Episodes
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Zen is an amalgamation of Buddhism and Daoism. But which way around: is it a Buddhism with a Daoist inflection, or a Daoism reinventing itself through a Buddhist lens? The question is practical. Zen can be sparse on how zazen translates into everyday life, as if appropriate action would simply fall into place once we sit hard enough. The Daoist stories have more to say. In the Zhuangzi, a cook's blade stays sharp for nineteen years because it follows the inherent structure of the ox; a swimmer navigates the white-water torrent with ease, following the course of the water without making a private one of his own. Appropriate action depends on a mind that perceives the patterns of a situation—its structure as well as its dynamic. There is much to be learned from the Daoist views on how the skill of discerning and acting in accord with these patterns can be cultivated.
Welcome to Zen Mind!
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Consider becoming a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
We're pleased to announce that Uji – Being-Time, a new self-paced course taught by Zenki Dillo Roshi, is available! Through a line-by-line commentary on Dogen's Uji (Being-Time)—one of the most profound texts in the Zen tradition—Zenki Roshi brings these teachings into everyday life with clear guidance and practical suggestions for practice.
The course includes an introductory talk, nine modules of commentary, practice suggestions, a concluding talk on daily-life practice, text translations, video and audio recordings, written study materials, lifetime access, and a free practice meeting with Zenki Roshi.
Receive 30% off through July 24 with the code UJI30. Learn more and enroll here: https://www.boulderzen.org/being-time-self-paced-course
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected].
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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To be alive is to have problems. While having problems is unpleasant, the deeper difficulty, this talk proposes, is not the problems themselves but the resistance we bring to them. Suffering is not one thing; it is pain multiplied by resistance. Beginning with the Five Remembrances and their reminder that aging, illness, death, and the loss of what we love cannot be escaped, the talk turns to the feelings we least want to feel, taking anxiety and powerlessness as the examples, and asks what it would mean to stop organizing our lives around their avoidance. Zazen offers the training ground: learning, in Suzuki Roshi's phrase, to sit with painful legs without being disturbed by them, then carrying that capacity into the disturbances that arise off the cushion. Reading a section of Being-Time (Uji), where Dogen links change itself, any change, with glorious golden radiance, the talk suggests that our challenge is to find aliveness even within our most unwanted feelings and states of mind. They also belong.
Welcome to Zen Mind!
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Consider becoming a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
We're pleased to announce that Uji – Being-Time, a new self-paced course taught by Zenki Dillo Roshi, is now available! Through a line-by-line commentary on Dogen's Uji (Being-Time)—one of the most profound texts in the Zen tradition—Zenki Roshi brings these teachings into everyday life with clear guidance and practical suggestions for practice.
The course includes an introductory talk, nine modules of commentary, practice suggestions, a concluding talk on daily-life practice, text translations, video and audio recordings, written study materials, lifetime access, and a free practice meeting with Zenki Roshi.
Special introductory offer: Receive 30% off through July 24 with the code UJI30. Learn more and enroll here: https://www.boulderzen.org/being-time-self-paced-course
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected].
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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Episodes manquant?
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This talk was given the day before a Bodhisattva Precepts Ceremony (Jukai) for five members of the Boulder Zen Center sangha. After describing the ceremony's lineage papers and the intentional family one joins by receiving the precepts, the talk turns to a difficulty. The grave precepts tend to land as a should, like a parental commandment, in what the talk calls the "structure of should," a morally superior part instructing a guilty one. This structure divides us within ourselves and, in the same movement, from other people, and it offers no freedom. The only door is to discover that—underneath our delusions and superficial desires—we already want what the precepts ask. In Zen the precepts are expressions of the awakening mind. It’s the soft, resonant, kind mind that arises through zazen, where interdependence is felt rather than thought. Because we inevitably lose this mind, the talk takes up trust and repentance, the latter understood as melting rather than self-punishment. It closes by observing that enacting this mind also asks for learned adult skills, not spontaneity alone, and encourages receiving the ceremony as a door into trusting one's own awakening mind.
Welcome to Zen Mind!
