The Zen Mountain Monastery Podcast

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – 8/30/26 – Shugen Roshi introduces the theme of the MRO 90-day Fall Ango 2026 training period: “Buddha Nature.”

Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei – ZCNYC – 8/30/26 – Join Hojin Sensei offering opening remarks to the practitioners at Fire Lotus Temple in Brooklyn to begin the Fall Ango Practice Period:

“Now the hundreds of grasses are actually gathering for the Fall.

Plucked from the entire earth, there would be ten million stalks.

One flower with five petals opens in the sky and the mud.

Without doubt it will naturally bear fruit.”

—Dogen’s words opening an Ango practice period.

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 8/29/26 – Breathing, sitting, walking, all of these ordinary activities offer the capacity to train the mind. But in what? Awareness, non-grasping, insight, stability, all these good qualities essential for liberating ourselves and others. Training is a vessel, it holds whatever we bring and it carries us along as well, a vehicle for practice. Shugen Roshi reminds us that trust in the process of Zen training is essential, but we will need to take that first step to enter training, and to continue coming back to receive the benefits of what it has to offer.

Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei – ZCNYC – 8/29/26 – The Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta is where Buddha gives the four postures: walking, standing, sitting, and lying down. The instruction is essentially to know the body as it is disposed: “when standing, one knows, ‘I am standing.’” walking they know: ‘I am walking.’ When sitting they know: ‘I am sitting.’ And when lying down they know: ‘I am lying down. When our body is aligned and upright the bodies energies begin to settle and circulate in a way that is balanced and the mind too settles into a calmer place. In this talk Hojin explores “when standing, one knows, ‘I am standing.’ It seems simple to just stand, but is it? (Zazenkai Talk)

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – ZMM – 8/23/26 – Breath is the quality that brings and sustains life–an inspiration of what enters us and provides nourishment. To have aspiration, in a sense, is the desire and motivation inspired by the Dharma which brings us into practice, inspired by our own internal call. When we cultivate even a small aspiration toward awakening, we encounter the possibility of freeing ourselves and liberating others. Shugen Roshi reminds us that we each have influence within our own sphere of living. So, what is our aspiration? What will we do with this very precious life?