Zen Center North Shore Podcast: Recent Episodes
ZCNS
Dharma Talks given by Guiding Teacher Myozen Joan Amaral or Guest Teachers of the Zen Center North Shore
The Zen Center was established in 2012 to make the teachings and practice of meditation freely accessible to a a diverse population across the North Shore of Boston and regionally throughout New England. We offer ongoing opportunities for the study and practice of Soto Zen Buddhism. The foundation of the Zen Center is built on the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha's teachings.
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a dharma talk at the Mahasati Center in Wenham Massachusettes in December 2023
Myozen Joan Amaral give a Dharma Talk at the Mahasati Center in Wenham MA on October 22nd 2023
Kyosho Valorie Beer joins ZCNS for a Dharma talk on October 8th 2023
Kyosho Valorie Beer has practiced Zen Buddhism since 1991. She was ordained as a Zen priest in 2005 and received Dharma Transmission in 2013 from her teacher, Edward Brown. She lived at Green Gulch Farm from 2003 to 2012, when she moved to City Center. After serving as the San Francisco Zen Center corporate secretary, she was the City Center Ino (Head of Meditation Hall), and is now supporting the Branching Streams sanghas as a visiting teacher. Before taking up monastic life, Valorie worked for two decades in corporate Human Resources at various high-tech companies in Silicon Valley. She is the author of four books, she is a private pilot, and she is the mother of a thirty-something daughter who works and lives in the Bay Area.
NCNS Guiding Teacher Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharam talk to the Sangha on July 9th 2023
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharma talk at the Mahasati Center in Wenham MA on April 23rd 2023
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a talk at the Mahasati Center in Wenham Massachusetts on May 14th 2023
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a dharma talk in February of 2023 at the Mahasati Center in Wenham, Massachusetts
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharma Talk at the Mahasati Center in Wenham, Massachusetts in January of 2023
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharma talk at the Mahasati Center in Wenham, Massachusetts's on November 6th 2022
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharma talk before a Jukai on October 2nd 2022 in Wenham, Massachusetts
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a dharma talk and leads the sangha in discussion on November 6th 2021
We are delighted to welcome back Zen teacher, sangha leader, translator and scholar Taigen Leighton to ZCNS for a dharma talk on Dongshan’s Place Beyond Heat and Cold and Soto Zen Responses to Climate Breakdown.
Dongshan, the ninth century Chinese founder of the Soto Zen lineage, recommended going beyond heat and cold. This story and Dongshan's teachings of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi and the five degrees offer contexts for responses to our current climate crisis.
Resources: Taigen Dan Leighton, Just This Is It; Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness (Shambhala, 2015). Rebecca Solnit, "Dare we hope? Here’s my cautious case for climate optimism”
About the speaker:
Taigen Dan Leighton is a Soto Zen priest and Dharma successor in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Taigen began formal everyday zazen and Soto practice in 1975 at the New York Zen Center with Kando Nakajima Roshi. He migrated to the Bay Area in 1978 and shortly thereafter began to work full time for the San Francisco Zen Center. Taigen practiced and resided for years at the SFZC City Center, Tassajara monastery, and Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, and received priest ordination in 1986 from Reb Anderson Roshi. Taigen also practiced for two years in Kyoto, Japan, translating Dogen with Shohaku Okumura Roshi, and practicing with several Japanese Soto Zen teachers. Taigen received Dharma Transmission in 2000 from Reb Anderson.
Taigen is author of Just This Is It: Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness; of Zen Questions: Zazen, Dogen and the Spirit of Creative Inquiry; of Faces of Compassion: Classic Bodhisattva Archetypes and Their Modern Expression; and of Visions of Awakening Space and Time: Dogen and the Lotus Sutra. He is co-translator and editor of several Zen texts including: Dogen's Extensive Record; Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi; The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Dogen's "Bendowa" with Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi; and Dogen's Pure Standards for the Zen Community: A Translation of "Eihei Shingi".
Taigen relocated to Chicago in 2007, and now is Guiding Dharma Teacher for the Ancient Dragon Zen Gate sangha. Taigen still teaches online at the Berkeley Graduate Theological Union, from where he has a Ph.D., and he has taught at various other universities. Taigen has long been an Environmental and Peace activist, currently working with Buddhist Peace Fellowship Chicago.
Guiding Teacher Myozen Joan Amaral gives a dharma talk on the life of the sangha in May 2021
Shokuchi Carrigan returns as guest speaker for the Sunday dharma talk, where she will further explore some of the themes from her class series on the paramitas.