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Consider becoming a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
The self-paced course Developing Embodiment, taught by Zenki Dillo Roshi, is available. The course includes six dharma talks, eighteen practice suggestions, and a complimentary practice meeting with Zenki Roshi. It explores what it means to live fully in and through the body, and how embodiment can support a path of freedom from suffering, wisdom, and compassion. Learn more and access the course here: https://www.boulderzen.org/developing-embodiment-self-paced
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected].
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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This talk was given at a One-Day Sitting at the Boulder Zen Center in partnership with Dharma Gates, an organization dedicated to opening pathways into formal meditation practice for young adults. The talk's central concern, however, reaches well beyond any one stage of life. It begins from the etymology of satisfaction—Latin satis (enough) and facere (to make)—and frames meditation as the practice of letting what is here be enough. Set against this is the recognition that our culture functions as a dissatisfaction machine: an economy that must grow, technology that must improve, advertising that manufactures needs we did not know we had, screens whose scroll generates comparison with lives far from our own. Anxious becoming is the felt shape of life organized around a hopefully better future. The point is not to negate the challenges that arise in different arenas of life—work, relationships, meaning, spiritual path—but to shift the ground from which they are met. "Just now is enough" relocates the present as one's whole experiential field in which one is already breathing and functioning. From there, the next step does not have to be forced; it unfolds.
Welcome to Zen Mind!
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Consider becoming a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
The self-paced course Developing Embodiment, taught by Zenki Dillo Roshi, is available. The course includes six dharma talks, eighteen practice suggestions, and a complimentary practice meeting with Zenki Roshi. It explores what it means to live fully in and through the body, and how embodiment can support a path of freedom from suffering, wisdom, and compassion. Learn more and access the course here: https://www.boulderzen.org/developing-embodiment-self-paced
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected].
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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This talk was given during a zazen intensive at the Boulder Zen Center. The talk holds a question often left unasked: what is the role of vow in Zen practice? It opens with a confession of skepticism. Vow can become superego, a new identity to monitor against. The talk works through this tension by tracing how way-seeking mind emerges from the friction of misrepresenting ourselves as substantial, separate selves within a reality that is undivided activity. Just sitting already contains the dynamic of practice: a backward step into undifferentiated awareness and a forward step into responsive engagement. Vow's role is not to add discipline on top of this. It is to keep reconnecting practice to way-seeking mind, because for most of us its felt urgency is not consistently present.
Welcome to Zen Mind!
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Consider becoming a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
The self-paced course Developing Embodiment, taught by Zenki Dillo Roshi, is available. The course includes six dharma talks, eighteen practice suggestions, and a complimentary practice meeting with Zenki Roshi. It explores what it means to live fully in and through the body, and how embodiment can support a path of freedom from suffering, wisdom, and compassion. Learn more and access the course here: https://www.boulderzen.org/developing-embodiment-self-paced
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected].
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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This talk is about how aliveness wants to unfold through our life process. It opens with the question of what it means to find an activity that expresses one's aliveness (for example gardening), and how to widen it so it can inform all of life's activities. The talk names five unfoldings of a "realizational life": aliveness, order, expression, form, and Way. Each requires the practitioner's awake participation; none can be skipped or forced. The talk also names three ways aliveness can be displaced rather than expressed in the present: deferral into the future, nostalgia, and longing for an imagined other life. A turning word is offered for each. The talk closes on the practice that holds the whole movement together—noticing where one actually is and meeting that place fully. To be awake to the unfolding is already a realizational life.
Welcome to Zen Mind!
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Consider becoming a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
The self-paced course Developing Embodiment, taught by Zenki Dillo Roshi, is available. The course includes six dharma talks, eighteen practice suggestions, and a complimentary practice meeting with Zenki Roshi. It explores what it means to live fully in and through the body, and how embodiment can support a path of freedom from suffering, wisdom, and compassion. Learn more and access the course here: https://www.boulderzen.org/developing-embodiment-self-paced
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected].
