Zencare Podcast

“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?

“Faith is not blind belief, but confidence born of seeing what's actually possible—the willingness to plant a seed without yet seeing the fruit.”

In this recent talk given on a snowy Sunday morning, Koshin Sensei explores the Buddha's teaching on three forms of generosity: giving out of faith, material generosity, and the gift of fearlessness (abhaya dana).

Drawing on Suzuki Roshi's gardening metaphor, Koshin asks: Are you just planting a seed and walking away, or are you tending to it day after day? Do you evaluate your practice after one visit, one year, even ten years or do you give yourself fully to the ongoing work of showing up?

Koshin also reflects on his own journey: after ten years of steady practice, he realized he was still deeply self-involved, lazy in zazen, and “one of those people you wouldn't want over for dinner”; lecturing everyone about veganism and Buddhism until a friend finally told him, “you're being an asshole.” Real friendship, real generosity, means being willing to say it like it is out of love, not just making people feel good.

At the heart of this talk is a question about faith. Not blind belief, but the willingness to plant a seed without knowing what will grow. Can you give yourself fully to this moment, whatever it brings? Can you offer steadiness in times of your own panic? And most importantly: Are you taking care of the garden every day, whether that be your practice, your relationships, your mind, your sangha, your heart and the hearts of others?

“Do an audit of how you spend your money. Does it match what you say you really care about?”

In this powerful recent talk, Koshin Sensei tackles a topic many spiritual communities avoid: money. Often, topics like finances and business can be deemed “not spiritual”, but does it have to be so?

Drawing on Suzuki Roshi and the Buddha's teachings on generosity (dana), Koshin explores how money is simply another form of impermanence. When it circulates, there's vitality. When it freezes, whether through fear, scarcity thinking, or the belief that “I don't have enough”, there's suffering.

Reflecting on 19 years of building the New York Zen Center, starting with $200 a month in payroll and a smelly room behind a hospital, Koshin invites us to examine our relationship with giving. Do you give freely, or with a closed fist? Does your bank statement match what you say you care about?

This isn't about guilt or shoulds–it's about recognizing that the tight fist is exhausting, while freely giving is not. Whether you have $1 or $100,000, the practice is the same: widening the circle in your own mind, including generosity in your life, and understanding that what you give today allows someone to practice decades from now.

“Our practice doesn't ask us how to end wars, it asks us where the wars begin. In this body. In this flash of rage. In this certainty that I am right and you are wrong.”

Amid news of global conflicts and war, Chodo Sensei offers a profound reflection on the second Buddhist precept: do not steal. But what does stealing mean when the world is organized around taking; lives, safety, homes, childhood, trust, and ultimately, humanity itself?

Drawing on Suzuki Roshi's teaching about entering the Buddha Hall with clean feet and the classic Zen story of the samurai and the master, Chodo explores how war begins long before bombs fall. It begins when we steal each other's humanity through language that turns people into targets, grief into statistics, and suffering into abstraction. It begins in the mind that divides the world into “us and them.”

With students sheltering from bombs in multiple countries, this isn't abstract philosophy, it's an urgent question: How do we sit with the sorrow of the world without collapsing into it? How do we notice our own anger without weaponizing it? How do we refuse to let suffering become something “out there” that we're not part of?