Everyday Zen (5): Ideals

Jikai Vicki Turay continues our dharma seminar on Charlotte Joko Beck’s  Everyday Zen asking the question: Do our ideals serve us or confuse us? Are they guiding principles or subtle forms of attachement?

What is Death with Dignity?

In honour of the Buddha's parinirvana, Shinmon Michael Newton asks: how does realizing our self-nature free us from birth and death? 

Everyday Zen (4): Relationships

"Every moment of our life is relationship. There is nothing except relationship." (Charlotte Joko Beck)

Shinmon Michael Newton continues our dharma seminar, exploring how we can perceive and navigate relationships with mindfulness and presence. 

Truth and Beauty in Hard Times

Myoshin Kate McCandless asks, with so much seeming to be so awry in the world right now, how can we  meet beauty and truth in unexpected moments and guises.

Everyday Zen (3): Feelings

Daikan John Green continues our dharma seminar on Charlotte Joko Beck’s Everyday Zen, in which Joko describes how sitting can be like opening a Pandora’s box — which looks still and pretty on the outside, but can release a swarm of intense feelings. How do we experience these feelings as they arise, without being caught by ‘emotion-thought’?

Working With Anger: Practising Patience (2/2)

In this second talk on working with anger, MRZC Priest Dai-i Flo Rublee uses Shantideva's writings in The Way of the Bodhisattva—along with Pema Chödrön's masterful analysis—to explore specific situations for practising patience in the midst of overwhelming emotion. She also reminds us of the value of our troublemakers: those people or situations that challenge us and give us opportunities for practice.

Working With Anger: Avoiding the Hook (1/2)

In this first of two talks based on Shantideva's writings in the classic text The Way of the Bodhisattva, MRZC Priest Dai-i Flo Rublee unpacks how anger functions as a hindrance to happiness and affects all around us. She goes on to explain how, by cultivating patience, we can learn to sit through the ‘pain of detox’ and avoid biting anger's hook.

Everyday Zen (2): What is Practice?

Myosen River Shannon continues our dharma seminar on Charlotte Joko Beck's book Everyday Zen and explores two questions Beck poses: "What is practice?" and "What is not practice?"