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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This talk was offered on Day 3 of the Spring Sesshin at the Boulder Zen Center, continuing the investigation of mind begun the previous day (published two weeks ago). The inquiry turns to the koan exchange between Damei and Matsu: "What is Buddha?" – "This very mind is Buddha." Dogen warns that students have misunderstood this teaching in two ways. The first error is to equate Buddha with the ordinary functioning of mind—thinking, feeling, perceiving—which leads to complacency: if I'm already Buddha, why practice? The second error is subtler, taking the field of awareness as an eternal soul or spiritual essence that stands behind and survives the passing show of experience. Both errors are forms of grasping. In one we grasp the contents of mind, in the other we grasp the field itself. The solution Dogen points toward is not a third thing to grasp but a release from grasping altogether. When Dogen says "the mind is mountains, rivers, and earth," he is not pointing to something behind experience but to full inhabitation of form, both liberation and a more complete entry into the world as living, dynamic appearance.
Welcome to Zen Mind!
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Consider becoming a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
The self-paced course Developing Embodiment, taught by Zenki Dillo Roshi, is now available. The course includes six dharma talks, eighteen practice suggestions, and a complimentary practice meeting with Zenki Roshi. It explores what it means to live fully in and through the body, and how embodiment can support a path of freedom from suffering, wisdom, and compassion. Learn more and access the course here: https://www.boulderzen.org/developing-embodiment-self-paced
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected].
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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This talk was offered on Day 2 of the Spring Sesshin at the Boulder Zen Center. It takes up a classic koan exchange: “What is the wondrous clear mind?” – “Mountains, rivers, and the earth. The sun, the moon, and stars.” The talk invites practitioners to investigate where the mind is located in their own experience, moving through a progression: from the familiar default of a private chamber behind the eyes, to attention merged with breath traveling through the body, to the senses opening outward until the visual field, sounds, smells, and tactile sensations all become part of a field of mind. The questions “What is the mind?” or “Where is the mind?”, asked in a Buddhist context, are not just philosophical but probe which views of the mind support or hinder liberation. A distinction between the contents and the field of mind is necessary but can lead to subtle forms of dualism. This is countered by the teaching of emptiness, which reveals the mind to be not a static expanse but a dynamic, ungraspable mystery and the self to be a moment-to-moment expression. This is what makes the mind “wondrous."
Welcome to Zen Mind!
We are excited to announce that the self-paced course, Developing Embodiment, is available! Taught by Zenki Dillo Roshi, this course includes six dharma talks, eighteen practice suggestions, and a free practice meeting with Zenki Roshi. You'll investigate what it means to live fully in and through the body, and how embodiment supports a path of freedom from suffering, wisdom, and compassion. You can learn more and access the course here: https://www.boulderzen.org/developing-embodiment-self-paced
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Consider becoming a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected].
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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This talk is from the Practice Course "Developing Embodiment," originally offered live at the Boulder Zen Center and now available as a self-paced course. It challenges a common assumption, that ethics is a luxury, something we attend to once our basic needs are met. Drawing on evolutionary perspectives, the talk suggests the opposite: cooperation and care are existential facts for human beings, built into our very survival as a species. Compassion, then, is not a virtue we impose on ourselves but a capacity we already have. The Sanskrit root of compassion, karuna, means something like "to be shaken" or "to quiver"—a bodily experience. We are stirred by the presence of others, moved by their suffering, drawn out by what we encounter. The talk explores how this resonance is rooted in openness rather than contraction, and how being moved is not a problem to solve but a capacity to inhabit. The practice is to notice when we contract and to open again. The talk also addresses how, in a world with so much suffering, we can relate to our compassionate impulses without shutting down.
Welcome to Zen Mind!
We are excited to announce that the self-paced course, Developing Embodiment, is now available! Taught by Zenki Dillo Roshi, this course includes six dharma talks, eighteen practice suggestions, and a free practice meeting with Zenki Roshi. You'll investigate what it means to live fully in and through the body, and how embodiment supports a path of freedom from suffering, wisdom, and compassion. You can learn more and access the course here: https://www.boulderzen.org/developing-embodiment-self-paced
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Consider becoming a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected].
