This talk was given as part of a One-Day Sitting at the Boulder Zen Center. It reflects on embodiment practice as the gate to the present and the present as the gate to our true nature. The talk begins with the question, "What is missing in your life?" Happiness, money, love, security? Where does our mind go with this question? Usually to some thought pattern. What happens if, instead, we go to the embodied presence of this moment - allowing our experience to be exactly what it is? What happens if, in addition, we realize that each here-now moment requires our participation - a wholehearted yes to our experience becoming what it needs to become? We might realize that nothing is missing and that the unfolding present is our true home.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Become a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

We are excited to announce that Zenki Roshi's live practice course, "Developing Embodiment", will begin on October 18th! This live course will explore the importance of embodiment on the path of practice and awakening. We will go over practices that allow us to develop and deepen embodied presence, and we will examine how embodiment supports our journey toward a life of freedom from suffering, wisdom, and compassion. Learn more and register here: https://www.boulderzen.org/developing-embodiment

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at office@boulderzen.org.

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Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk continues and concludes the mini-series on exploring space and spaciousness. This time the emphasis is on mental space. While the two previous talks emphasized practices with visual objects, body, and breath, this talk makes suggestions for how to investigate and work with thoughts. (1) What is there between thoughts; what kind of space do you find there? (2) Where do thoughts come from, and where do they go? Do thoughts have a source? (3) Are thoughts fundamentally different from the space in which they appear? As a result of these investigations, we might find that it is more helpful to view the mind as a space that ‘allows thoughts’ rather than a self-agency that ‘does thinking.’ Suzuki Roshi spoke of Big Mind and small mind. The narrow setting of the small, self-centered mind can be understood as an expression of the wide, spacious setting of Big Mind, in which no self can be found. So even that dualism can be accommodated by space.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Consider becoming a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at office@boulderzen.org.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

This talk continues the mini-series on exploring space and spaciousness. It presents a variety of practices with gaze, body, and breath that can help us verify in our own experience that the separation of mind from object and self from other is only an afterthought that distorts the original undividedness of space. The experience of undivided spaciousness can help soften conflict, ease trauma, and increase the freedom with which we respond to changing circumstances. We can even relax our sense of self-directed agency. We might then take the view that we are not located in space but that we are what space is doing in this location. Space appears to be the agent. But rather than turning this into a notion of God, we can simply rest in the realization that moment by moment, spaciousness resolves into function. Life unfolds without clinging.

Welcome to Zen Mind!

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Consider becoming a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at office@boulderzen.org.

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.