Ron Hogen Green, Sensei - ZMM - 4/27/24 - From the Book of Equanimity, Case 67 - The Wisdom of the Flower Garland Sutra - The base of our practice is to realize our own true nature. Hogen Sensei exhorts us to not defile it by clinging to our deluded opinions; we are all fundamentally endowed with the virtues of the Buddha.

Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei - ZMM - 04/26/24 - Dharma Talk during the Apple Blossom Sesshin 2024 Fusatsu Ceremony - Hojin Sensei encourages us to strive to be in harmony with each and every aspect of our life.

Danica Shoan Ankele, Osho - ZMM - 4/24/24 - Can we genuinely be ourselves if we are not free of the idea of "ourself"? Shoan Osho talks about our evanescent nature and grounding ourselves in that.

Ron Hogen Green, Sensei - ZMM - 4/21/24 - Inspired by Master Dogen’s poem “Snow”, Hogen Sensei asks us what makes us whole? What can we rely on to face what is before us with clear intention?

Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei ZMM - 4/14/24 - A tea shop proprietor serves traveling monks a koan to accompany their tea. “Let those of you with miraculous powers drink tea.” Then she says to the stunned monks, “Watch this old, decrepit woman show her miraculous powers.” Then, she simply walks out. Hojin Sensei reflects on this story from "The Hidden Lamp, Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women".

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 4/7/2024 - From Master Wu-men's Gateless Gate, Case 5 - "Hsiang-yen: Person Up a Tree" - How do we discriminate in a way that liberates and doesn't entangle us in the quandaries of duality? Shugen Roshi uses a koan from the Gateless Gate to highlight this question; how can non-duality be the nature of all things in this world of such profound variation?

Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei - ZCNYC - 4/7/24 - From The Hidden Lamp: Collection of Stories of Twenty Five Centuries of Awakened Women - What is grief? Can we respect it? Not fear it? Really let it work us in and through our embodiment allowing its raw ingredients to scour our beautiful hearts into release into the impermanence that is the Buddha Way. Hojin reflects on her own relationship to ‘Good Grief’ and her love for Satsujo’s appropriate response, maybe not quite what we would expect from...

Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei - ZCNYC - 4/6/24 - Awakening From Illusion... Is that what we call the practice of the way? For awakening is not a one-time thing, a one-time event. But a continual awareness that needs to be continually maintained. Such maintenance as we well know may be difficult. It’s what we call practice. What supports do we have in our practice?

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 3/31/24 - Shugen Roshi presents the Buddha's teaching on the Five Remembrances (impermanence, aging, illness, death, and karma) and invites his students to offer their own experience, thoughts, questions.... How do we act on and connect to these, both inside ourselves and in our relationships?

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 3/30/24 - From the Koans of the Way of Reality - Xinyang's Sweet Melons - Being on the eve of the funeral of the monastery's beloved gardener, Senior monastic Choke Yukon, Abbot Shugen Roshi presents us, fittingly, with this koan from a collection compiled by the late John Daido Loori the founder of Zen Mountain Monastery.

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 3/29/24 - Teisho during the March Fusatsu at ZMM during Spring Ango 2024 - In the context of our practice of the precepts, the 5th grave precept "Proceed Clearly", Shugen Roshi talks about the kleshas - mental states that cloud the mind- and how we can work with them. (We apologize; the first several minutes of this talk were not recorded.)

Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei - ZMM - 3/28/24 - From "The Hidden Lamp, Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women" - Hojin Sensei presents a koan of Lingzhao and her father, falling together. How do we fall with someone? How do we accept somebody’s support? And do we ever know that we are helping?

Ron Hogen Green, Sensei - ZMM - 3/27/24 - From The Record of the Transmission of the Light, Case 1 - Shakyamuni Buddha - Hogen Sensei reminds us that we are all inherently buddhas and have the ability to realize ourselves in our lifetime.

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZCNYC - 3/24/24 - Shugen Roshi offers a teaching on how we come into contact with and into relationship with the world. How do we meet each other? And what can make this so difficult?

Danica Shoan Ankele, Osho - ZMM - 3/24/24 - Shoan Osho unfurls wide the themes of the Spring Ango -- Right Relationship, Gratitude, Interdependence -- by offering a cornucopia of teachings; from the verses of Mahapajapati, Buddha's aunt who raised him, to the 9th century Chinese master Xuefeng, bringing in her own teachers' words, along with Ross Gay's "Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude."

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - 3/17/24 - From The True Dharma Eye, Case 148 - Dongshan's 'Teachings of the Insentient" - What does it mean to realize the true nature of mind? If we say that we must "realize it ourselves" then what is it that we can share and communicate with each other? And what's the difference between us and the insentient when it comes to communicating this?

Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei - ZCNYC - 3/17/24 - Hojin Sensei examines a prevalent feature of our lives: distraction. We call it “monkey mind;” in Sanskrit it’s vikshepa, which means “mental wandering”, being drawn to objects that cause us to lose our ability to remain one-pointedly focused on virtue. She encourages us to be patient with ourselves and use these distractions to deepen our self-understanding, for the benefit of all.

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 3/10/24 - From Master Wu-men's Gateless Gate, Case 15 - "Tung-shan's Sixty Blows" - What is there to learn directly from our questions, settling into and being with them, without complicating them, without hastily hunting for, or picking and choosing and clinging to, answers?

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 3/3/24 - Shugen Roshi introduces the theme of the MRO 90-day Spring Ango training period, "Right Relationship with the World; Expressing Gratitude."

Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei - ZCNYC - 3/3/24 - Hojin Sensei opens this Ango, or Peaceful Dwelling, with a talk about right relationship with the world; expressing gratitude. She shares the Fourth Noble Truth and the Eightfold Path, a path that we’ve been offered. And through this path, how we can find a peace that is deeper than our conditioning.

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi - ZMM - 3/2/2024 - From The Blue Cliff Record, Case 3 - Master Ma is Unwell - For each of us, how do we create and hold ourselves in that place which opens to the middle way, the bodhisattva way? Where does our intention come from and what does it take to stay with our practice?

Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei - ZCNYC - 3/2/24 - How do we create suffering, and how do we unmake it? What is skillful? What isn’t? Hojin Sensei speaks about the Fourth Noble Truth and the Eightfold Path.

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi and Danica Shoan Ankele, Osho - ZMM - 02/25/2024 - Shugen Roshi introduces Mn Shoan for the first time as "Osho", and uses the occasion to comment on Master Dogen's fascicle on the three pure precepts, pointing out the broad affirmative nature of these moral and ethical teachings, and their active transmission through the ages; teacher to student, person to person, amongst all of us.

Bear Gokan Bonebakker, Senior Monastic and Dharma Holder - ZMM - 2/18/24 - Mn Gokan shares his insight about speech; how it manifests, in its various forms, inward and outward, positive, negative, constructive, destructive, truthful, false. Are we aware of its purpose in any given instance? He encourages us to appreciate its power and to practice constant mindfulness of how we use it.