Zencare Podcast

“How you bow is not just for you.”

In this recent dharma talk, Koshin Sensei reflects on what it means to practice consistently: to be the same person regardless of who's watching, what conditions you're in, or whether you're getting what you want.

Drawing on Dogen Zenji's teaching on the Four Embracing Actions (giving, loving speech, beneficial action, and identity action), Koshin explores what should remain unchangeable in practice and what needs to adapt as NYZC prepares for a major transition.

At the core is a distinction borrowed from teacher Aoyama Roshi: Fu'eki, what must not change (the practice of freeing ourselves from small self and habitual mind), and Ryuko, what can evolve to meet the moment.

What are the things in your practice and your life that must not change? And what might you need to change in yourself to allow practice to enter you?

“The precept does not ask us to be passive in the face of injustice. The question is always: from what place do we speak?”

In this recent talk, Chodo Sensei explores the sixth and seventh precepts: not speaking of others’ faults and errors, and not elevating oneself while blaming others.

What can seem like simple teachings become a profound invitation to examine the energy beneath our speech. Are we speaking from compassion, clarity, and care? Or from reactivity, self-protection, and the need to be right?

With honesty (and more than a touch of humor), Chodo reflects on how quickly the mind moves toward comparison, judgment, and disparagement, and how this habit creates suffering for ourselves and others. The practice, he reminds us, is not to suppress truth or avoid difficult conversations, but to slow down, look at our motivations, and learn to speak in ways that are true, timely, kind, and beneficial.

This is the work of becoming “that which we already are”; people capable of finding the Buddha in one another, especially those who challenge us most.

“The purpose of practice might be to enter the question so fully that it begins to reshape us.”

What is the purpose of practice after all? In this talk on doubt and the practice of not-knowing, Chodo Sensei shares a teaching from his favorite Zen teacher: Zen Master Raven, the wise old bird from Robert Aitken Roshi's animal sangha stories.

When Badger asks what the purpose of practice is, Raven doesn't answer directly. Instead, he asks: “Do you have an inkling?” When Badger hesitates and says “I'm not sure,” Raven responds: “Doubts dig up the whole blue planet.”

Rather than treating doubt as something to overcome or push away, Chodo invites us to embrace it. Can you live with the doubt? Can you doubt the doubt? Can you feel it in the body rather than trying to answer it from the head?

The talk and teaching is about letting doubt do its work of digging, of opening, of uncovering what's been with us all along, waiting for us to stop long enough to feel it.

“In Zen practice, we talk about bearing witness; not as a passive act, but as a form of deep engagement. To really see what's happening. Not escaping into numbness, but also not hardening into fixed views.”

In this recent talk, Chodo sensei reflects on the fourth and fifth precepts (truthfulness and not clouding the mind) as practices for living in a fractured and overwhelming world.

Speaking to the instability, violence, and uncertainty of our current moment, he invites us to notice the ways we reach for certainty, numbness, outrage, or distraction when the truth feels too much to bear.

But what can we do when we are stuck in the “sh*t show” (a term Chodo would never use)? He offers bearing witness as a courageous and compassionate response: staying close to what is true, pausing long enough to discern clearly, and meeting the world without adding confusion to confusion.

“In this moment, what does it mean to care?”

What do the precepts ask of us in a time of injustice, division, and outrage?

In this recent talk, given the day after millions took to the streets in protest across the US, Chodo Sensei reflects on anger, activism, and the thin line between harm and care.

Drawing on Suzuki Roshi's teaching that we don't observe precepts to attain enlightenment but to actualize Buddha's spirit, Chodo explores how the precepts are not commandments that remove us from the world and this very moment, but rather invitations to meet both with intimacy.

He reminds us that our practice isn't about perfection. It's about noticing when we're about to cross that line from care to harm in our minds, our words, our actions. It's about letting one question interrupt us, shape our lives: In this moment, what does it mean to care?