Angel City Zen Center - Beginners Only Podcast

Nina Snow - Weeping Zen

In a heartfelt and emotional discussion, Nina Snow explores Zen’s favorite topic to overlook - emotions. With readings from “The Hidden Lamp” and Charlotte Joko Beck, Nina explores the difference between unnecessary ego drama and real emotion. How much crying is too much? How much should we believe what we’re feeling? What’s the bridge between letting go of ego and knowing when to act? Nina takes us through all this in intimate and personal terms with an eye toward guiding us into a practice more about open exploration than answers and prescriptions.

Emily Eslami - The Passion of Dispassion

Emily Eslami on Craving. It's a talk about happiness, the limitations of happiness, passion, and the joy of dispassion. It's a talk about ironic contentment and what exactly were we looking for in the first place anyway? But there is always hope, and as Emily puts it, "Maybe what we deem as happiness is inadequate, maybe there’s a happiness that goes beyond happiness." Can I tell you what she means exactly? I wish. But I can tell you it's something worth exploring, listening for, and sitting with.

Nina Snow - Happy

Nina tackles the ever tricky subject of happiness with a reading from “The Zen Teachings of Homeless Kodo” - “What is Happiness?” Is happiness the point? Can we transcend the duality of emotion? And what would we call THAT emotional state if not happiness??

Orlando K. - Rogue Idealism

Bringing back the “What Am I Doing Here??” series, our own Orlando K. regales us with the story of how he got here and what he’s doing to possibly help us answer the question of what any of us are doing here. Orlando goes all in and talks about experiences of death and impermanence, aesthetic and philosophy, debate and silence, and tackles the great questions of “what is a hero, what is justice, what is right and wrong whats the difference between actions and intention?”

Brad Warner - Matter and the Immaterial

In a loose and wide ranging Q&A style discussion, Brad takes on some big questions and gets deep with the sangha. With topics ranging from how to deal with anger, to what the heck does “form is emptiness, emptiness is form” mean, to practical tips on zazen posture. we delve into the heart of what zazen and being human are all about. Is finding our Buddha nature as simple as feeling the sensation in our joints? And speaking of joints and sensation, what do we do if zazen won’t stop hurting? It’s a talk about what’s so damn special about being human, what happens when you sit yourself into stillness, and practical tips on how to let your body take you there. Plus a reading from Kobun Chino on koans at the end just for good measure!

Emma Roy - Lay Practice

Emma Roy celebrates the lay community. While so much has been written about the wise monks and teachers who have defined Buddhism, Emma points out that this is not the vast majority of practitioners, and takes a moment to reflect on the path of being a student as its own ambition. It’s a talk about hierarchy, asking questions, not knowing, and an exploration of practice as an achievement in and of itself.

Emily Eslami - “The Practice of Impossible Things”

Emily takes on the impossible in her “Intro to Zen” talk. How exactly is anyone supposed to introduce this wild, inexpressible, unattainable practice we do day after day, moment by moment? Reading from Dogen’s Zazen Shin, she takes a deep dive into the classic koan about trying to sit to become a Buddha, described as just as simple as trying to polish a tile to make a mirror. But here we will let Emily speak for herself in a demonstrative moment where she manages to express the inexpressible totality of what exactly Zen practice is: “There are so many things in our life that are impossible to achieve; being the perfect Buddhist, being the perfect partner, being a well rounded human who cooks and cleans, has a productive work life, an amazing social life, and exercises four times a week. All that stuff we put pressure on ourselves to do, its impossible! So I think its really nice that this is a practice of sitting and doing an impossible thing, and letting go of the need to achieve anything. Maybe that’s the point of letting go, that we do achieve something. Maybe we do get what we want. But we can’t trick it! We can’t pretend we don’t have a goal to get what we want. We just have to accept that what we’re doing is impossible and we don’t have a goal, and yet maybe by doing that, maybe the tile is already a mirror”

Dave Cuomo - Wait, what exactly is Mahayana Buddhism? (History of Zen pt 5)

Dave continues his series on the history of Zen with pt 5 - Mahayana Buddhism. He wades into the murky history to try to find the historical roots of the Mahayana, and what if anything, set it and its followers apart from early Buddhism. Dave and the sangha also reflect on the ways the arguments and differences that caused this split in the first place are still very much alive and relevant today in the different approaches of modern Buddhist schools.

Nina Snow - Greed & Generosity

Nina Snow leads the sangha in a roundtable discussion on the nature of greed, exploring it’s roots in fear and attachment, and the generosity inherent in letting go.

Emma Roy - The Big Bummers of Buddhism

Emma Roy discusses “The Three Characteristics,” the three hallmarks of Buddhism that everyone wishes were not true - suffering, impermanence, and no self. Why do these have to be true and why do we have such a hard time accepting that they are?