About the speaker:
Shokuchi Deirdre Carrigan trained as a student of Zen at San Francisco Zen Center for 20 years, including four practice periods at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center and more than a decade of residential practice at Green Gulch Farm, where she served the community as Kitchen Manager (Tenzo,) Guest Program Manager (Shika), Conference Coordinator, and Assistant to Senior Dharma Teacher Tenshin Reb Anderson. She was ordained a Soto Zen priest in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi by Tenshin Roshi in 2010 and served as Shuso (Head Student) in 2014.
Shokuchi studied Iyengar Yoga with Donald Moyer for two decades, graduated from the Advanced Studies Program at The Yoga Room in Berkeley, CA, and has taught yoga since 1988, including Zen and Yoga retreats at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, Green Gulch Farm, The Yoga Room, Yogasana in Brooklyn, New York, and in Ireland. In 2017, Shokuchi moved to New York City where she served as Head of Practice (Tanto), at Brooklyn Zen Center until COVID-19 closed the urban center. She is currently leading zazen and offering talks, dharma study classes, and yoga classes online, and continues to co-lead Zen and Yoga retreats. During this time of physical isolation, she is enjoying the opportunity to extend and deepen her study of dharma.
We are pleased to welcome Jisho Sara Siebert!
Drawing on both a Buddhist home leaving perspective and from her work/ practice, Jisho shares with us her view of right relationships as transformative, and home leaving as a path to dropping the stories and relationships we were raised with, in order to form unlikely ones in the service of justice.
Jisho is a Soto Zen Buddhist priest who was led to Buddhism by the suffering around her and in her work to prevent domestic and sexual violence. Her path to understand suffering and joy led her to Los Angeles – where she first met her teacher, Gengo Akiba Roshi, then to Papua New Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, monasteries in Japan, and Haiti. At present she works for organizations based in Haiti and Uganda committed to preventing violence against girls and women and ending child slavery. She is recognized as an International Zen Teacher (Kokusaifukyoshi) by the Soto Shu and teaches at Zen Fields in Ames, Iowa.
We are pleased to welcome David Loy this evening for zazen and a dharma talk on The New Ecosattva Path.
David R. Loy is a professor of Buddhist and comparative philosophy, a prolific writer, and a teacher in the Sanbo Zen tradition of Japanese Buddhism. His books include "Lack and Transcendence, A New Buddhist Path", and most recently "Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis". He is especially concerned about social and ecological issues. In addition to offering workshops and meditation retreats, he is one of the founders of the new Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center, near Boulder, Colorado.
In June 2014, David received an honorary degree from Carleton College, his alma mater, during its 2014 Commencement, and in April 2016 he returned it, to protest the decision of the Board of Trustees not to divest from fossil fuel investments.
You can find out more about the breadth of his work at davidloy.org.
It is our joy to welcome back Dr. Laura Harrington.
Dr. Laura Harrington is on the faculty of Boston University’s Department of Religion, where she teaches courses on Asian literature and history. Her research interests include Tibetan tantric literature, and the history of Buddhism in the United States with an emphasis on the Cold War period. She also serves as Zen Center North Shore's Board Secretary.
It is our great joy to welcome Rev. Keiryū Liên Shutt!
Rev. Keiryū is a Dharma heir in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Born into a Buddhist family in Vietnam, she began her meditation practice in the Insight tradition. A founding member of the Buddhists of Color in 1998, her Soto Zen training began at Tassajara and continued monastically in Japan and Vietnam. While she has placed her trust and faith in Soto Zen, Liên continues to enjoy the deep silence of Insight practices and has completed retreats in the U.S. and Thailand. Please go to AccessToZen.org for info on her weekly meditation group, individual guidance details, and other events.
December 3rd 2020
Myozen Joan Amaral discuss the question, "What do I do with my mind on the cushion?" with the Sangha on November 22nd 2020
Guest Teacher Rev. Issho Fujita Zooming in from Japan to join us as he returns to Massachusetts, at least virtually, to lead the Sangha in a discussion of Zazen practice on November 12th 2020
Rev. Issho Fujita was born in Ehime prefecture in Japan in 1954. He studied developmental/clinical psychology at University of Tokyo. Besides academic study, he intensively practiced Aikido and Noguchi Exercise. When he was a PhD. Student at the age of 27, he was recommended by a master of Chinese medicine to attend a week-long Zen sesshin (intensive Zen training session) at Enkaku-ji, traditional Rinzai monastery in Kamakura. Through this experience he was deeply fascinated by zazen practice. Eventually he left the graduate school to study Zen full time at Antai-ji, Soto Zen monastery in Hyogo Prefecture.
