or difficulties? Is the big "E" attainable by me even if I feel too small for it? Dōgen's radical idea is that practice and enlightenment are not separate. It's when we return to this place, here and now, and simply do our practice that we find that thing that we're looking for.

The Buddha famously said, "Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule." How do we really manifest this, even when standing in opposition to what we think is wrong? Can we see through our own sense of self-righteousness? Jonathan Haidt writes in The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion: "This book explained why people are divided by politics and religion. The answer is not, as Manichaeans would have it, because some people are good and others are evil. Instead, the explanation is that our minds were designed for groupish righteousness. We are deeply intuitive creatures whose gut feelings drive our strategic reasoning. This makes it difficult—but not impossible—to connect with those who live in other matrices, which are often built on different configurations of the available moral foundations."

Self-care can be defined as regenerative activity, free from a sense of entitlement, that supports healthy functioning. In this context, does Zazen qualify as "self-care"? What can Zazen do for us, and what is its true purpose?

David Hinton makes the following argument in his book "China Root: On Taoism, Ch'an, and Original Zen" - that when Buddhism arrived in China from India, it was fundamentally reinterpreted and reshaped by Taoist thought, and then the resulting amalgam of Ch'an, or Zen, is so transformed by Taoism that it is scarcely recognizable as Buddhism at all. Our guiding teacher explores this idea in the context of how original Buddhist teachings
combined with Mahayana features such as inherent Buddha nature, interdependence, thusness, "sudden" realization, and radical nondualism to manifest as the Ch'an or Zen that we recognize. A lively discussion follows.

Join us for a ten-week journey as we ask ourselves how to manifest our Zen ethics and precepts beyond the personal realm.

Traditionally, Buddhism and Zen have focused on individual practice aimed at relief of individual suffering. However, there are many teachings that point us beyond our small selves toward our relationships: We should care for all beings without distinction, practice generosity without limit, actively work for the welfare of others, and accord with the truth of Interbeing – that we aren't fundamentally separate from anything.

In the first week of this 10 week discussion series, Rev. Domyo Burk leads the Sangha through a discussion of excerpts from David Loy's A New Buddhist Path: Enlightenment, Evolution, and Ethics in the Modern World.

In this episode Rev. Domyo Burk discusses with the sangha the fifth field in the teaching of her Ten Fields of Zen, The Precepts. Domyo speaks about the The Precepts as our moral guidlines in Zen and how they play a large role in our practice.

As Rohatsu Sesshin begins for many Zen Buddhists all over the world, Rev. Domyo Burk discusses Sesshin (a silent multi-day residential retreat), addressing the challenges, and describing why it is important and central to Zen practice