Zencare Podcast

“The robe of liberation does not hide our imperfections. It doesn't erase our history. It's stitched together from many different pieces of cloth, just as our lives are stitched together from moments of joy and grief, cruelty, clarity, confusion, generosity, and fear.”On the final full day of sesshin (silent retreat), Chodo sensei takes up a story from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones about Shichiri, a Zen master confronted by a thief wielding a sword. Shichiri gives the man his money, reminds him to leave enough for the next day’s taxes and even asks him to say thank you. Years later, after serving a prison sentence, the thief returns and becomes his disciple.The story raises a profound question: What happens when we refuse to reduce another person (or ourselves) to the worst thing they have ever done?Drawing on his years offering prison dharma at Sing Sing, Chodo reflects on meeting men whom the world had labeled murderer, dealer, rapist, or offender. Zen practice does not erase harm or eliminate accountability, he reminds us. But neither does it allow a single action, wound, or identity to become the whole story of a human life.During sesshin, another kind of thief appears: the voice that says you're not worthy, that steals the present by dragging it into the past, that insists we already know who we are. As practitioners prepare to receive the Buddha's robe, Chodo offers a different understanding. Jukai is about trusting that you have never only been the story you've told yourself. The robe of liberation weaves in every aspect of your being.

Editor's Note(s): Just a few weeks ago, Jisho Siebert, teacher at Zen Fields in Ames, Iowa offered the first guest-teacher dharma talk for our summer Commit to Sit. It's an incredibly refreshing take on a classic Zen story which you may have heard a number of times and we are glad to share it with you here. Alongside it, we are very delighted to announce our three Fall courses are now open for registration, the first of which features the guest teacher herself:The Diamond Sutra: Offering Care Without Grasping with Jisho SiebertCatch Your Mind: How to Live in a World on Fire with Koshin SenseiLiving an Ethical Life: A Study of the Zen Precepts with both Koshin Sensei and Chodo SenseiNow, a bit more about Jisho's moving talk... “I found this story really annoying for a long time.”That's how Jisho Siebert opens her exploration of one of Zen's most famous teaching stories, the tale of Master Hakuin, falsely accused of fathering a child, who responds only with “Is that so?” When the truth is revealed a year later and the baby is returned, he says the same three words again.On the surface, it's a story about equanimity. But Jisho invites us to slow down and ask the questions the story leaves out: What was this like for the young woman? For the baby, separated after a year of bonding? For the fish market worker who never came forward? For the parents, the villagers, the storytellers who passed this down, erasing women's perspectives along the way?Drawing on decades of crisis response and violence prevention work, Jisho shows how equanimity in action looks like curiosity instead of judgment, questions instead of arguments, and fierce care that doesn't collapse into either passivity or reactivity. When the whole fabric of a community shifts (as it does for those involved in this classic tale) so does the experience of those within it. There's no one who isn't involved, so how can we act like it?

“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.‍NYZC PUBLICATIONSUntangled here: https://bit.ly/untangled-bookWholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up here: https://amzn.to/2JTKF1tAwake At The Bedside here: https://amzn.to/3aijXdL‍‍CONNECT WITH US—Instagram—Facebook—Donate

“They will not ask me why I wasn't Moses. They will ask, ‘why weren't you Zosia? Why weren't you more yourself?’”On the 82nd day of our recent Commit to Sit, Koshin Paley Ellison delivered this dharma talk on the Buddha's final teaching about useless and frivolous discussion.Drawing from Dogen's commentaries and the Buddha's last instructions, Koshin asks how much of our day we spend entertaining confusion versus actually practicing presence.Through humor and honesty, this talk illuminates how our tight grip on wanting things to be different than they are creates suffering and loneliness. Koshin shares the story of Rabbi Zosia and Suzuki Roshi's teaching on “becoming yourself,” clarifying that this doesn't mean reinforcing our opinions, but becoming more ourselves with everyone. A call to soften wherever we're holding too tight, discriminate what's truly wise, and practice the beautiful way together.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.‍NYZC PUBLICATIONSUntangled here: https://bit.ly/untangled-bookWholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up here: https://amzn.to/2JTKF1tAwake At The Bedside here: https://amzn.to/3aijXdL‍‍CONNECT WITH US—Instagram—Facebook—Donate