The Zen Mountain Monastery Podcast
Religion & Spirituality Podcas
The Mountains and Rivers Order (MRO) is a Western Zen Buddhist lineage established by the late John Daido Loori Roshi and dedicated to sharing the dharma as it has been passed down, generation to generation, since the time of Shakyamuni Buddha. Zen Mountain Monastery, the main house of the Mountains and Rivers Order, is one of the West’s most respected Zen Buddhist monasteries and training centers. Nestled in New York’s beautiful Catskill Mountains, the Monastery draws its strength from the ancient tradition of Buddhist monasticism. Since 1980, the Monastery has offered spiritual practitioners traditional and innovative ways to engage the dharma through a wide range of retreats and residential programs that unfold within the context of authentic, full-time Zen monastic training. The Zen Center of New York City: Fire Lotus Temple is the city branch of Zen Mountain Monastery. Supporting home practitioners in the metropolitan area, ZCNYC offers varied practice opportunities within the Eight Gates training matrix.
Location:
United States
Description:
The Mountains and Rivers Order (MRO) is a Western Zen Buddhist lineage established by the late John Daido Loori Roshi and dedicated to sharing the dharma as it has been passed down, generation to generation, since the time of Shakyamuni Buddha. Zen Mountain Monastery, the main house of the Mountains and Rivers Order, is one of the West’s most respected Zen Buddhist monasteries and training centers. Nestled in New York’s beautiful Catskill Mountains, the Monastery draws its strength from the ancient tradition of Buddhist monasticism. Since 1980, the Monastery has offered spiritual practitioners traditional and innovative ways to engage the dharma through a wide range of retreats and residential programs that unfold within the context of authentic, full-time Zen monastic training. The Zen Center of New York City: Fire Lotus Temple is the city branch of Zen Mountain Monastery. Supporting home practitioners in the metropolitan area, ZCNYC offers varied practice opportunities within the Eight Gates training matrix.
Language:
English
Episodes
Our Original Perfection
5/5/2024
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 5/5/24 - From the Book of Serenity, Case 93 - Luzu's Not Understanding - What do we have to do to realize our own perfection? And what does it actually mean in the sense in which it is spoken of in the Buddhist sutras? And our appreciation of relationship; with ourselves and with others... Do we know how it comes to us? Are we open to it?
Duration:00:45:03
Dharma Encounter: On the Courage to Listen
4/28/2024
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei - ZMM - 4/28/24 - A foundational aspect of relationship: listening in all it's myriad forms... How do we practice it? How do we understand it in terms of the Precepts, or the Four Noble Truths, with Vow? What's missing when we're not listening? Hogen Sensei engages the Sangha with this theme, presenting a koan from the Book of Equanimity, "The Wisdom of the Flower Garland Sutra," along with the poem "Listening" by David Ignatow.
Duration:01:18:51
Doing Wrong on the Road to Blessedness
4/27/2024
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei - ZMM - 4/27/24 - From the Book of Equanimity, Case 67 - The Wisdom of the Flower Garland Sutra - The base of our practice is to realize our own true nature. Hogen Sensei exhorts us to not defile it by clinging to our deluded opinions; we are all fundamentally endowed with the virtues of the Buddha.
Duration:00:38:53
Fusatsu: Sangha Harmony
4/26/2024
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei - ZMM - 04/26/24 - Dharma Talk during the Apple Blossom Sesshin 2024 Fusatsu Ceremony - Hojin Sensei encourages us to strive to be in harmony with each and every aspect of our life.
Duration:00:39:18
Fazhen’s Awakening
4/25/2024
Katie Yosha Scott-Childress, Senior Lay Student - ZMM - 4/25/24 - Yosha introduces us to lay woman Fazhen (12th Century) with the story of her awakening.
Duration:00:39:58
Leaving The Way to The Way
4/24/2024
Danica Shoan Ankele, Osho - ZMM - 4/24/24 - Can we genuinely be ourselves if we are not free of the idea of "ourself"? Shoan Osho talks about our evanescent nature and grounding ourselves in that.
Duration:00:40:17
Leading the People
4/21/2024
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei - ZMM - 4/21/24 - Inspired by Master Dogen’s poem “Snow”, Hogen Sensei asks us what makes us whole? What can we rely on to face what is before us with clear intention?
Duration:00:57:56
The Old Woman’s Miraculous Powers
4/14/2024
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei ZMM - 4/14/24 - A tea shop proprietor serves traveling monks a koan to accompany their tea. “Let those of you with miraculous powers drink tea.” Then she says to the stunned monks, “Watch this old, decrepit woman show her miraculous powers.” Then, she simply walks out. Hojin Sensei reflects on this story from "The Hidden Lamp, Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women".
