Audio Library

Being the host is being genuine. It’s loving your life, the one you have. For this you have to settle into what you really want.

Arriving at my hotel that afternoon, I saw a dirty pickup truck that was just exquisite to look at. I’d never seen anything so clean, so crisp and so “here.” The whole universe is available to us in this way. All we have to do is return.

I’m restless and my body hurts, and in the middle of the night, I come out to the living room and it’s been waiting for me; the night is so happy to see me, and the owl opens its door and I can hear the conversation of the winter stars.

When we are not expecting something, people to be nice to each other at Xmas, for example, what actually happens can be wonderful. When we are not looking, that’s when our lives change.

The Zen idea is that we need and we can find a pathway, make a pathway, through the dark. One way that we can navigate in the vast uncertainty is to praise each other, to console each other, to appreciate and extend a hand.

Kanzeon is the sutra for setting out in the new year, and for setting out into the next life. When we notice that we are always secretly accompanied, that is the living presence of Kanzeon. She watches over our practice.

Jon Joseph talks with acclaimed poet Robert Hass about the great Japanese Haiku masters, Hass’s poetry, and his twenty-five-year collaboration with the poet Czeslaw Milosz.

In the world of anxiety and stress we can always help others. And that’s what we do. The thing is not to seize a delusion to believe in.

We don’t get much say over what the world does and we don’t get much say over what enters our minds. Our job is to hold steady for the world, for those to come, to make a path for people to follow.

Some time ago, I wrote a poem called, “Thank you is red.” OK, but what other colors are on the horizon?

The old boat is sailing off laden with its gifts and sorrows, and the New Year—who knows what it will bring, what we will discover, what new fear will confront us and what we will love?

For all creative activity we must step from a high place without guarantees. There is something exhilarating about that act. That’s the way to live!

People go to abandoned places to search for their true nature. At such a moment, honored one, where is your true nature?

There are no answers, only depths … but the depths—oh my, the depths are wondrous indeed! For those depths are beyond the words and explanations and understanding that answers normally entail—and there, anything and anywhere is the answer: willow seed fluff swarming sunlit through afternoon skies, hummingbird probing blue-violet iris blossoms veined gold, someone answering a knock at the courtyard gate …

Marie Howe’s poetry shines with a kind of clear and beautiful light of the ordinary. She somehow captures the simple yet eternal and graceful moment: Sitting with a dying brother, rushing on errands with a daughter, letting in the whining dog late at night. In Howe’s poetry these are opportunities for us to awaken to our true humanity.

Throughout Governor Jerry Brown’s half century of politics—one of the most fascinating and effective public careers in California history—there has always run a deep moral and religious stream. Brown talks with co-hosts Jon Joseph, John Tarrant and David Weinstein about his evolving quest for an authentic spiritual and political life.

A Zen Luminaries conversation with poet Jane Hirshfield about writing, Zen, and creativity, hosted by Jon Jospeh & Friends. On writing, she says: A poem is a field of discovery. It is not the record of something I already know. It is the record of exploration for alchemical transformation or for a pot a rice. The cooking pot is us.

It is a grand tradition in Irish and Scottish pubs for musicians to join jam sessions which break up only when the sun peeks over the hayfields. That kind of amazing musical collaboration involves hundreds of songs over dozens of hours. Jordan McConnell: “We would be in the middle of a piece of music and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Something’s about to change, but I’ve no idea what’s coming up.’ Then my hand goes to where it needs to be and my mind just follows along.”

Author, filmmaker, and Zen teacher Susan Murphy Roshi joins the Pacific Zen Luminaries Series with host Jon Joseph & Friends to talk about her newest book on Zen koans for facing the climate crisis. John Tarrant writes: “As in a fairy tale, we have the impossible task of saving the earth. We know that there are sensible things that are good to do but we must also do what we haven’t thought of—seeing our lives and the earth with fresh eyes.”

For years, Dr. Epstein kept his Buddhist beliefs separate from his work as a psychiatrist. Becoming more open about his spiritual leanings, he was surprised how many of his patients were eager to learn more. Jon Joseph hosts Mark Epstein, MD, for a conversation about the intersection of Buddhism and the practice of psychotherapy. With comments from John Tarrant, Allison Atwill and Joan Sutherland.

Acclaimed Sci-Fi writer and earth advocate Kim Stanley Robinson chats with Jon Joseph about his personal version of Zen practice, the what-ifs of writing alternative history, poetry in the High Sierras, and more. John Tarrant comments. Recorded November 15th, 2023.

In meditation things come and go, as in life. In Zen the experience of loss contains a treasure. There is gold inside the loss whether of a person, a country, or a beloved house. Grief dissolves everything. The valleys of life are important for developing empathy. Mazu gives us the path to walk through the demons: Help others cross. Make yourself a raft. An Indigenous saying: Inside the last tear, happiness is hiding. 

What is the heart of any big question? We are swimming in a sea of uncertainty and the mind wants to fill in the blanks. Yet our questions are much smaller than what’s on offer, what’s possible as an answer—the whole universe might be doing something through me.

A lively conversation with prolific writer and former journalist Pico Iyer about his fascinating life traveling to zones of conflict, his relationship to religion, his friendship and spiritual journeys with the Dalai Lama, and his life in Kamakura, Japan, where he now spends most of his time. Recorded October 30th, 2023.

The mind is an artist ceaselessly creating narrative with a need to skip out of experience into story. The Daoists encourage us to remain in the dance—not to make a plan is the Way: Remove the barriers to your life and exclude nothing! Your very heart mind is Buddha.

Bankei’s awakening came through facing his aversion to death. His question, “What is bright virtue?” brought him to Zen early in life. Later, he became one with the field and could fully see whatever he encountered. As your life becomes more whole, everything comes to belong.

“What is this?” asked the eccentric Zen teacher Budai, holding up odd objects to a crowd. The universe is an intimate net, its jeweled facets contain everything, including the smell of fresh toast. All living beings must turn toward the ultimate. This is deeper than any sorrow, horror, disgrace. The strangeness and beauty of now, of life, is beyond explanation. And this moment has always been here.

Salt and sauce—the taste of life is complex. Even in times of deprivation, persecution and war, the flavor of life may include radical happiness. In Zen, we don’t have to know the solution, we just put the next foot forward. We ally with the capacity of life to dissolve outrage and the need to be either right or wrong. Difficulty and richness accord with each other. Walking the path is the gift of Zen, feeling the ancestors’ gifts of salt and sauce.

All the ways we try to get out of awakening! It becomes a real burden, to not let some piece of life touch me or penetrate. These things become very clear in retreat; it becomes hard to ignore what’s there. And all the efforts to snare it, charm it, or steal it from someone else, including a past or future versions of oneself … despite these efforts, we can’t hold off awakening.

David talks about entering baths in Japan. How do you enter a bath? What is your way? We are not just entering the bath—the bath enters us. Water added to water. It’s not about getting clean; it’s about getting free.