Cosmopolitan Zen

Compassion as a Liberating Power: Bring Difficulties into Compassion - Jozen Jonathon Fielder - February 7th, 2026 - WPP26 This talk marks the final week of a winter practice series based on Awakening Through Love and focuses on compassion as a liberating power. After briefly recapping earlier weeks—love as our true nature, letting be, and extending love to others, Jozen explores Mahayana and Zen teachings that emphasize non-dual compassion, compassion that makes no distinction between good and bad, self and other. Drawing on Dzogchen teachings, Zen koans, and the Dalai Lama, the talk explains that **wisdom (emptiness) and compassion must arise together, as both reveal the shared causes of suffering and the shared potential for freedom. The session culminates in a guided loving-kindness (metta) meditation, progressively extending compassion from oneself to loved ones, neutral people, difficult people, and ultimately all beings, affirming the insight that self and reality are not separate. Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action. https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

Ekai Roshi explains the Zen koan “Does this clear, deep heart-mind come and go?” and emphasizes that while awakened awareness (clear, deep heart-mind) is ever-present, our sense of self or ego “comes and goes” and often obscures it. Meditation practices like concentration (shamatha) can quiet the mind and reveal this awareness, but deeper insight practice (vipassana) is needed to understand how our habits and conditioning interfere with it. The speaker highlights the Five Hindrances, laziness/lethargy, doubt, aversion, agitation and desire, as common mental patterns that cloud awareness. By recognizing how these hindrances arise in our own experience, practitioners can develop insight, stabilize awakened awareness, and continue the ongoing training that follows initial awakening. Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action. https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

How to Work with Emotional Koans - Ekai Joel Kreisberg Roshi - February 21st, 2026 Ekai Joel Kreisberg Roshi explains that traditional Rinzai koan training, systematized by Hakuin Ekaku, treats awakening (kensho) as the starting point of practice. Junpo Denis Kelly Roshi recognized that insight alone does not ensure emotional maturity, so he extended koan inquiry into the realm of feelings through “emotional koans.” These examine emotions such as anger, shame, and disconnection as learned, constructed responses that arise because we care, and for which we are responsible. Practitioners slow down, welcome emotions as information, return to awakened awareness, and respond with compassion. The work continues through daily reflection or journaling, teacher dialogue, applying inquiry during meditation, and sharing the practice with others, uniting awakening with emotional growth. Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action. https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

In this interview, Simha Frederick Marx recounts his Buddhist journey from beginning practice in 1988 with Nichiren Shoshu, moving to vipassana, and meeting Junpo in 2000, which led him to decades of practice with Hollow Bones Rinzai Zen. He describes attending 15–16 retreats over 26 years, his openness to all Dharma traditions despite a strong Rinzai focus, and his use of solo retreats to self-diagnose and settle recurring neuroses and anger loops. He shares his disinterest in social media, touches on themes from his recent book Confessions of a Sacred Fool, and notes that, after moving out of the city, he’s now launching a new sangha and stepping more fully into Zen teaching, something he feels is long overdue. Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action. https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

This talk explains the structure and purpose of Mondo Zen facilitation as a living dialogue rather than a technique. Ekai describes how a facilitator uses precise, compassionate questioning to bring unconscious beliefs, emotional patterns, and fixed identities into direct awareness. The process relies on deep listening, embodied presence, and timing rather than interpretation or advice. Mondo Zen is framed as a way of helping students see through their own stories in real time, allowing insight to arise naturally through inquiry, silence, and resonance between teacher and student. Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action. https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

Ekai Joel Kreisberg Roshi offers an introduction to the Mondo Zen Facilitation, through an intensive look at the Thirteen koans of Jun Po Roshi. After a discussion of the context and history of Mondo Zen Facilitation, Ekai Roshi leads a pointing out meditation for the First Koan of Mondo Zen - Is it possible to purely listen without an opinion? Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action. https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

The Heart of Zen FPP24 - October 27, 2024 Emyo Darlene offers her unique teachings on Jun Po Roshi's Mondo koans. She takes students all the way through the first seven koans in this teaching. Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action. https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

Why there are no victims - Kenshin Cian Whalley - November 15th, 2025 - FPP25 Kenshin Cian reflects on a lifetime of examining the difference between real victimization and the identity of victimhood, sharing how early childhood trauma shaped his unconscious patterns in relationships. Through Mondo Zen practice, shadow work, and metacognitive awareness, he realized that while harm is real, the ongoing story of being a victim is a choice shaped by conditioned parts of the self. He describes catching himself strategically allowing suffering to influence outcomes, seeing clearly that a deeper awareness was always present and choosing. Recognizing this “choice point” allowed him to step out of the victim–rescuer–persecutor cycle, reclaim his disowned power, and respond from presence rather than trauma-driven parts. https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/fallpractice25 Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action. https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

Seven Bodhisattvas - Shakyamuni - Emyo Darlene Tataryn - April 5, 2025 - SPP25 Faces of Compassion - Week 1 - We begin with an exploration of Shakyamuni as a Bodhisattva archetype. The journey from Prince Siddhartha to the Awakened One offers insights for all the bodhisattva archetypes. Join us for the opening session of the Spring Practice Period - Seven Bodhisattvas with a dharma talk by Emyo Darlene Tataryn. Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action. https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

Dharma Reflection - Weekend Sangha Practice - January 25, 2025 Ekai delves into the difference between dharana, shamata or concentration practice and non-meditation, silent illumination or shikantaza, or just sitting, being with what arises. The distinction helps one recognize the value of both types of meditation. Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action. https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

Fall Practice Period 2025 Daiden Dan Pecaut’s talk centers on awakening as the process of seeing through the ego and returning to embodied wholeness. He describes the ego not as a fixed entity but as a shifting collection of stories, memories, and defenses. Zen, he says, doesn’t destroy this process but places it in proper perspective, allowing the deeper self — Buddha-nature — to lead. Daiden stresses that awakening isn’t about gaining anything new but realizing what’s already present. Yet, he acknowledges that modern practice must include healing the psyche and body, since traditional Zen often bypassed trauma. Integrating Zen, shadow work, and embodiment, Daiden teaches that awakening matures through the body — where breath, awareness, and being are one. https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/fallpractice25 Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action. https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

Shunya Lynn Hyer shares teachings inspired by Junpo Roshi, exploring the transformative nature of emotions, especially anger and fear, as gateways to awareness rather than reactions to avoid. She explains that beneath anger lies deep caring, and when met with mindfulness, anger becomes a compass pointing toward unmet needs and truths. Using tools like an “emotions wheel,” she encourages expanding emotional intelligence and viewing emotions as valuable information rather than moral judgments. Through personal reflection on grief and loss, she illustrates how anger can mask deeper pain, while fear, too, serves as vital information for survival and growth. Both emotions, when held with compassion and awareness, become alchemical forces—turning pain into clarity, fear into courage, and ultimately revealing the innate Buddha-nature within all beings. https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/fallpractice25 Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action. https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/