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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Zazen reveals how much of our mental struggle is bound up with time. The future presses in as plans, goals, and ideals of what we or the world should become. The past returns as memory, justification, and attempts to reinterpret difficult experiences—often in the service of protecting an image of who we are. In a psychological approach, we might be guided to explain and rearrange our story in healthier ways. In meditation practice, however, when the past resurfaces, it becomes an opportunity to complete what wasn’t fully lived. Completion is not perfect resolution. It is meeting a situation fully and openly. This can change our view of time altogether. Rather than an abstract series of points, time is the dynamic of living situations asking to be met and completed.
Welcome to Zen Mind!
Our annual Everyday Bodhisattva Practice Period is well underway. Practice Periods are guided by Zenki Roshi together with members of the Practice Council. The 2026 Practice Period emphasizes the study of Dōgen’s fascicle Being-Time (Uji). Learn more here: https://www.boulderzen.org/practice-period-2026
Following the Practice Period, a full commentary on Being-Time (Uji) will be offered later this summer as a self-paced course. To be notified when it launches, please join our mailing list.
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Consider becoming a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected].
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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This talk was given as a practice encouragement before entering the silence of a Weekend Sitting at the Boulder Zen Center. It highlights aspects of zazen relevant for any practitioner. It begins with three observations: we cannot think our way to the fruits of practice; awakening is an accident, though meditation makes us accident-prone; and many meditators, after an initial period of dramatic transformation, watch their practice plateau. So what do we do? The suggestion is to notice experience with greater subtlety in three arenas: posture, breath, and the field of phenomena. The upright posture reveals tension and, over time, opens into a subtle energetic balance—lifting through the spine and grounding into the earth at once. Breath attention becomes a gateway to a refreshed, warm feeling. The world itself begins to shimmer with quiet delight. Practice may plateau, even feel boring, but when balance, warmth, and delight in ordinary appearance settle into something familiar, separateness softens—not as an achievement, but as a new way of being.
Welcome to Zen Mind!
Our annual Everyday Bodhisattva Practice Period is well underway. Practice Periods are guided by Zenki Roshi together with members of the Practice Council. The 2026 Practice Period emphasizes the study of Dōgen’s fascicle Being-Time (Uji). Learn more here: https://www.boulderzen.org/practice-period-2026
Following the Practice Period, a full commentary on Being-Time (Uji) will be offered later this summer as a self-paced course. To be notified when it launches, please join our mailing list.
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Consider becoming a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected].
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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This talk was given as an introduction to a multi-week study of Dogen’s essay Being-Time (Uji) during the Boulder Zen Center Everyday Bodhisattva Practice Period. It doesn’t go into the details of the text yet but sets the ground for engaging Dōgen (or any difficult dharma text) not as philosophy, but as practice. The question isn’t about the nature of time (what it is), but how we relate to time in ways that bind us or free us. Our ordinary assumptions about time operate invisibly, shaping anxiety, expectation, and disappointment. Through everyday examples—broken machines, shifting plans, bodily limits—we see how attachment to what should last creates suffering. Practice invites a different intimacy with impermanence, not as an idea but as lived experience. The key to this is a shift in how we attend to the present moment, which leads to shifts in our sense of time and our sense of self—thus opening the gate of transformation.
Welcome to Zen Mind!
Our annual Everyday Bodhisattva Practice Period is currently underway. This three-month period offers an opportunity for Sangha members to come together and deepen their practice through individually designed schedules, supported by Dharma teachings and peer-to-peer Sangha dialogue. Practice Periods are guided by Zenki Roshi together with members of the Practice Council, and the 2026 Practice Period emphasizes the study of Dōgen’s fascicle Being-Time (Uji). Learn more here: https://www.boulderzen.org/practice-period-2026
Following the Practice Period, a full commentary on Being-Time (Uji) will be offered later this summer as a self-paced course. To be notified when it launches, please join our mailing list.
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Consider becoming a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected].
