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Zencare Podcast: Daily Summaries Delivered
by New York Zen Center
GROUNDED IN THE DHARMA. DEVOTED TO CONTEMPLATIVE CARE.
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- 2 weeks ago28 min
Finding the Buddha in Others | Chodo Robert Campbell
“The precept does not ask us to be passive in the face of injustice. The question is always: from what place do we speak?”In this recent talk, Chodo Sensei explores the sixth and seventh precepts: not speaking of others’ faults and errors, and not elevating oneself while blaming others.What can seem like simple teachings become a profound invitation to examine the energy beneath our speech. Are we speaking from compassion, clarity, and care? Or from reactivity, self-protection, and the need to be right?With honesty (and more than a touch of humor), Chodo reflects on how quickly the mind moves toward comparison, judgment, and disparagement, and how this habit creates suffering for ourselves and others. The practice, he reminds us, is not to suppress truth or avoid difficult conversations, but to slow down, look at our motivations, and learn to speak in ways that are true, timely, kind, and beneficial.This is the work of becoming “that which we already are”; people capable of finding the Buddha in one another, especially those who challenge us most.
- 3 weeks ago22 min
Doubt Digs Up the Whole Blue Planet | Chodo Robert Campbell
“The purpose of practice might be to enter the question so fully that it begins to reshape us.”What is the purpose of practice after all? In this talk on doubt and the practice of not-knowing, Chodo Sensei shares a teaching from his favorite Zen teacher: Zen Master Raven, the wise old bird from Robert Aitken Roshi's animal sangha stories.When Badger asks what the purpose of practice is, Raven doesn't answer directly. Instead, he asks: “Do you have an inkling?” When Badger hesitates and says “I'm not sure,” Raven responds: “Doubts dig up the whole blue planet.”Rather than treating doubt as something to overcome or push away, Chodo invites us to embrace it. Can you live with the doubt? Can you doubt the doubt? Can you feel it in the body rather than trying to answer it from the head? The talk and teaching is about letting doubt do its work of digging, of opening, of uncovering what's been with us all along, waiting for us to stop long enough to feel it.
- Apr 29, 202629 min
Not Turning Away from this Fractured World | Chodo Robert Campbell
“In Zen practice, we talk about bearing witness; not as a passive act, but as a form of deep engagement. To really see what's happening. Not escaping into numbness, but also not hardening into fixed views.”In this recent talk, Chodo sensei reflects on the fourth and fifth precepts (truthfulness and not clouding the mind) as practices for living in a fractured and overwhelming world.Speaking to the instability, violence, and uncertainty of our current moment, he invites us to notice the ways we reach for certainty, numbness, outrage, or distraction when the truth feels too much to bear.But what can we do when we are stuck in the “sh*t show” (a term Chodo would never use)? He offers bearing witness as a courageous and compassionate response: staying close to what is true, pausing long enough to discern clearly, and meeting the world without adding confusion to confusion.
- Apr 7, 202627 min
What Do We Do With Our Anger? | Chodo Robert Campbell
“In this moment, what does it mean to care?”What do the precepts ask of us in a time of injustice, division, and outrage? In this recent talk, given the day after millions took to the streets in protest across the US, Chodo Sensei reflects on anger, activism, and the thin line between harm and care.Drawing on Suzuki Roshi's teaching that we don't observe precepts to attain enlightenment but to actualize Buddha's spirit, Chodo explores how the precepts are not commandments that remove us from the world and this very moment, but rather invitations to meet both with intimacy.He reminds us that our practice isn't about perfection. It's about noticing when we're about to cross that line from care to harm in our minds, our words, our actions. It's about letting one question interrupt us, shape our lives: In this moment, what does it mean to care?
