Zen Center North Shore Podcast
By ZCNS
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.
Zen Center North Shore PodcastFeb 22, 2024
Snow Storm
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a dharma talk on zoom amidst the snow in January of 2024
Ongoing Walking
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a dharma talk at the Mahasati Center in Wenham Massachusettes in December 2023
Glorious
Myozen Joan Amaral give a Dharma Talk at the Mahasati Center in Wenham MA on October 22nd 2023
Special Guest Dharma Talk by Kyosho Valorie Beer
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.
Practice at Tea
Guiding Teacher Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharma talk to the Sangha on July 23rd 2023
Relentless Practice
NCNS Guiding Teacher Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharam talk to the Sangha on July 9th 2023
This Rock Supports That Rock
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharma talk at the Mahasati Center in Wenham MA on April 23rd 2023
Confidence, Openness Arrogance and Inquiry-Reverend Shingaku Jenny Henderson
Reverend Shingaku Jenny Henderson joins ZCNS to give a talk to the Sangha on 5/7/23
In Case You Get Stuck in Your Head
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a talk at the Mahasati Center in Wenham Massachusetts on May 14th 2023
Too Busy To Be Anxious
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a dharma talk in February of 2023 at the Mahasati Center in Wenham, Massachusetts
Nourishing Wholeheartedness
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharma Talk at the Mahasati Center in Wenham, Massachusetts in January of 2023
Beyond Categories
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharma talk at the Mahasati Center in Wenham, Massachusetts's on November 6th 2022
Sacred Spaces
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharma talk before a Jukai on October 2nd 2022 in Wenham, Massachusetts
Shikantaza and Birds
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharma talk in the new physical space in September of 2022
What Do You Think Is Going On Here?
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a dharma talk in early July 2022
All Together
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharma Talk on June 26th 2022
See, See, See
Myozen Joan Amaral engages the Sangha in discussion on May 29th 2022
Beginning with Love Right Here
Myozen Joan Amaral leads a discussion on Dogen with the Sangha in June 2022
Inquire and Notice
Myozen Joan Amaral give a Dharma talk at the end of May 2022
You Have To Be Here To Show Up
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharma talk on April 17th 2022
Karma Call and Response
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharma Talk in March 2022
Don't Underestimate Your Gassho
Myozen Joan Amaral offers a Dharma talk in January 2022
Suzuki Roshi's Great Encounter
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a dharma talk on December 5th 2021
Compass
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a dharma talk and leads the sangha in discussion on November 6th 2021
Field of Freedom, Notions of Control
Myozen Joan Amaral leads the Sangha in a discussion on November 7th 2021
Valley Sounds and Mountain Colors
Myozen Joan Amaral leads the Sangha in discussion on September 19th 2021
Intention
Myozen Joan Amaral leads the sangha in discussion in September 2021
Just This
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharma talk on July 25th 2021
Plant and Tend
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharma Talk on August 1st 2021
Returning to the Natural World
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharma Talk in July 2021
The Sangha Jewel
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a dharma talk on July 11th 2021
Immersion
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharam Talk on June 13th 2021
Guest Teacher Taigen Leighton: Dongshan’s Place Beyond Heat and Cold and Soto Zen Responses to Climate Breakdown
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.
Just Do the Job
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a dharma talk on May 23rd 2021
Turning the Wheel and Turning the Wheel
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a dharma talk during an all day sitting on May 16th 2021
Growing Up and Growing Out
Guiding Teacher Myozen Joan Amaral gives a dharma talk on the life of the sangha in May 2021
Guest Teacher Shokuchi Carrigan-Celebrations
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.
Guidance for Awakening Beings
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a dharma talk in January 2021
Guest Teacher Jisho Sara Siebert Home-leaving and Justice
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.
Two Truths
A Dharma Talk by Myozen Joan Amaral
The New Ecosattva Path
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.
Guest Speaker Dr. Laura Harrington: The Genealogy of Socially Engaged Buddhism
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.
A Great Awakening
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharma talk on December 20th, 2021
Trust
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a Dharma talk on December 6th 2020
Rev Keiryū Liên Shutt - Freedom Thinking
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
Mind Waves
Myozen Joan Amaral discuss the question, "What do I do with my mind on the cushion?" with the Sangha on November 22nd 2020
Rev. Issho Fujita- Coming Home and Sitting Peacefully
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.
On the Four Foundations of Mindfulness-Part 3
-Shokuchi Deirdre Carrigan continues her class on The Four Foundations of Mindfulness
Hogetsu Laurie Belzer-Bhadda Kundalakesa & Our Women Ancestors
Hogetsu Laurie Belzer give a talk on the Buddhist Women Ancestors on October 11th 2020
Nothing to Reject
Myozen Joan Amaral gives a dharma talk on October 4th 2020