Zencare Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

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Zencare Podcast

New York Zen Center

Religion & Spirituality

Frequency: 1 episode/14d. Total Eps: 20

GROUNDED IN THE DHARMA. DEVOTED TO CONTEMPLATIVE CARE.

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https://zencare.org
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https://zencare.org/donate/
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http://zencare.org/commit-to-sit-summer-2025
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https://amzn.to/2JTKF1t
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Awakening in the Butcher Shop | Koshin Paley Ellison

Wednesday, July 29, 2026 • Duration 29:02

“We have to be endlessly humbled and endlessly receptive. And what a joy! That, to me, is the joy of practice: to be endlessly receptive to being changed by whatever kind of ‘meat’ you're getting.”

On the 26th day of NYZC’s summer practice period, Koshin sensei turns to a classic story from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones:

When Banzan walked through a market, he overheard a customer demand the best piece of meat. The butcher replied, “Everything in my shop is the best. You cannot find here any piece of meat that is not the best.”

The story ends simply: “At these words Banzan became enlightened.”

What would it mean to realize that whatever life is presenting to us right now—in the butcher shop, on the street, or the middle of a difficult relationship—is the best piece? Even what we don’t like. Even what makes us reactive. Even what we’ve been struggling with for fifty years. Can this moment, too, be whole and complete, nothing lacking?

Koshin reflects candidly on his own recent experience of rage and impatience in a long-standing relationship. He knows the teaching intellectually, and yet finds himself completely reactive anyway because understanding the dharma in our heads is not the same as living it in our bodies.

Practice, he reminds us, is not about eliminating pain or pretending everything feels good. It is about meeting what is here without adding another layer of resistance, judgment, or story. We inquire. We soften. We ask: What is this moment here to teach me?

And perhaps, again and again, we discover the strange joy of becoming endlessly receptive to being changed.

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“Is That So?” Hakuin, Equanimity, and Seeing All the Perspectives | Jisho Sara Siebert

Tuesday, July 21, 2026 • Duration 55:26

Editor's Note(s): Just a few weeks ago, Jisho Siebert, teacher at Zen Fields in Ames, Iowa offered the first guest-teacher dharma talk for our summer Commit to Sit. It's an incredibly refreshing take on a classic Zen story which you may have heard a number of times and we are glad to share it with you here.

Alongside it, we are very delighted to announce our three Fall courses are now open for registration, the first of which features the guest teacher herself:

The Diamond Sutra: Offering Care Without Grasping with Jisho Siebert
Catch Your Mind: How to Live in a World on Fire with Koshin Sensei
Living an Ethical Life: A Study of the Zen Precepts with both Koshin Sensei and Chodo Sensei

Now, a bit more about Jisho's moving talk...

“I found this story really annoying for a long time.”

That's how Jisho Siebert opens her exploration of one of Zen's most famous teaching stories, the tale of Master Hakuin, falsely accused of fathering a child, who responds only with “Is that so?” When the truth is revealed a year later and the baby is returned, he says the same three words again.

On the surface, it's a story about equanimity. But Jisho invites us to slow down and ask the questions the story leaves out: What was this like for the young woman? For the baby, separated after a year of bonding? For the fish market worker who never came forward? For the parents, the villagers, the storytellers who passed this down, erasing women's perspectives along the way?

Opening the Closed Fist: Money as Spiritual Practice | Koshin Paley Ellison

Tuesday, March 17, 2026 • Duration 38:30

“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.

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Where Do Wars Begin? The Second Precept & Human Dignity | Chodo Robert Campbell

Tuesday, March 3, 2026 • Duration 22:19

“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?

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No Arrival: Practice and Realization Are One | Koshin Paley Ellison

Wednesday, February 25, 2026 • Duration 28:43

“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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Safeguarding What Matters Most | Koshin Paley Ellison

Wednesday, February 11, 2026 • Duration 34:12

“Many people can study lots of things, but are you living that way?”

On the 12th day of our Commit to Sit, during a winter blizzard, Koshin Sensei explores a profound question: What's the difference between talking about spiritual practice and actually living it?

Drawing on teachings from Suzuki Roshi and the 13th-century Zen master Dogen, Koshin examines how we often get caught in our thoughts; arguing with teachers in our minds, feeding our sense of entitlement, constantly debating whether we're “doing it right.”

But what would it be like to simply be ourselves, our ordinary selves, without all that noise?

At the heart of this talk is the concept of “transmission” from teacher to student, not as something claimed or awarded, but as something shown through how we live. Koshin asks us to consider: Do we practice only when it's convenient? Do we use spirituality as an identity or a lifestyle brand rather than a lived commitment? And perhaps most importantly: How do we practice when we're alone, when no one is watching?

Koshin also reflects on his own struggles with “why not me?” and shares Dogen's wisdom about safeguarding genuine practice in a world that makes it easy to dilute or neglect.

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Not Enough: The Practice of Surrendering the Self | Chodo Robert Campbell

Tuesday, January 27, 2026 • Duration 32:02

“Each in breath is bringing life into the body, and each out breath is a death. We never know if there'll be another inhale.”