- Mar 25, 202639 min
The Gift of Fearlessness | Koshin Paley Ellison
“Faith is not blind belief, but confidence born of seeing what's actually possible—the willingness to plant a seed without yet seeing the fruit.”In this recent talk given on a snowy Sunday morning, Koshin Sensei explores the Buddha's teaching on three forms of generosity: giving out of faith, material generosity, and the gift of fearlessness (abhaya dana).Drawing on Suzuki Roshi's gardening metaphor, Koshin asks: Are you just planting a seed and walking away, or are you tending to it day after day? Do you evaluate your practice after one visit, one year, even ten years or do you give yourself fully to the ongoing work of showing up?Koshin also reflects on his own journey: after ten years of steady practice, he realized he was still deeply self-involved, lazy in zazen, and “one of those people you wouldn't want over for dinner”; lecturing everyone about veganism and Buddhism until a friend finally told him, “you're being an asshole.” Real friendship, real generosity, means being willing to say it like it is out of love, not just making people feel good.At the heart of this talk is a question about faith. Not blind belief, but the willingness to plant a seed without knowing what will grow. Can you give yourself fully to this moment, whatever it brings? Can you offer steadiness in times of your own panic? And most importantly: Are you taking care of the garden every day, whether that be your practice, your relationships, your mind, your sangha, your heart and the hearts of others?
- Mar 17, 202638 min
Opening the Closed Fist: Money as Spiritual Practice | Koshin Paley Ellison
“Do an audit of how you spend your money. Does it match what you say you really care about?”In this powerful recent talk, Koshin Sensei tackles a topic many spiritual communities avoid: money. Often, topics like finances and business can be deemed “not spiritual”, but does it have to be so?Drawing on Suzuki Roshi and the Buddha's teachings on generosity (dana), Koshin explores how money is simply another form of impermanence. When it circulates, there's vitality. When it freezes, whether through fear, scarcity thinking, or the belief that “I don't have enough”, there's suffering.Reflecting on 19 years of building the New York Zen Center, starting with $200 a month in payroll and a smelly room behind a hospital, Koshin invites us to examine our relationship with giving. Do you give freely, or with a closed fist? Does your bank statement match what you say you care about?This isn't about guilt or shoulds–it's about recognizing that the tight fist is exhausting, while freely giving is not. Whether you have $1 or $100,000, the practice is the same: widening the circle in your own mind, including generosity in your life, and understanding that what you give today allows someone to practice decades from now.
- Mar 3, 202622 min
Where Do Wars Begin? The Second Precept & Human Dignity | Chodo Robert Campbell
“Our practice doesn't ask us how to end wars, it asks us where the wars begin. In this body. In this flash of rage. In this certainty that I am right and you are wrong.”Amid news of global conflicts and war, Chodo Sensei offers a profound reflection on the second Buddhist precept: do not steal. But what does stealing mean when the world is organized around taking; lives, safety, homes, childhood, trust, and ultimately, humanity itself?Drawing on Suzuki Roshi's teaching about entering the Buddha Hall with clean feet and the classic Zen story of the samurai and the master, Chodo explores how war begins long before bombs fall. It begins when we steal each other's humanity through language that turns people into targets, grief into statistics, and suffering into abstraction. It begins in the mind that divides the world into “us and them.”With students sheltering from bombs in multiple countries, this isn't abstract philosophy, it's an urgent question: How do we sit with the sorrow of the world without collapsing into it? How do we notice our own anger without weaponizing it? How do we refuse to let suffering become something “out there” that we're not part of?
- Feb 25, 202628 min
No Arrival: Practice and Realization Are One | Koshin Paley Ellison
“When you encounter obstacles, do not see them as hindrances separate from practice.”In this talk from the beginning of the year (and in preparation for the Year of the Fire Horse), Koshin Sensei reflects on what it really means to make effort. Not as self-improvement, but as a vow to be fully here.Drawing on Dōgen’s teachings on continuous practice, he offers simple, direct questions we can live inside: How are you using your time? How are you caring for your body, (the personal and the collective)? Do your investments of time, finances, energy, etc. support what you say you value? And can you meet obstacles not as interruptions, but as the very field of practice?This talk is both grounding and bracing: a reminder that practice and realization are not separate, that there’s no “arrival,” and the most honest measure of our practice might be how the people around us experience it.With humor and warmth, Koshin invites us to return, again and again, to uprightness in this moment, and to a life shaped less by habit energy and more by vow.
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GROUNDED IN THE DHARMA. DEVOTED TO CONTEMPLATIVE CARE.
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