168 - Is This IT? Dogen's Everyday Activity (Kajo) - Part 1
In Zen we say practice is nothing other than your everyday activity. If we view the Dharma as something special – a particular activity we treat as more sacred, or a state we hope to attain that will ...
13 Maj 202139min
167 - If You're Not Making Mistakes, You're Not Practicing
How can practice with mistakes - so we make fewer mistakes, but also so we aren't paralyzed by fear of mistakes, stressed out trying to avoid them, or stuck in regret or self-recrimination once we've ...
28 Apr 202133min
166 - The Ceremony of Wesak: Celebrating and Expressing Gratitude for Our Teachers
The annual Buddhist festival of Wesak celebrates the birth of Shakyamuni Buddha. The ceremony takes inspiration from the Buddha's mythological birth story, and I describe a version of the ceremony and...
20 Apr 202129min
165 - The Buddhist Moral Precepts as a Practice for Studying the Buddha Way
The Buddhist precepts aren't just guidelines help us live moral and beneficial lives, they're also practice tools for studying the self. As Zen master Dogen wrote, "To study the Buddha Way is to study...
9 Apr 202140min
164 – Gratitude as a Dharma Gate
Gratitude can be used as a practice to shift our attention from self-centered problems and complaints to an awareness of the miracle of simply being alive. It can help us be less reactive, depressed, ...
19 Mars 202148min
163 - Lotus Sutra 4: Parable of the Plants - Superior, Middling, or Inferior Beings and the Dharma
The Lotus Sutra Parable of the Plants says that just as rain falls equally on plants big and small and each plant takes up what they need, so the Buddha shares the Dharma with all beings without any j...
12 Mars 202133min
162 – Am I a Good Buddhist?
If you practice Buddhism, it's natural to ask yourself, at some point, "Am I a Good Buddhist?" It's difficult to see ourselves as a good Buddhist when we fail to act in accord with our own deeper aspi...
1 Mars 202125min
161 - The Parinirvana Ceremony and the Teaching of the Buddha's Dying and Death
Parinirvana, the death of the Buddha Shakyamuni, is commemorated by a ceremony in mid-February in most Buddhist communities throughout the world. The Buddha gave several important teachings right befo...
15 Feb 202131min