In 1987 he became a resident teacher at Pioneer Valley Zendo in Massachusetts, USA. During his stay until 2005, he also taught at various colleges and institutions, such as Smith College, Amherst College, Mt Holyoke College, University of Massachusetts, and Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.
In 2010 he was assigned to be a Director of Soto Zen Buddhism International Center in San Francisco. Until resigning from that position in 2018, he visited many Soto Zen centers, temples and groups worldwide to teach Soto Zen teaching and practice.
He lives in Hayama, Japan, with his family, as a free-lance Zen teacher who teaches somatic style Zen in forms of lectures, workshops and books.
A Special Episode offered by Myozen Joan Amaral for encouraging a practice of stability in this challenging time.
Recorded on 11/2/2020
Shokuchi Deirdre Carrigan gives the second talk in her guest teacher series on The Four Foundations of Mindfulness on October 1st 2020.
Guest Teacher Gyokei Yokohama leads the discussion on Dogen's "Bodhisattva's Four Methods of Guidance".
Day 1 of ZCNS' virtual residency with Edward Brown on September 17th 2020.
Edward was ordained in 1971 by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, who gave him the Dharma name Jusan Kainei, which means "Longevity Mountain, Peaceful Sea."
Edward has been practicing Zen since 1965 and also has done extensive vipassana practice, yoga, and chi gung. He leads regular sitting groups and meditation retreats in Northern California and offers workshops in the U.S. and internationally on a variety of subjects, including cooking, handwriting change, and Mindfulness Touch.
Edward is an accomplished chef, who helped found Greens Restaurant in San Francisco and worked with Deborah Madison in writing The Greens Cookbook. Edward's other books include The Tassajara Bread Book, Tassajara Cooking, The Tassajara Recipe Book, and Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings. He also edited Not Always So, a collection of Suzuki Roshi's lectures. In 2007, Edward was the subject of a critically acclaimed feature-length documentary film entitled How to Cook Your Life, directed by Doris Dörrie.
Myozen Joan Amaral gives the last dharma talk before the summer interim at ZCNS on August 23rd 2020
Charlie Pokorny head priest of Stone Creek Zen Center in Northern California joins the sangha for a dharma talk on August 20, 2020
David Chadwick leads the Sangha in a discussion on his experience with Suzuki Roshi, preserving teachings, Zen in the age of Covid-19 and his personal experience via Zoom from Bali on August 16th 2020
Myozen Joan Amaral leads the group in a discussion and meditation exercises in class 2 of the "One Dharma" series on January 24th 2019
Guest Teacher Shokuchi Deirdre Carrigan offers the sangha dharma teachings on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness from the body's point of view on July 19th 2020
Shokuchi Deirdre Carrigan received training in Soto Zen practice as a resident of San Francisco Zen Center for 12 years, was ordained as a priest in the Shunryu Suzuki lineage by Tenshin Reb Anderson in 2010, and was Shuso (head monk) with Abbess Eijun Linda Cutts in 2014 at San Francisco Zen Center/Green Gulch Farm. She has been teaching yoga in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1988, as well as co-leading Zen and Yoga retreats at Tassajara and Green Gulch Farm since 2002. She is the Tanto (Head of Practice) at Brooklyn Zen Center.
Guest Teacher Chris Ives gives a talk on Zen practice, Pilgrimage Tradition and connecting with nature July 16, 2020
The first class in the "One Dharma" Series offered in January of 2019. Myozen Joan Amaral leads the group in a discussion of practice, compassion and social justice
Guest Teacher Nick Kranz gives a dharma talk on the shared lineage between his practice and Zen Center North Shore on April 5th 2020
Guest Teacher Nick Kranz gives a talk to the sangha on the Ecology of the Heart on April 5th, 2020
Guest Teacher Ben Connolly gives a talk on the subject of Love and Intimacy on October 19th, 2019
Guest Teacher Dr. Laura Harrington a professor at Boston University gives a talk on the history of Buddhism in America on August 19th, 2019
Myozen Joan Amaral leads the sangha in a discussion of Zen Master Dogen's "Mountain and River Discourse" (Sansui Kyo)
Guest Teacher Nizk Kranz gives a talk on Sadhana of Mahamudra from the Tibetan Tradition.
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a talk discussing the "Bodhisattva's Four Methods of Guidance"
Dharma Talk By Myozen Joan Amaral on the start of Zen Center North Shore and a remembrance of some of the people who helped shape it.