Brooklyn Zen Center

Recorded on October 10, 2026 at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY.

Rev. Doyeon Park, a minister of the Manhattan Won Buddhist Temple and Buddhist spiritual life advisor at Columbia and NYU, explores the complex nature of compassion in her Dharma talk at Brooklyn Zen Center drawing from personal experiences as a student and as a minister. True compassion, she explains, comes from the Latin for “to suffer together” and from the Buddhist concept of Karuna, the wish for all beings to be free from suffering, which is rooted in our interconnection. She describes a three-stage practice: first releasing ill will, then developing a neutral understanding of others’ conditions, and finally wishing genuine well-being even for difficult people. She concludes that “fierce compassion,” meaning strong words or action when needed, must be guided by wisdom and honest reflection on one’s intentions.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If these teachings have benefited you, please consider supporting the program with a donation (suggested $2-7/episode, or whatever feels right for you!). You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Recorded on October 10, 2026, at Boundless Mind Temple in Brooklyn, NY

This talk considers the PISAB principle of Learning from History and its connection to Zen practice—specifically, the discipline of studying ourselves. Sarah Sensei explores ways we can engage with both our personal histories and the collective narratives that shape our lives, our places, and our social conditioning. Through this investigation, we can work toward liberating ourselves from inherited patterns of suffering.

The BZC Podcast is offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive.

If these teachings have benefited your life, please consider supporting the program with a donation (suggested $2-7/episode, or whatever feels right for you!). You can donate to Brooklyn Zen Center at brooklynzen.org under ‘Giving.’ Thank you for your generosity!

Our being in the world – and our karmic orientations in everything that is happening – is what makes the world around us what it is.

Reflections on Resistance and Pipeline 3: a share by Yoko Ohashi and Koan Anne Brink

Please take care, and practice this song, this Samadhi song, for the welfare of this world. And listen to the teachings that you working on this Samadhi yourself is transforming beings. We are not doing this just to transform our self, were doing it to transform all beings. But working on our self in this way, transforms beings.

The focus of the Bodhisattva Samadhi is the Bodhisattva wish, the Bodhisattva aspiration: to make Buddhas for the welfare of the world. And then there is that aspiration, you can also, in a sense, vow and commit to that aspiration. So the aspiration, and the commitment of the aspiration, is at the center of the Bodhisattva Samadhi.

The beings who have this wish and commitment – to realize perfect understanding for the welfare of all beings – when those beings enter into Samadhi, their vow goes with them. So in that sense, the Bodhisattva Samadhi (or what I would call zazen) – I consider the zazen that I am recommending and encouraging is Bodhisattva Samadhi. And that Bodhisattva Samadhi, that zazen, is a vow. It’s an open, relaxed, buoyant, undistracted vow: to gather the entire ocean of Buddha’s teachings, for the welfare of all beings.

The Samadhi is the teaching of Suchness. The Samadhi is intimate communion. The Samadhi is Buddhas and Ancestors. Buddhas and ancestors are the Samadhi. Buddhas and Ancestors are that teaching. Buddhas and Ancestors are intimate communion. Bodhisattvas want to live in that intimate communion, they want to be Buddhas and Ancestors, they want to be the teaching of Suchness. Because that is what they understand is the way to help people. They work on that in their own practice. Which they understand is how you help other people.

Everything you do is an opportunity. Everything you say, every gesture you make, every thought that arises in your mind. All of those are opportunities – each one is an opportunity to take care of this Samadhi that has been given to you.

In the sensation of the low-grade heartbreak there is gratitude, appreciation, grief and sadness. How can I cultivate the space in my life for a low-grade heartache, that I think is necessary to engage in Bodhisattvic activity? It’s an uplifting grief that sustains us and that can keep us in the game.

The Bodhisattva vow of living for the liberation of all beings, even before my own, to raise up in the heart the liberation of all beings — this is the most powerful interrupter and lover of karma. This vow turns everything toward karma.

Sometimes you sit down – or I sit down – because there is fear. But that is still a fearless choice to face your fear, to understand your fear. Bodhisattva can have fear, but does not live from fear. Fear is not the source of Bodhisattva activity.

We deeply desire to be in accord with the natural functioning of life, with dependent co-arising, with the way things interact and support each other, without these false senses of separation. That is what our heart and our lives desire in the deepest sense.

This is our practice, the practice of love, the practice of intimacy. That’s why we offer a relationship with a teacher, and we offer sangha, so we can work this way with each other.

We are training ourselves – in our bodies, in our minds, through the practice, through the teachings – to make it more likely that in a moment of suffering, in a moment of threat, that we will be able to have an intention to, and maybe some sort of capacity to respond to courageous connection, instead of tightening into separation and division.

For me the most powerful things the vows do are because of their impossible nature — they are humbling. They have a kind of leveling effect. In the face of this impossible vow, I’m one person in a community. So there is an aspect of confession in that vow, of acknowledging our humanness and our limited view. So there is a humbling and tenderizing effect of the vow, that enables us to open up to the functioning of the universe, we actually open up to possibility. We become tender in the face of new possibilities, our imagination is liberated.

We can cultivate this sense of great expansive unconditioned love. That allows us to meet the difficulty in life without turning away and without getting caught.

We really need human beings that are devoted to the difficult spiritual path required to release the full light of love into the world.

How do we work through our pain, through our numbness? How do we regain a sense of aliveness?

I would suggest a mind that is awake, and that settles, and that finds love, joy, and ease in precariousness, so that we can be with each other, and love each other, and support each other. In very real, concrete meaningful ways.