The Zen Mountain Monastery Podcast

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – 8/9/26 – With effort in practice, we bring forth our natural aliveness. To do this we make an effort to let go of self-clinging and other ways we deplete our energies. Even with expectations of the way we imagine “letting go” to be, when we encounter the reality of how tight we grasp on to our attachments, can we yield our fixed and self-centered ideas? Shugen Roshi explores this energy of aliveness with the Five Powers of the Buddha as well as a koan from Dogen’s 300 Koan Shobogenzo. (From The True Dharma Eye, Case 44: Guishan’s “I have already exhausted myself for you.”)

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi – 8/2/26 – Koan study can turn our minds inward, showing us where we get stuck in our own habitual tangles and ways of thinking about reality. What is the true nature that ’mind training’ can reveal? Shugen Roshi brings alive the subtle teachings of Zhao Zhou with this question. Through practice, we gain some ground in working with our own minds, therefore finding ways to untangle ourselves and live in true freedom. (From the Gateless Gate, Case 11 – Zhao Zhou Examines the Hermits.)

Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei – 8/2/26 – “A bird flies in the sky, and no matter how far it flies, there is no end to the air.” Following a retreat at the temple, Avian Traces, Hojin Sensei speaks about being with her mother recently in her dying process, and a bird showing up on the windowsill making contact. She links this with other stories of birds and the fact that birds have been showing up in the Buddhist teachings going back to the time of the Buddha.

Danica Shoan Ankele, Sensei – 7/26/26 – In sesshin, the deep work of transformation is held within a supportive container. Yet each of us must still discover the capacity for faith as we learn to settle the mind and realize our true nature—our fundamentally free nature. This cultivation of faith can be understood in three ways: faith in practice and the path, faith in the boundlessness of the bodhisattva vow, and faith in the truth of cause and effect. In this talk, given at the conclusion of ZMM’s Interdependence Sesshin, Shoan Sensei offers guidance for navigating these dimensions of faith.

Bear Gokan Bonebakker, Osho – ZMM – 7/25/26 – Zazen practice of shikantaza, “just sitting” comes from the Chan practice of Silent Illumination. In solitude we find our way, in the support of the teachings and learning to allow our minds to settle and come to rest. How we can understand this practice requires knowing that it’s open and available all the time. Gokan Osho reminds us that this path of liberation, of silent illumination, is never far away when we clarify it for ourselves.