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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This talk was given at the opening of the 7th 90-day Everyday Bodhisattva Practice Period at the Boulder Zen Center, as participants were clarifying guiding intentions for the months ahead. Zen practice—and life more broadly—organize themselves around what we commit to. Rather than emphasizing goals, intention is presented as direction: the way attention is shaped and sustained. From this view, positive change does not come from forcibly fixing or cutting away what is unwholesome. Practice is instead to nourish what is already wholesome, allowing what is unwholesome to wither from lack of attention. Nourishment becomes a guiding orientation: staying in the zone of nourishment, investigating what truly supports life, and trusting one’s own sense of it—while recognizing that personal nourishment and true wholesomeness is inseparable from the well-being of others and the living world.
Welcome to Zen Mind!
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
Our annual Everyday Bodhisattva Practice Period is now underway! This three-month period offers an opportunity for Sangha members to come together and deepen their practice through individually designed schedules, supported by Dharma teachings and peer-to-peer Sangha dialogue. Practice Periods are guided by Zenki Roshi together with members of the Practice Council. The 2026 Practice Period emphasizes the study of Dōgen’s fascicle Being Time (Uji). Learn more here: https://www.boulderzen.org/practice-period-2026
See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected].
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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At the turn of the year, we often pause to reflect, set intentions, and imagine a better version of ourselves ahead. Yet often we experience a stubborn gap between those ideals and the lived texture of daily life. This talk questions whether that gap can be closed through effort and control, or whether something else is being asked of us. After reflecting on traditional Buddhist teachings on right intention and critiquing them from a Zen perspective as dualistic (a self trying to improve itself over time), attention turns toward the present moment itself. What if liberation is not postponed to the future, but available now? Through zazen and beginner’s mind—allowing experience to be exactly as it is—intention becomes less about fixing ourselves and more about a continued pulse of receiving the texture of this situation here now and trusting its unfolding.
Welcome to Zen Mind!
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
Our annual 'Everyday Bodhisattva Practice Period' is now open for registration! The 3-month Practice Period is an opportunity to come together with other members and deepen your practice with an individually designed schedule supported by a variety of Dharma teachings and peer-to-peer Sangha dialogue. Practice Periods are led by Zenki Roshi, BZC’s Guiding Teacher, together with members of the Practice Council. The 2026 Practice Period will emphasize the study of Dogen's fascicle 'Being Time' (Uji). Learn more and register here: https://www.boulderzen.org/practice-period-2026
See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected].
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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This talk explores impermanence as an intimate fact of lived experience, in contrast to our desire for permanence and stability. Along with conditionality and no-self, impermanence is a core principle of Buddhist wisdom teachings. Yet these principles only matter when they are felt directly-in this breathing body, in sickness, aging, loss, and vulnerability. This is why we meditate: practice allows impermanence to be known not as an idea, but as an existential fact of our life. What we call "self" can then be understood as a defensive posture against fragility. The talk reframes Zen practice as two inseparable movements: zazen, receiving experience as it is, and action, responding to conditions as they arise. What can be relied on, even as everything changes, is this receptive awareness and responsive activity.
Welcome to Zen Mind!
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
Our annual 'Everyday Bodhisattva Practice Period' is now open for registration! The 3-month Practice Period is an opportunity to come together with other members and deepen your practice with an individually designed schedule supported by a variety of Dharma teachings and peer-to-peer Sangha dialogue. Practice Periods are led by Zenki Roshi, BZC’s Guiding Teacher, together with members of the Practice Council. The 2026 Practice Period will emphasize the study of Dogen's fascicle 'Being Time' (Uji). Learn more and register here: https://www.boulderzen.org/practice-period-2026
See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected].
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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This talk was given on day 3 of a 7-day sesshin at the Boulder Zen Center. It continues an exploration of three modes of attention: focus, field, and full function. Attention is the most foundational way the world comes into being for us. This talk explores what this means for our sense of self and our sense of freedom. It uses a chapter called "Finding Yourself" from a recently published book with talks by Suzuki Roshi. You can find the reference in the show notes as well as ways for how to access the other talks in the sesshin series.
Welcome to Zen Mind!