Duration:00:37:44
The Two Entrances
4/14/2024
Bear Gokan Bonebakker, Senior Monastic and Dharma Holder - ZCNYC - 4/14/24 - Sharing a teaching from Bodhidharma, Gokan speaks about the importance in the Zen tradition of directly realized experience, over our conceptual understanding. How is it when you truly let go? Trust yourself!
Duration:00:35:05
Be Patient
4/7/2024
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 4/7/2024 - From Master Wu-men's Gateless Gate, Case 5 - "Hsiang-yen: Person Up a Tree" - How do we discriminate in a way that liberates and doesn't entangle us in the quandaries of duality? Shugen Roshi uses a koan from the Gateless Gate to highlight this question; how can non-duality be the nature of all things in this world of such profound variation?
Duration:00:41:58
Satsujo Weeps: Total Eclipse of the Heart
4/7/2024
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei - ZCNYC - 4/7/24 - From The Hidden Lamp: Collection of Stories of Twenty Five Centuries of Awakened Women - What is grief? Can we respect it? Not fear it? Really let it work us in and through our embodiment allowing its raw ingredients to scour our beautiful hearts into release into the impermanence that is the Buddha Way. Hojin reflects on her own relationship to ‘Good Grief’ and her love for Satsujo’s appropriate response, maybe not quite what we would expect from a Dharma story and our ideas of how to let go of attachment.
Duration:00:43:32
Right Essentials: Great Trust, Great Inquiry, Great Commitment
4/6/2024
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei - ZCNYC - 4/6/24 - Awakening From Illusion... Is that what we call the practice of the way? For awakening is not a one-time thing, a one-time event. But a continual awareness that needs to be continually maintained. Such maintenance as we well know may be difficult. It’s what we call practice. What supports do we have in our practice?
Duration:00:38:07
Dharma Encounter: The Five Remembrances
3/31/2024
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 3/31/24 - Shugen Roshi presents the Buddha's teaching on the Five Remembrances (impermanence, aging, illness, death, and karma) and invites his students to offer their own experience, thoughts, questions.... How do we act on and connect to these, both inside ourselves and in our relationships?
Duration:00:56:31
Gardening in the Dharma World
3/30/2024
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 3/30/24 - From the Koans of the Way of Reality - Xinyang's Sweet Melons - Being on the eve of the funeral of the monastery's beloved gardener, Senior monastic Choke Yukon, Abbot Shugen Roshi presents us, fittingly, with this koan from a collection compiled by the late John Daido Loori the founder of Zen Mountain Monastery.
Duration:00:40:43
Fusatsu: Getting to Know the Kleshas
3/29/2024
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 3/29/24 - Teisho during the March Fusatsu at ZMM during Spring Ango 2024 - In the context of our practice of the precepts, the 5th grave precept "Proceed Clearly", Shugen Roshi talks about the kleshas - mental states that cloud the mind- and how we can work with them. (We apologize; the first several minutes of this talk were not recorded.)
Duration:00:34:53
Lingzhao’s Helping
3/28/2024
Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei - ZMM - 3/28/24 - From "The Hidden Lamp, Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women" - Hojin Sensei presents a koan of Lingzhao and her father, falling together. How do we fall with someone? How do we accept somebody’s support? And do we ever know that we are helping?
Duration:00:42:01
The Lion’s Roar: Your Roar
3/27/2024
Ron Hogen Green, Sensei - ZMM - 3/27/24 - From The Record of the Transmission of the Light, Case 1 - Shakyamuni Buddha - Hogen Sensei reminds us that we are all inherently buddhas and have the ability to realize ourselves in our lifetime.
Duration:00:40:17
Mondo: Coming Into Contact
3/24/2024
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZCNYC - 3/24/24 - Shugen Roshi offers a teaching on how we come into contact with and into relationship with the world. How do we meet each other? And what can make this so difficult?
Duration:01:04:10
In Praise of Every Single Thing
3/24/2024
Danica Shoan Ankele, Osho - ZMM - 3/24/24 - Shoan Osho unfurls wide the themes of the Spring Ango -- Right Relationship, Gratitude, Interdependence -- by offering a cornucopia of teachings; from the verses of Mahapajapati, Buddha's aunt who raised him, to the 9th century Chinese master Xuefeng, bringing in her own teachers' words, along with Ross Gay's "Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude."
Duration:00:41:31
Communicating Reality
3/17/2024
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - 3/17/24 - From The True Dharma Eye, Case 148 - Dongshan's 'Teachings of the Insentient" - What does it mean to realize the true nature of mind? If we say that we must "realize it ourselves" then what is it that we can share and communicate with each other? And what's the difference between us and the insentient when it comes to communicating this?
Duration:00:43:38