Why did the 17th century Zen practitioner Ryonen Genso burn her face to enter a Zen temple? What is this path worth?

In this talk, Sensei Kanko challenges us to think what is possible when we move past healing alone and ask the most fundamental spiritual question: who am I? Naming the shadow of patriarchy in Buddhism but refusing to let Ryonen's story end there, she asks what burning question made this Japanese woman willing to scar herself. Using an infinity symbol, Kanko distinguishes the Western project of building a "healthy ego" from the non-dual path of dropping ego altogether — and points beyond both to Mu, the ground of being, asking what we are willing to let go of to touch that source.

Sensei Kanko gave this talk on the second-to-last day of a Zen retreat in May 2026.

Thank you for listening to the Boundless in Motion podcast. You can access more information about our programs and retreats by going to www.boundlessinmotion.org or www.kriteekanko.com.

How can you become fully enlightened like a Buddha? If you were a Buffalo, how can you be enlightened from head to tail? Or is that a delusional goal?

In this talk, Sensei Kanko (Dr. Kritee) explores the koan of a buffalo passing through the window ( or a in Chinese architecture). In the koan, Buffalo’s head, horns, and four legs all make it through the window, but the tail cannot. What is this stubborn little tail that nags at us after years, even decades, of practice, therapy, and healing? Which patterns of unlovability, shame or inadequacy do we keep circling around or trying to hide from others? Drawing on personal stories — her arrival in the U.S. a week before 9/11, her early depression, and a recent health scare with her mother — Sensei Kanko offers a trauma-informed reading of this koan. She suggests we replace the word "ego" with "trauma," and invites us to hold the tail with tenderness rather than trying to eliminate it. She also gestures toward a deeper, absolute dimension of the koan, where the distinction between tail and enlightenment begins to dissolve — pointing, as Dogen did, to how the very sense that "something is missing" can itself be a mark of Dharma filling body and mind.

Sensei Kanko gave this talk during a recent half-day sit (Zazenkai) in April 2026.

If this talk speaks to you, consider joining Sensei Kanko and Imtiaz Rangwala for the upcoming Zen sesshin at Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center from May 11–17, 2026, which includes a "Solo" day of practice in nature. Details and registration are available at www.boundlessinmotion.org.

Thank you for listening to the Boundless in Motion podcast. You can access more information about our programs and retreats by going to www.boundlessinmotion.org or www.kriteekanko.com.

Why might cuddling, hugging and belonging be important in our spiritual paths?

In this talk, Sensei Kanko explores the tension between the koan's spiritual teaching on an “absolute” or “ultimate” plane, i.e., nothing in life is out of place, and what she sees as a deeper historical truth: that loneliness is out of place. We are mammals. Mammals experience safety, learning, and healing through touch, play, and physical closeness. Yet the epidemic of loneliness in modern life has severed us from ways to meet this basic evolutionary need. Drawing on stories from her own life and from a powerful experiment in one of her community "pods," Sensei Kanko makes the case that spiritual practice alone cannot substitute for what we need as mammals. While emphasizing the importance of developing ways to feel safe and to heal the wound of loneliness, she also explores the “absolute” spiritual truth: from the perspective of emptiness (called Shunyata or Mu in Asian languages), no wave in the ocean is out of place — not loneliness, not fear, not even death. The worst, she reminds us, is already baked into every human life. How do we relax into that impossible truth while also honoring our mammalian need to be held?

Sensei Kanko gave this talk during a half-day sit (Zazenkai) in late March 2026.

Thank you for listening to the Boundless in Motion podcast. You can access more information about our programs and retreats by going to www.boundlessinmotion.org or www.kriteekanko.com