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives, such as the December Sesshin. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
We recently started our annual year-end fundraising effort! Please consider making a one-time contribution or starting or upgrading your membership to make this next phase of BZC possible: https://www.boulderzen.org/fundraiser
See all events, programs, and how to become a member at www.boulderzen.org. Reach out and email us at [email protected].
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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While Zenki Roshi is teaching the Fall Practice Course 'Developing Embodiment' at the Boulder Zen Center, we are re-airing three dharma talks that address fundamental topics and practices related to embodiment.
The third one is "Stepping Back (and Back In)" which was originally published on November 28, 2024. This talk asks what it means to be identified with thoughts, opinions, emotions, personal characteristics, roles, and positions. And then, what it means to dis-identify from those aspects. It explores Dogen's practice instruction "to take the backward step that turns the light around and inward." Dogen's stepping back is to first discover and then establish oneself in the 'field of mind' that is always present "behind" the many 'contents of mind' that are coming and going from moment to moment. This is the realization of non-attachment and freedom. However, there remains a dualism between field and content, self and other, subject and object. So after taking the backward step, what does it take to "step back in" and release one's self and this dualism?
Welcome to Zen Mind!
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
See all events, programs, and how to become a member at www.boulderzen.org. Reach out and email us at [email protected].
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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While Zenki Roshi is teaching the Fall Practice Course 'Developing Embodiment' at the Boulder Zen Center, we are re-airing three dharma talks that address fundamental topics and practices related to embodiment.
The second one is "No Inside, No Outside" which was originally published on September 27, 2023. This talk explores how to make use of the turning phrase "No inside, no outside." A turning phrase is a verbal expression that can transform our sense of self and being in the world. The phrase is held in mind as an antidote to culturally or personally ingrained views. When we investigate common sense distinctions such as internal/external and self/other, we come face to face with our tendency to objectify what is perceived to be outside and the resulting sense of alienation. The talk provides embodied practices for entering a space of intimacy so that sight and sounds as well as thoughts and feelings can be perceived as appearing in the same undivided space.
Welcome to Zen Mind!
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
See all events, programs, and how to become a member at www.boulderzen.org. Reach out and email us at [email protected].
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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While Zenki Roshi is teaching the Fall Practice Course 'Developing Embodiment' at the Boulder Zen Center, we are re-airing three dharma talks that address fundamental topics and practices related to embodiment.
The first one is "Pause for the Pause" which was originally published on June 27, 2024. This talk was given as part of a Weekend Sitting. It highlights the distinction between the contents of mind and the field of mind. Dogen encouraged his students "to be continuously intimate with the field of mind." The talk presents two attentional practices to discover and establish oneself in the field of mind: (1) "To pause for the particular," a version of mindfulness practice that emphasizes the creation of a dharmic pulse within one's perceptual process, and (2) "to pause for the pause," which invites the stillness of the field to come to the foreground. Perceiving sensorial contents within the context of the field trains the mind in non-attachment and non-identification. Based on these practices, the talk suggests to view Zen rituals as a succession of still points and action, ultimately fostering an embodied integration of stillness and activity.Welcome to Zen Mind!
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected].
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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This talk kicked off the new live Practice Course ‘Developing Embodiment’ that just began at the Boulder Zen Center. The talk first defines the ultimate fruition of the Zen path as ‘embodying buddha.’ It’s not enough to understand what liberation from suffering as well as wisdom and compassion mean, our intention needs to be to demonstrate these qualities in each unique situation with our embodied presence, our whole being. The talk then presents the general unfolding of the Zen path, the role of embodiment on that path, and the interaction between the yogic and psychological dimensions of embodiment. It ends with an overview of the curriculum of the live Practice Course, which is open for enrollment until October 24th and which will be available as a self-paced course after the live teachings end on November 22, 2025.
Welcome to Zen Mind!
Zenki Roshi's new practice course, "Developing Embodiment," is live! Over the course of six weeks, he will give practice instructions on how to develop an embodied presence in the Zendo and in daily life. Learn more and register here: https://www.boulderzen.org/developing-embodiment
Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/
See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at [email protected].
If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!
Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.
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