Sangha Practice
/Myoshin Kate McCandless offers various practices which can help us maintain and care for our sangha relationships.
Dharma Podcast and Teachings
The Mountain Rain Zen Dharma Podcast
features talks by our guiding teachers, Myoshin Kate
McCandless and Shinmon Michael Newton, as well as a
variety of MRZC practice leaders and other guest speakers.
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Recent talks can be found below.
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Teachings Archive
You can browse all past talks by speaker, date, category, and program in our archive found HERE
Beliefs and Ethics (What is Zen? Chapter 6)
/What do ritual and tradition evoke? How do the precepts help us commit to compassionate action? Can we understand religion as daily life?
Myosen River offers the third talk in our dharma seminar on the book What Is Zen: Plain Talk for a Beginner's Mind by Norman Fischer and Susan Moon.
Right Livelihood and the Subversive Power of Volunteering
/In this ZED Talk (Zen Engaged Dharma), Roshin Carmen Mills illuminates how volunteer work – ‘selfless service’ – serves the self, while also serving the greater whole and cultivating a deeply held sense of inherent value and connection. All the while, taking a sly poke at consumer capitalism.
Forms and Ritual (What is Zen? Chapter 3)
/Myoshin Kate McCandless offers insight into how forms and rituals such as bowing and chanting bring us into our bodies and nurture community.
Week two of our dharma seminar on the book What Is Zen: Plain Talk for a Beginner's Mind by Norman Fischer and Susan Moon.
True Compassion
/Shinmon Michael Newton offers insights into why Dogen venerated Avalokiteshvara, and how an act of true compassion, karuna, is an act of wisdom.
What's the Point of Zazen? (What is Zen? Chapters 1-2)
/Shinmon Michael Newton presents the first in a series of seminars based on the lively Q&A book What Is Zen: Plain Talk for a Beginner's Mind by Norman Fischer and Susan Moon.
How Much is Enough?
/Myoshin Kate McCandless describes how the eight-fold path and the eight awakenings support us in knowing how much is enough, even as we are steeped in a culture of hyper-materialism.
Opening the Hand of Thought (Chapter 7)
/Nin-en Susan Elbe offers the final talk in our ten week dharma seminar on Kosho Uchiyama Roshi's book: Opening the Hand of Thought.
We each live in the world as an individual self operating within the realm of desires, aversions, categorization and separation. In this chapter, Uchiyama Roshi explores how practicing goal-less zazen can bring us to meet our "true" self, which fully realizes interconnection with all beings.
