Pandemic Zen: Recent Episodes
Paul Gerstein, MD
An experimental podcast exploring the healing and life-sustaining potential of Zen insight, meditation and mindfulness in a modern world of existential challenges to health, happiness and our very survival.
Recorded by: Paul Gerstein, MD
Paul takes us on a deep dive into the 22nd koan in the Hekigan Roku: "Seppo's Turtle-Nosed Snake". Dealing with living, dying and Reality, this abstruse yet powerful koan can be penetrated by a close and careful look at the code-language and strange events depicted therein. Through this process, we learn how to work with the more puzzling Zen teaching stories and uncover their profound implications.
This talk was presented by Paul Gerstein at the September 14, 2025 Living Dharma Center virtual zazenkai.
How can Zen practice precisely meet the moment when things go "wrong"? We place the election of Trump in a larger context with the help of a shocking koan from the Mumonkan collection.
Lecture (teisho) to a Zen retreat by Paul Gerstein on 10/27/2024 in which he presents the 7th koan from the Hekigan Roku (Blue Cliff Record): "You Are Eh-Cho!"
To help elucidate this terse and penetrating koan, Paul discusses a famous line from The Diamond Sutra and goes on to explore an incorrect approach to mindfulness practice that can contribute to a kind of meditation illness or "Zen sickness". Paul describes a video presentation on the origins of the universe entitled, "Everything and Nothing" and how a specific understanding of cosmology points to a profound truth at the core of what we call, "Me".
Zen talk given to a morning Zen retreat (Zazenkai) on August 11, 2024. We start with a poem titled, "My Catastrophe", highlighting the doneness of each present moment and the freedom to shine one's truth. We go on to discuss the importance of "attentive desisting"; then read and comment on an excerpt on Zen practice, Easiness for Beginners, from the great 20th century Ch'an master, Hsu Jun. We finish with the initial parts of a song by U2 performed live at Slane Castle, Ireland: Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of [released 2000].
Talk to Zen retreat group on how to approach the "end" of everything. We discuss koan #29 from the Hekigan Roku: "It will be gone with the other."
This is a Zen lecture (teisho) to a virtual retreat group. We start with a TV commercial from the 1950s and progress to the strange "preliminary koan" called, The Duck in the Bottle.
In this episode, Paul gives a teisho (Zen lecture) on a koan from The Blue Cliff Record (a Tang and Sung dynasty collection of 100 teaching stories).
Recorded by: Paul Gerstein, MD
Intro music: Dancing for the Answers by Nick Mulvey
Ending music: Kerosene Hat by Cracker
In this episode, we discuss the rapidly worsening pandemic in the U.S. and the troubling opposition by many to proven mitigation efforts. We examine the famous statement by Milarepa, an 11th century Tibetan master: “Abandon hope and fear.” Finally, a teaching story from The Blue Cliff Record points to a way out of struggling against painful difficulties of everyday life.
Recorded by Paul Gerstein, MD
Intro music: Dancing for the Answers, Nick Mulvey
Ending music: Fearless, The Neville Brothers
In this episode, Paul starts with a brief bio of his training in both medicine and Zen followed by a deep dive into facts and fictions regarding COVID-19. The contrast between blind beliefs and careful observation highlights how the scientific method and mindfulness practice counters the false narratives of anti-science, political propaganda in the setting of an alarmingly worsening pandemic.
Recorded by: Paul Gerstein, MD
Podcast channel creation and website design: James Kieffer – Kieffer Consulting, LLC
Intro music: Dancing for the Answers, Nick Mulvey
Ending music: Look At Miss Ohio, Gillian Welch
The release of a cellphone video of the killing of an African American jogger, followed by one of a Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, leads to a world-wide explosion of outrage over racism and police brutality. Added to the trauma of the pandemic and its associated economic collapse, we connect the failure of president Donald Trump to inspire and lead Americans and the world to a higher moral ground against an array of unprecedented challenges. The role of mindfulness is further explored as a prime coping mechanism when the whole world seems to be falling apart. How ‘noticing’ is a stepping-back without withdrawing. Zen master Rinzai’s famous quote regarding the Dharmakaya (the ‘body’ of absolute Truth) gets a close look. We investigate developing the facility and appreciation of noticing that things, most fundamentally, appear (before any other meaning we might ascribe to them). Dharmakaya koans are presented and placed into context with today’s global crises.
Paul Gerstein, MD
Website: pandemic-zen.com
In print: Form Is Emptiness: An Insider’s Guide to the Heart of Zen Buddhism, P. Gerstein, 2013, www.levellerspress.com/?s=form+is+emptiness
Recorded by: Paul Gerstein
Channel and website design: James Kieffer – kiefferconsulting.com
Intro music: Dancing for the Answers, Nick Mulvey
Ending music: For What It’s Worth, Buffalo Springfield
Paul discusses the ongoing pandemic and its effects on our psyches and everyday lives. Taking an even deeper dive into the “Stopping…” koan, Paul associates insights from quantum physics’ theories of time and reality with the Zen approach of directly experiencing the elements of one’s actual life with openness, attentiveness and the letting go of story-making.
Credits:
Recorded by: Paul Gerstein, MD
Podcast channel creation and website design: James Kieffer – kiefferconsulting.com
Intro music: Dancing for the Answers, Nick Mulvey
Ending music: Time Has Come Today, The Chamber Brothers
Podcast channel is given the name, “Pandemic Zen” and the general theme of using mindfulness to deal with real-life adversity. Paul explains the Zen phrase, “Jumping on the back of the horse thief’s horse” to describe methods of intentionally turning the concept of meaning to one’s advantage in exploring an underlying truth.
Credits:
Recorded by: Paul Gerstein, MD
Podcast channel creation and website design: James Kieffer – kiefferconsulting.com
Intro music: Dancing for the Answers, Nick Mulvey
Ending music: Riders On The Storm, The Doors
Going further into “Stopping” and the reliance on intellectual meaning vs. the “meaning” of the sheer experience of sensory actuality. Paul discusses the insight of “What it means is that it is (and nothing more).” We look into the non-interference of naming with directly-experiencing. Awakening and enlightenment are explored in a fresh way. “Awakening is waking up the fact that things appear.”
Credits:
Recorded by: Paul Gerstein, MD
Podcast channel creation and website design: James Kieffer – kiefferconsulting.com
Intro music: Dancing for the Answers, Nick Mulvey
Ending music: The Lantern, The Rolling Stones
In this first episode, Paul discusses the implications of the global COVID-19 pandemic and how attending to one’s sensations can be a doorway to a fresh relationship with the challenges of everyday life. Using the koan, “Stop the sound of the distant temple bell”, we explore a method of looking both through and behind the world of form to contact the ‘Source’ of reality.
Credits:
Recorded by: Paul Gerstein, MD
Podcast channel creation and website design: James Kieffer – kiefferconsulting.com
Intro music: Dancing for the Answers, Nick Mulvey
Ending music: Who’ll Stop The Rain, Creedence Clearwater Revival