Angel City Zen Center - Beginners Only Podcast

Sara looks at the structure and disciplines we create in our life, from Zen to work to our personal hobbies and ambitions, to try to find the true motivations and intentions animating what we do, and maybe even find out what a happy healthy productivity might look like. Do our routines and disciplines help bring us into harmony with life, or wall us off from having to actually look at it? Does the mind that motivates our work know anything about getting that work done? Is the secret to success just caring a whole lot less?? Find out here!

Chris reports on his efforts to tend the delicate ecosystem of his beloved backyard without letting it take over his life. Is it ever possible to figure out what the right thing to do is ahead of time? How much of our efforts are based on our desire to do good vs our desire to be perceived as good? Are red-winged blackbirds the meanest little buggers in the backyard and if so, should we still let them feed there?? Find out here!

Dave explores the body mind and the art and science of flow states with a brief autobiography of his own body and all the things it knows and does that he will never comprehend. Why is everything just easier on the days we do yoga? Do our bodies know, think, and express things our brains don’t understand, and can we get them in touch with each other? What are the often overlooked virtues of being a short man, and what is your own unique brand of weird you get to work with?? Find out here!

Dave gives us a personal, factual, and historical explanation of enlightenment in Buddhism and how we might or might not relate to it in our everyday practice. What does a healthy relationship to such a pie in the sky concept look like in the modern day? Do our teachers have it? Do they need to have it? Why does it feel taboo to talk about it plainly if it’s so central to our whole tradition? Are the old legends real or just canny pr?? Find out here!

Sara wrestles with the competitive spirit, who we’re really competing with, and what we might actually be trying to win. What does a healthy relationship to being right look like? Can we become winners without making losers? Is there a compassionate way to be a know it all?? Find out here!

Dave gives a road map to meditation and what you might expect to find in doing it for a half hour, an hour, a decade, or a lifetime or two. What is the one technique that unlocks all benefits instantly while carrying us down the stream unendingly? Can meditation done wrong actually do harm? And why does Zen think death is so funny?? Find out here!

In our ongoing series where brave sangha members tell us the story of what they’re doing and why they’re here, while we just maybe learn something about those things for ourselves, good sangha friend Sebastien brings us a fascinating and curious philosophical autobiography that searches skeptically through a couple thousand years of religion & thought to see if one of them might hold up to the stress test of an actual life. What do we lose when we have no religion and what do lose when we take one on? Is Buddhism’s takeover of psychology complete? Is skepticism the most solid ground for faith? And is Buddhism gaining culture currency just a recipe for making it corny? Find out here!

Sara dives deep into the dangerous waters of molten lavas of rage, grief, and repression bubbling just beneath the surface of our coping mechanisms. What do we deprive the world when we repress our inconvenient feelings, and is there a safe way to air them out? Are there good reasons to spend our energy propping up the institutions that let us down? And if the way we feel isn’t a problem, how are we supposed to fix it?? Find out here!

Dave brings us a brass tacks talk on meditation technique with a deep look at listening practice, inner listening, and intentional meditation practice in general. Can we engage in such things without spoiling the freewheeling just sitting shikantaza Zen is famous for? Can we scale the heights of the deepest meditative attainments with nothing but effortless ease? Is the peace we seek waiting quietly for us in the omnipresent roar of the A/C? Find out here!

Resident poet Matthew is back with a deep exploration of the Buddhist and personal lore around listening practice, as wayward monks almost get sexy, a patron saint of listening saves us all by finding the sound of her own heart beat, Matthew reveals his awkward youthful misdeeds, and we dissolve the boundaries between ourselves and everybody else to find ourselves just a little more free. Are wisdom and compassion just another word for listening? Can we still function in the world if we drop the narrative of its story? Is listening to ourselves checking out the most fool proof way to tune in?? Find out here!

Dave dives into the intersection of Zen and cutting edge psychology to learn about post traumatic growth and whether that might just be the wellness Zen has been quietly selling all these thousands of years. How come terrible experiences sometimes shut us down and sometimes opens us up into new and wondrous worlds? Is everything we go through really for the better? Can reality ever wrong? And if we can’t trust our own eyes, ears, or thoughts, who can we trust?? Find out here!

Sara explores the inner critic and its role in the creative process through an insightful dissection of Bodhidharma’s original founding text of Zen. How does what our Great Red Bearded Barbarian Ancestor actually said measure up to the perfect Zen master living rent free in our heads? Where does the inner critic come from and how does it hold us back? Is it actually making some good points, and is there a healthier happier way of listening to that? Find out here!

Beth explores the lure of silence, how to find it, what it asks of us, and what it offers. How much of our energy and attention do we owe to our family and friends? What is conversation really for? How can we explain the inner worlds we fly through freely when we’re not thinking in words?? Find out here!

Dave takes a secular look at the the literal magic embedded in the ceremonies and rituals of Zen to see if we can still wholeheartedly relate to them in our modern rational age, and if we’re going to try, what it would take to get the math of that magic right. Have we completely misunderstood what magic was supposed to mean and how it works? Can we draw on the power of a history we don’t always agree with? Do we need to believe in the mechanics of our rituals for their magic to work? Find out here!

Sara questions a dubiously lucrative job she’s been working and what the dubiously perfect Zen teacher in her head might have to say about it. What if our work doesn’t seem to align with our ideal aspirations, but what if paying the bills and having a little pocket money helps us to be our best self? What if we’ve already made our choices, but just don’t to admit them? What would Buddha do, and what if what he does is judge us?? Find out here!

Samm walks through a dark night of the soul on retreat and paints us vivid portraits of her grief embracing liberatory epiphanies. Can depression be a blessing and a curse? Can we trust a world of guaranteed impermanence? Is a mid life crisis really just an opportunity to have an older, wiser, second adolescence? Find out here!

Matthew plays thief to his own empty room as he wrestles with restlessness and whether trying to scratch that perpetual itch is a futile attempt to take empty space, or reaching out and grabbing the loot that makes life worth living. Also! Fresh haiku snapshots of our recent trip to Japan. Can the photographs that steal our souls also make us more present? Is Zen a zoo of ideas trapped in a cage of avoiding its true nature? How do we know our personal Zen craze isn’t just another phase?? Find out here!

Dave takes the opportunity of a scenic coastal camping retreat to reconcile all the regrets and ruminations that naturally arise given a little space, and maybe hold us back from fully sinking into such a beautiful place. Are we afraid of peaceful space? Can Zen be kind and still be effective? Is leave-no-trace good advice to live our lives by or can we maybe leave them a little better than we found them? Find out here!

Sara takes an unflinching look at learning to trust our selves despite or maybe because of whatever messes we may have made in our lives along the way. What’s the difference between the mind that aspires to our best intentions and the one that actually tries to put them into practice? What sort of wonderful demons can we look forward to making friends with along the way? Can we actually do Zen practice, or does it do us?? Find out here!

In the year 794 a populist, liberating, and some might say threatening brand of Buddhism spreads like wildfire in the countryside forcing a Tibetan king to convene a great debate with enormous consequences that will shape the spiritual fate of nations, end in exile, death, or centuries of power and prestige for the participants, and shape our questions and understanding of what we’re practicing here down to the present day. Is enlightenment something that can be trained? Or is it something innate that no one can take away? Can Buddhism give us happier, healthier brains, or does trying to improve our thinking just get in the way? Can drugs help us see what Buddha saw? Find out here!