On the third day of our recent Winter Sesshin (silent retreat), Chodo Sensei offers a profound teaching on the practice of bowing and the art of surrendering the constructed self.

Through the story of Gray Wolf and Zen Master Raven, he explores why true bowing leaves no self left to be humiliated; it is awakening expressing itself.

Chodo Sensei shares his own journey with body dysmorphia, addiction recovery, and the physical limitations that now prevent him from doing full prostrations.

With characteristic honesty and humor, he reminds us that sesshin is “not a spa weekend”, it's rigorous practice that asks us to surrender to the forms, the discomfort, and our resistance itself.

Drawing on Naomi Shihab Nye's poem “Kindness,” he invites us to consider: What stories are we holding onto? Can we surrender to this practice as it is, releasing our expectations of “huge awakenings” and bright lights, and instead bow to reality as it unfolds, moment by moment, breath by breath?

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Becoming Yourself | Jiryu Rutschman-Byler

Tuesday, January 6, 2026 • Duration 34:05

“The best way to observe precepts is just to be you yourself and then the precepts are always with you.”

What does it mean to “be yourself” in Zen, not as self-improvement, but as a direct, embodied intimacy with life as it is?

We were honored to recently host Jiryu Rutschman-Byler, co-abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, at our zendo in New York for this moving dharma talk on the newly released collection of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi’s teachings, Becoming Yourself, that Jiryu and the late Sojun Mel Weitsman were co-editors on.

Beginning with the simple form of upright posture, he offers vivid images; zazen as a chrysalis in which we can “melt,” thoughts like a bagel wrapper that’s useful until we keep holding it, and practice as “sharing the feeling” of right here, right now.

In the latter half of the talk, Jiryu also explores Suzuki Roshi’s radical view of precepts: not moralism or rule-following, but the natural expression of a life that remembers its place in the cosmos and a self that includes everything, past, present, and future.

We hope you enjoy this dharma talk and that you'll join us for our upcoming Commit to Sit, in which Becoming Yourself will be our guiding text!

MUSIC

Heart Sutra by Kanho Yakushiji – Buddhist priest and musician of the Rinzai sect and Imaji temple in Imabari, Japan. In 2003, he formed “KISSAQUO”, a songwriting duo based in Kyoto.

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NYZC PUBLICATIONS

Untangled here: https://bit.ly/untangled-book
Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up here:

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When the Roots Are Deep, There is No Need to Fear the Wind | Koshin Paley Ellison

Tuesday, December 23, 2025 • Duration 56:06

“Settling down is a protest against a society that values speed.”

We share this opening talk from our last Commit to Sit in honor of our upcoming 90-day program starting this January.

In it, Koshin sensei invites us into studying Shakyamuni Buddha's final teaching on becoming a great person, explored through Dogen Zenji's commentary and Uchiyama Roshi's wisdom.

Through powerful stories of the Buddha stopping Angulimala mid-chase, Ryokan wishing he could give away the moonlight, a student rubbing fire sticks until they see flame, Koshin explores the eight qualities of an awakened life: having few desires, knowing one has enough, appreciating serenity, making diligent effort, and more.

Koshin shares what it means to live with both hands, to let everything drop, and to become the good adult who can nourish deep roots so that when the winds come, there's no reason to fear.

MUSIC

Heart Sutra by Kanho Yakushiji – Buddhist priest and musician of the Rinzai sect and Imaji temple in Imabari, Japan. In 2003, he formed “KISSAQUO”, a songwriting duo based in Kyoto.

‍

NYZC PUBLICATIONS

Untangled here: https://bit.ly/untangled-book
Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up here: https://amzn.to/2JTKF1t
Awake At The Bedside here: https://amzn.to/3aijXdL

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CONNECT WITH US

Why Weren't You More Yourself? | Koshin Paley Ellison

Thursday, December 11, 2025 • Duration 22:01

“They will not ask me why I wasn't Moses. They will ask, ‘why weren't you Zosia? Why weren't you more yourself?’”

On the 82nd day of our recent Commit to Sit, Koshin Paley Ellison delivered this dharma talk on the Buddha's final teaching about useless and frivolous discussion.

Drawing from Dogen's commentaries and the Buddha's last instructions, Koshin asks how much of our day we spend entertaining confusion versus actually practicing presence.

Through humor and honesty, this talk illuminates how our tight grip on wanting things to be different than they are creates suffering and loneliness.

Koshin shares the story of Rabbi Zosia and Suzuki Roshi's teaching on “becoming yourself,” clarifying that this doesn't mean reinforcing our opinions, but becoming more ourselves with everyone.

A call to soften wherever we're holding too tight, discriminate what's truly wise, and practice the beautiful way together.

MUSIC

Heart Sutra by Kanho Yakushiji – Buddhist priest and musician of the Rinzai sect and Imaji temple in Imabari, Japan. In 2003, he formed “KISSAQUO”, a songwriting duo based in Kyoto.

‍

NYZC PUBLICATIONS

Untangled here: https://bit.ly/untangled-book
Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up here: https://amzn.to/2JTKF1t

CONNECT WITH US

Zencare Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

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Zencare Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

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